Seth Alling is a Detroit-based developer turned designer turned developer, who has been working with WordPress since 2009.

Currently he works remotely as the Lead Developer for Ranch House Designs, a small agency located in Wharton, Texas, where he is primarily responsible for developing custom WordPress websites and plugins.

When he’s not developing (or designing), you can find him running, playing soccer or spending time with his wife and two sons.

Presentation: Using the Editor the Proper Way

“Over the past few years, I always seem to be brought in to help troubleshoot issues people have had with content editing. Sometimes it’s just something minor, and other times they have legitimately broken their site. This has helped me learn if people just understood the basics of the editor, it would go a long way in helping their site.”

What unique perspective are you bringing to this talk?

“Not only am I someone who has bounced back and forth between design and development, but my intro to WordPress was actually as a user, so I have uniquely viewed WordPress from different perspectives.

Additionally, I am fairly active and relate the entire talk to the failures I had while first learning how to mountain bike, so if you are just interested in hearing about my failure, I can provide you with that. ;)”

What’s one really cool thing people will discover during your session?

“How to go back in time! Seriously, there’s an extremely simple way built into WordPress that allows you to pull up previous content from your page.”

Do you have a good WordPress related story, anecdote or memory?

“After being annoyed with the way WordPress dealt with having comments on by default for pages, I got fed up and decided to write a script to help with that.

I told a friend what I had done and he encouraged me to put it on the WordPress plugin repository. Thus, No Page Comment was born and it became fairly popular.

I still remember the memory of looking at the stats and finding out that the plugin had 1,000 installs, which really isn’t all that much, and thinking how cool it was to have developed something that people were actually using.

WordPress 4.3 finally solved that issue, and it makes me happy to realize I created something that helped out thousands of sites for the 4 years there wasn’t a solution available in core WordPress.”

What are you most looking forward to at WordCamp Toronto?

“I enjoy meeting new people, especially those in the WordPress community, and look forward to meeting more.”