[ad_1] ഈ ഉപന്യാസം മലയാളത്തിലും ലഭ്യമാണ് Here is Hari reading his own story aloud. I will never forget the day I turned 22. I was officially at the lowest point in life as I woke up that morning. While my peers were employed with multinational companies or pursuing higher education at top universities worldwide, I had just been fired from my first “job” and was broke. Things were so bad that I had even become a pariah in my own family. Setting aside all those negative thoughts, I pulled myself out of my bed and switched on my computer, which lit up with a partly-written blog post on the TinyMCE editor of WordPress 3.0.1. That sight filled me with hope. I felt a strong creative urge to continue writing and started typing away. After completing that post, I leaned on my chair, marveling at my creation. All my negative emotions had now disappeared. I realized that even if I failed in life, I would always have two things with me – my blog and the open source software that powered it (WordPress). And that was all I needed to trudge onward. Little did I know that this open source software (that powers 40%+ of all websites in the world today) would eventually become my raison d’être and give me a life I could never even dream of! Discovering WordPress I was born and brought up in Thiruvananthapuram, in Kerala, India as an only child to engineer parents. Since computers and programming had always fascinated me as a kid, I enrolled in an engineering course with a specialization in information technology after high school. My goal was to take up a career in technology. I even had lofty dreams of pursuing research in computer science. My batch had a four-month break before college started, and during this time, I started working with my friends’ web services startup. One evening, while working on a client’s website, I was introduced to WordPress. It was a revelation. You could create and customize websites from an admin panel without needing to hand-code in HTML! I loved it and wanted to create a WordPress website on my own. However, since I did not have the resources to purchase a domain and hosting package, I did the next best thing – I set up a blog on WordPress.com. As the cliche goes, that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 🙂 Thriving with WordPress during tough times Soon, the holidays were over, and college started. With high hopes, I stepped foot into one of Kerala’s top engineering colleges. However, within a few days, I realized that I was a misfit in this system. The Indian educational system is designed for rote-learning by default and rejects everyone that does not comply. My ‘radical’ dreams of thinking out of the box, finding knowledge outside prescribed textbooks, exploring the practical side of concepts, and even furthering original ideas – made me an outcast. I was disappointed, disillusioned, and eventually lost interest in academics. To add insult to the injury, my friends kicked me out of the web services startup, which was my saving grace during this ordeal. During this challenging time, it was WordPress that kept me going. Pouring my mind into my WordPress blog helped me survive the trauma of college. Fueled by curiosity, I tried to find practical applications of core computer science concepts taught in college by tinkering with WordPress code and creating mock websites. Slowly I started earning pocket money through freelance projects and Google AdSense. I eventually bought my own domain and moved to self-hosted WordPress. All-in-all, WordPress not only helped me survive college but taught me more than college ever could. By the end of four years, I had learned PHP, MySQL, web designing and development, open source philosophy, and even became a better writer thanks to WordPress! Even as the nightmare called college went on by the side, I collected a bunch of professional accolades. The most memorable ones include being an honorary speaker at one of India’s top engineering colleges, getting a chance to interview Richard Stallman himself, winning an international essay competition, and becoming a freelance journalist with one of India’s national newspapers. Life was challenging but promising! Presenting at NIT Calicut – one of India’s top engineering colleges, as an invited speaker Selected as a runner-up for Mindful Leadership co-organized by University of Dayton, Ohio and Loyola Institute of Business Administration Finding out about Automattic My love for WordPress encouraged me to add a question about Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of WordPress, in a trivia quiz that I hosted at an intercollegiate quiz in my third year. The question went unanswered, but while preparing for the quiz, I learned about Matt’s company – Automattic, Inc. Automattic owned WordPress.com and had 30+ employees working remotely from all corners of the world then. Since WordPress was everything to me, working for the company that runs WordPress.com felt like a dream. I believed that I had a real shot at making it to Automattic; since it was a fully distributed company, I could work remotely from India without having to worry about work permits or visas. The “Happiness Engineer” role seemed like a perfect fit for me, and I decided to apply right after graduating from college a year later. A glimpse from the same quiz that I hosted where I would shortly ask that question about Matt that would go unanswered! However, life would have other plans for me. Dreams come crashing down – but not without hope! History teaches us that every misfit meets debilitating failure early on in life. After surviving for nearly three and a half years, my crash came in my final year. Since I lacked the minimum attendance, I did not graduate with my batchmates and was asked to repeat my last semester with my juniors. It was a major blow – not just for my ego, but also for my existence. Nevertheless, I did not lose
