{"id":618,"date":"2011-08-26T08:14:09","date_gmt":"2011-08-26T06:14:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2011.capetown.wordcamp.org\/?p=618"},"modified":"2013-01-21T20:17:46","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T18:17:46","slug":"speaker-spotlight-neil-pursey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/speaker-spotlight-neil-pursey\/","title":{"rendered":"Speaker Spotlight: Neil Pursey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"neil-photo\"<\/a>\u00a0Tell us a bit about yourself<\/h3>\n

When I\u2019m not working I enjoy a round of golf, it definitely keeps me sane. I am the owner\u00a0of WebGrowth<\/a>, co-partner in ThinkSEO<\/a> and co-partner in the GROW Academy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I discovered SEO\u00a0by chance in a previous business of mine, and realising the need for SEO skills in South Africa I founded\u00a0WebGrowth in 2006.<\/p>\n

I have a deep desire for helping businesses succeed through search marketing\u00a0as well as education & social development. I came across WordPress in 2008 and have never\u00a0personally built a website in anything else besides it since then.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Why WordPress?<\/h3>\n

In 2008 I was choosing between various CMS platforms and WordPress stuck out as the easiest and\u00a0most effective way to build a website. I still feel that way 3 years later. I\u2019m probably even more\u00a0passionate now than I was then about WordPress because of the developments that have happened\u00a0over the past few years, which have been ground breaking in website management & design.<\/p>\n

What are your thoughts on the WordPress community as a whole? And the South African WP\u00a0community?<\/h3>\n

The WordPress community is great. It\u2019s probably the main reason why WordPress has become so\u00a0popular. The support in forums is amazing. There are many South African WordPress users but the\u00a0contributing community is still very small in comparison to international counterparts. Hence the\u00a0reason why I really like the WordCamp Cape Town initiative. It\u2019s a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n

Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Cape Town?<\/h3>\n

From an SEO perspective I see many WordPress blogs and websites built in South Africa that have\u00a0basic SEO errors. My goal is to educate publishers (and web developers) of the simplicities of SEO\u00a0and how effective it can be.<\/p>\n

What is your talk going to be about?<\/h3>\n

I\u2019m going to be talking about a very popular SEO plugin, Yoast\u2019s SEO plugin. I will be going through\u00a0some fundamental settings that all webmasters should think about when setting up a website. I\u2019ll\u00a0also be educating the listeners on the best techniques for on-site optimisation within WordPress.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Cape Town?<\/h3>\n

It will definitely be to see how big the Cape Town WordPress community is and to learn from other\u00a0peoples experiences of WordPress.<\/p>\n

What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?<\/h3>\n

I would want them to leave with an action plan\/to do list for SEO on their website and if I can add\u00a0one more.. hopefully to demystify SEO for many publishers.<\/p>\n

What is your favourite WordPress theme and\/or plugin, and why?<\/h3>\n

My favourite theme would be the Canvas theme by Woothemes.<\/a> It\u2019s very powerful! My favourite\u00a0plugin is Yoast\u2019s SEO plugin and you\u2019ll see why in my presentation<\/p>\n

Share one WP tip<\/h3>\n

A basic tip is to ensure that you\u2019ve added a .htaccess file to the root folder and rewrite the url\u00a0structure to \u2018custom\u2019 and insert \/%postname%\/ into the field.<\/p>\n

Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you u follow?<\/h3>\n

Our local boys from Woothemes<\/a> are definitely doing good work for the community. They are constantly adding more value to the platform from a global perspective.<\/p>\n

What is the most exciting feature\/addition\/improvement to WordPress that you have noticed in\u00a0the last year?<\/h3>\n

The addition of drag and drop custom menus has definitely been the most exciting development\u00a0within WordPress for me.<\/p>\n

Where do you see WordPress 2 years from now?<\/h3>\n

I would hope to see a more drag and drop functionalities within WordPress for the newbs and a\u00a0more scalable WordPress (manage large amounts of content in page format) for the more complex\u00a0websites. I have seen certain themes starting to do this but there is definitely room for more\u00a0development over the next 2 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0Tell us a bit about yourself When I\u2019m not working I enjoy a round of golf, it definitely keeps me sane. I am the owner\u00a0of WebGrowth, co-partner in ThinkSEO and co-partner in the GROW Academy. I discovered SEO\u00a0by chance in … Continue reading Speaker Spotlight: Neil Pursey<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7694169,"featured_media":687,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9463],"tags":[9494,9480,29],"class_list":["post-618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-speaker-spotlight","tag-neil-pursey","tag-publisher-track","tag-speakers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/files\/2011\/08\/neil-photo.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1wS7r-9Y","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7694169"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3205,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions\/3205"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capetown.wordcamp.org\/2011\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}