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Life At The End Of Your Comfort Zone
[ad_1] It is often said that life, adventure, challenge, growth, etc, begins at the end of your comfort zone. Like all much-abused aphorisms, that is both true and not. Yes, growth comes from outside your comfort zone, but then your comfort zone just becomes bigger. Before I get ahead of myself though, I should introduce myself. Hi, my name is Akshat, and I am the founder of BlogVault, MalCare, WP Remote, MigrateGuru and AirLift. I have spent 12 years on a rollercoaster WordPress journey, building these solutions for high performance WordPress sites. Today, I am going to tell you about my comfort zone. If you are wondering what WordPress has to do with my comfort zone, you’re about to find out. But first, a little context In the pre-BlogVault world, I was working at Citrix, doing kernel hacking for a product called NetScaler. This is as far removed from WordPress as you can possibly imagine. I was about to discover my new path rather abruptly. One fine day, The Coding Horror blog crashed. In case you are unfamiliar with this stalwart of the programming world, it is Jeff Atwood’s blog. Jeff Atwood is the founder of StackOverflow, another keystone of the programming community. If Jeff Atwood’s blog didn’t have backups, I thought, what about the legions of sites out there? Thus, BlogVault was born; its siblings mentioned above soon to follow. Stage 1: Products for problems When I created BlogVault, I wasn’t thinking about building for people. I saw a problem that I could fix, and created a solution for it. In fact, I understood so little about how people purchase products that every time someone bought a subscription, I thought it was a miracle. Obviously, magic wasn’t part of the equation, so I figured that I would have to actually meet people in WordPress. I needed to understand them, and why they were buying my product at all. This was a big step out of my comfort zone, by the way. I do not excel at meeting new people. That may be the understatement of the year. Hello strangers! Enter WordCamps. Now, everyone knows that WordCamps are events of inclusion, bringing people from all walks of life together. I didn’t at the time, and attending my first few conferences was me actively putting myself out there. I volunteered at a few, and spoke at others. None of this came easily or naturally, because it was innately difficult to interact with strangers. Over a few events, the discomfort became less and less, till it has gone entirely. I met wonderful people and built lasting friendships. For instance, I attended a WordCamp Europe in Spain one year, and got in touch with a friend who lived in the country. We’d never met before, but we’d corresponded a few times. He and his wife came to pick me up, and they showed me around for 2 days. It is incredible that someone can have so much generosity for a virtual stranger. Stage 2: Products for people Once I crossed the hurdle of interacting with strangers, I started to understand that building a product cannot be done in a vacuum. It is important to consider the people who are going to use it, why they would use it, and how it solves their problems. The WordPress community helped me reframe our products in terms of value propositions. Our marketing evolved to be about creating and showcasing value, and solving issues. I also learned how to use the right metrics to measure interaction. I found myself moving towards a more analytical mindset. This was in stark contrast to how I started: with a gut-based approach and the joy of making. I pivoted quickly to add people into the mix. It feels great—almost romantic—to say we build for the joy of making, but it is not a viable business model unless you factor in people. The courage to be imperfect BlogVault is a great backup product, even if I do say so myself. MalCare is too. MigrateGuru is the stuff of dreams, even. But. BUT. AirLift isn’t. Not yet, anyway. These are all products that we have made for WordPress, and have continued to improve over the years. It took us ages after we built MalCare to actually release it. It wasn’t perfect, how could we possibly release it? Eventually, I realized that this wasn’t the way to grow. And, I’m not going to lie, it took a lot to overcome this mindset. There were unexpected cheerleaders in every corner, and bit by bit, we were emboldened to take a leap of faith. Customers who loved our existing products encouraged us to let them try our new ones. Slowly I developed the courage to be imperfect, and trust in the process. We moved forward with the certainty that we would make it better. A fair field and no favor WordPress has been around for decades, and there are competitors on every level. This knowledge contributed to the desire to perfect our product. How will something that is less-than compete with established products in the market? I needed to develop a competitive mindset! Not quite. WordPress is big enough for everyone to thrive. But more than that, it isn’t a dog-eat-dog world. The community doesn’t have a win-at-all-costs mentality. People here have a lifestyle approach to business, without the hyper competitive spirit. It is a wholesome and largely ethical ecosystem. I discovered that the competitive spirit I thought I needed to develop—which didn’t come naturally—wasn’t necessary. I could succeed and make a mark, without that trample-to-get-ahead mentality. (If only I could stop using trite-but-true phrases as adjectives as easily.) The wheel has come full circle 12 years ago, I started my entrepreneurial journey with BlogVault, a definite outsider to WordPress. While I have encountered the boundaries of my comfort zone many times over the years, WordPress has helped me push past them. Today, I can proudly claim to not only be part of this amazing
Continue readingMy Life Before & After WordPress
[ad_1] Early Days I have always had a knack for technology. I still remember the summer of 2006 when I bought a PC for the first time. I would try to install Windows XP many times so to make Windows work smoothly but without any luck. It was those stubborn viruses, which would only be removed by running a virus scan, not a fresh Windows install, something I figured out later. Although, it took me another decade – right after my MBA in 2015 – to turn my curiosity for technology into a passion after I stumbled upon web technologies from the development perspective. It is when I started learning WordPress while still working in an administrative and support capacity at an organization in my hometown. Daydreaming Being an introvert in nature, the thought of working remotely providing value using technology with the freedom to choose my own work hours has always fascinated me. While becoming a digital nomad exploring nature felt like touching the sky. I knew it was quite possible after finding real stories online but I had no path to follow to turn my dream into a reality. The Challenge After spending tons of time online, figuring out the way was the easy step. Now that I look back during my initial days when I was getting started, the biggest challenge I have come to realize was to stay motivated as being all alone with the Imposter Syndrome – which I am sure every developer has faced during their careers – did take a toll on me. I think it is not easy to stay motivated when there aren’t immediate rewards for the hard work we do. Sometimes, weeks would go by for me to not do anything but try to stay motivated and don’t just give up. Humble Beginnings I could easily recall the evening of my last MBA exam day when I started exploring web technologies. Even just before that, I spent a good 2-3 months learning and then finding projects for web design on 99Designs until I realized that I am not very passionate about becoming a designer. I started learning HTML, CSS, basic JavaScript with jQuery but learning these technologies alone could only go so far without a clear path. I was looking for a tool that could help me build a website from scratch and for that, I explored many tools and technologies along the way including WordPress. While celebrating the 68th independence day of Pakistan online I came across this amazing article by Ahmad Awais (big props) which really helped me to make a definite decision to choose WordPress over other online publishing tools. After basic learning, I started right away working as a WordPress Power User, mostly delivering theme customizing projects for the clients in the local market while still working a day job. All the Way WordPress It took me another two years to finally choose WordPress as my full-time career. I moved to the capital and after many failed attempts at getting hired and desperate moments followed afterward, I finally received an offer letter from a digital agency, Centangle Interactive, where I joined as a Web Developer focused on the WordPress platform. I consider joining Centangle as one of the best decisions of my life as it helped me with my professional growth by becoming familiar with the whole WordPress ecosystem in a supportive environment. I was being valued for my opinions in the web projects I was involved with. I was also appreciated and encouraged for the open-source work I did for the company. During the pandemic last year, I joined a startup viz. UPTEK. The company provides web development services to its international clientele. I have been trusted with the opportunity to work on some of the premium freelancing platforms on behalf of the company. While apart from the developer role at the company, I am also involved in client communication and project management which has been an exciting journey for me so far with lots of learning almost every day. WordPress Community WordPress introduced me to the world of open-source software and the WordPress community itself. WordPress community connects WordPress enthusiasts via monthly Meetups, annual WordCamps, virtual collaborations like contributions to the WordPress project, and a whole lot more. The WordPress community made me a firm believer in the power of open-source software and an enthusiast who enjoys a great deal to contribute back to the WordPress community via writing, speaking, and helping organize meetups. Over the years, I have had the opportunity to write open-source software for the WordPress platform and feel humbled to contribute to the WordPress core. I have also had the privilege to speak as well as help organize the monthly WordPress Meetups and the annual WordCamp(s) for the Islamabad/Rawalpindi WordPress community. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to help start the Elementor Community Islamabad Chapter – which organizes monthly Elementor Meetups. Yet that is not it, I have met some really humble people over the years, whom I proudly call my besties. I met these fine folks on a train on my way to WordCamp Karachi 2018 which was the very first WordCamp in Pakistan. It is all made possible by WordPress and its community and for that, I am forever grateful. Now fast forward to the present, I have been traveling and exploring every corner of the country almost every other month with my train buddies by fulfilling my dream of traveling. Takeaway If anything, one of the main takeaways, why I shared my story, is to stay persistent. I know it is hard to stay motivated and break into this industry. But if you are determined, then WordPress will surely reward you as It can’t be said in any better words than by the words of the very Chris Lema himself: “WordPress will change your life if you let it” So, if you are starting out then get yourself a clear path and just dive
Continue readingHow WordPress Has Changed My Life – Gtarafdar
[ad_1] I’m Gobinda Tarafdar from Dhaka, Bangladesh. In short, Gtarafdar. This short form is available everywhere on social media. Actually, while I was a kid, a medicine specialist suggested this short form of my name. From that time, I had a plan to use it. Moving on, now I have become a WordPress Enthusiast Marketer. In this essay, I will share my journey to WordPress with you. Early Stage Of My Career: I started my career as a teacher in an academic coaching center back in 2010. I was then a 1st-year student of my 4-year Graduation Program. But the number of my earnings was not sufficient to cover all my livelihood. My parents were giving me support to continue my study at that time. So I was looking for more ways to earn my living. But in our country, it’s tough to get a job without graduation. I tried to find more tutoring jobs but failed to get one. Then I gave stand-up comedy a try. At that time, it became popular. I participated in a TV reality show based on stand-up comedy. But failed to reach the top five. So, didn’t get much success in the comedy sector as well. In this way, two years passed. After a while, I got the idea of a call center job in the telco industry of our country. I gave an interview to our number one telco company Grameenphone – a sister concern of Telenor. And luckily got the chance to join there. And it’s a game-changing part of my career. I learned a lot about team play, pressure handling, the ability to put myself in a customer’s shoes, and more. But it was a part-time job, and my graduation was about to end. Immediately after finishing my graduation, I got the opportunity to join Grameenphone’s Finance team. However, I had to pass the challenging interview as many other promising candidates were competing with me. Everything seemed so great at that time. Got the opportunity to work in the country’s best corporate office, but bad luck struck again. Didn’t get the chance to be a full-time employee from contractual employee status. I took a break to join the country’s public service commission. Unfortunately, I failed to get the desired position again. In the meantime, my father retired from his job. All of a sudden, so many responsibilities came upon me. By the way, I forgot to mention, in this time frame, I had completed my Graduation, Masters, and MBA. The year where I’m now in the beginning of 2018. After my father’s retirement, I had no time for an experiment. But the main challenge came then. No one wanted to give me a chance as I worked at one of Bangladesh’s most prominent companies; they thought I couldn’t fit into their office culture. Also, I wanted to start my career as a Digital Marketer, and I had no practical experience at that time. I had some certification of Udemy and Hubspot free courses. But I was confident that I had a degree of MBA in Marketing. But all of my confidence was doomed within three months. I stopped applying everywhere, started to do some research on the job sector. Finally, I decided to join the IT industry, and in our country, WordPress Based companies are in the leading position. So, I had my target fixed towards the WordPress industry. A Huge Risk-Taking State in My Career: I took a huge risk to start my career in the WordPress industry. After not seeing much job opportunities in the Digital Marketing area in my country, I was planning to join the telco industry again as I was finding no option to cherish my dream. I badly needed a job at that time. But meanwhile, I found a job circular in weDevs. They were looking for a Digital Marketer Intern. So I made my decision to take part in this program. Surprisingly, I got another job offer from a renowned MNC of our country in the sales team. But I took a huge risk and started trying for the weDevs internship program, and refused the salesperson job. My friends Mayeen & Arif helped me a lot to learn more about WordPress. And they guided me on how I could set up localhost on my computer, and from then, I started to explore themes and plugins from the WordPress repository. I must say I got an interesting tool to play with. After passing three stages, I finally got the chance to join weDevs. weDevs is a popular WordPress Plugin making company. It’s famous for Dokan Multivendor Marketplace Solution for WooCommerce. My Life at weDevs Ohh, maybe you have a question about how it can be risky to go for the weDevs internship program! Well, the payout of the other company was three times higher than the weDevs internship payout. And I refused to join the other sales team while I still didn’t have any guarantee to join the weDevs team. So now you can judge, isn’t that risky? (Sorry, I can’t share the name of the sales company publicly here due to some policy issue.) The Journey to WordPress: From the day when I had installed WordPress in my local host, my journey in this ecosystem started. I found it so easy to use and user-friendly that I felt anyone could create a website. I started to read articles and explore the World of WordPress. Also, weDevs’s internship program helped me a lot to get involved in the WordPress industry. My mentor Afshana Diya and Mainul Kabir Aion guided me a lot to dive deep into the sea of WordPress. Learned the area of content marketing, explored paid mediums, gathered knowledge on social media marketing, and more within three months. The internship program was exact and compact, along with interactive. Here came another twist. I wanted to be a part of the Digital Marketing Team. But because of my communication skills and interpersonal relationship
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