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WordPress Veteran, Connor Turner discusses WordPress Security, Future Trends, and Customer Satisfaction

Updated on March 4, 2020

6 Min Read

With more than 15 years of experience in web design and development under his belt, Connor Turner is one of the most renowned WordPress industry influencers of his age. He is currently the President of Armadillo Studios, the web design agency known for its cutting-edge solutions. It enjoys a large customer base in Canada. Under his visionary leadership, the web agency has made unprecedented progress since its inception in 2006.

In his own words, Connor Turner is the Jack-of-all-Trades when it comes to web design and development. Today, we are extremely grateful to Connor Turner for his time.

During this interview, he shares his opinion about the importance of customer satisfaction, his experiences at WordCamps. He also sheds light on the current and future trends of WordPress, the security threats etc. He also has some words of wisdom for the newbies.

Connor Turner Interview

Cloudways: Being in the industry for 8 years and using WordPress for quite sometime now. Tell me, how did it all start? Was it all planned, or you just happened to come across it?

Connor Turner: It wasn’t planned at all. Like many of the people who started in this industry during the late 2000s’, I have had no formal training in software development and there really wasn’t a formal way to dive into the web design world.

To be honest, I accidentally fell into WordPress and web design in 2006. After graduating from the University of Calgary, I ended up working in the energy sector in Alberta for a few years. After a couple of years within the same company, I started transitioning from contract and lease work towards internal web site design and planning, and that gave me my first taste for web design.

During that time the web, as we know started functioning. There was a massive movement away from solely Flash website development and the basis for CSS and web standards based development had just gathering strength within the community.

At the same time, the world of Social Media was starting to explode within the larger tech industry. I ended up deciding to head down to Austin, Texas for SXSW in 2007 and fell in love with the community and industry. I ended up walking away from my Oil and Gas career later that year and starting Armadillo Studios … and as they say…… the rest is history.

Cloudways: You are running Armadillo Studios, a well-established web development and design agency. What’s the formula of your success? How important is the teamwork behind the agency’s progress?

Connor Turner: My formula for success with clients is pretty easy and straightforward. Armadillo’s main focus is solely on the customers. Whether it’s building unique and customized WordPress powered websites, tailored social media campaigns or top-notch email marketing strategies, our sole focus is on the customer and their clientele.

It’s all about giving the highest quality product to match our client’s budgets and corporate goals.

Cloudways: You are one of the forces behind WordCamp Calgary. What inspires you to take such a step? How do you value these WordCamps?  Have you attended any other than WC Calgary? If yes, share your experience.

Connor Turner: For me getting involved with WordCamp Calgary and the Calgary WordPress Meetup was an opportunity to help give back to the local WordPress community.

As stated, I’ve been developing and designing with WordPress since 2007 and when I started, there weren’t many local resources for WordPress developers in the city. So for me, things like WordCamps and Meetup groups are a great way for local developers, designers, bloggers and other people in the community to get together and help share ideas and resources.

To be honest, before co-organizing WordCamp Calgary 2014, I didn’t get a chance to attend the first WordCamp in Calgary. I was actually living in the Eastern Canada for a couple of years and attended the WordCamp in Ottawa, but had heard about the great success of the 2013 edition. Our WordCamp was a fusion between the previous year’s edition and some of the elements that made Ottawa’s WordCamp such a success.

Cloudways: Being an experienced WordPress user, which plugins and themes do you prefer to use on your websites?

Connor Turner: I actually don’t use themes for any of my WordPress websites. I craft all of my themes from scratch using a bare bones skeletal template I built a few years ago. It’s much easier to create a unique experience for clients when you’re starting from a blank canvas.

I also find that pre-made templates tend to add massive amount of weight to WordPress sites. It takes a bit more time to learn the core elements of WordPress to build sites from scratch, but in the long term, it’s far more valuable than being able to hack and slash the twenty fourteen or twenty thirteen themes.

In regards to plugins, my standards include Google Sitemaps, Gravity Forms, All-in-one SEO and WP-smush-it.

Cloudways: Apart from WordPress and web development, what other activities you love to engage in – say – food, traveling, music, politics etc.

Connor Turner: I’m a pretty obsessive sports and politics junkie. I usually spend my time watching Ice Hockey and MLS Soccer.

Recently, I’ve also become quite active within the political scene, in particular working to encourage local political parties to embrace and improve their own user experience with online technology.

Cloudways: There are many WordPress communities and groups active on social media? How vital these are in terms of sharing ideas about the development and progress of WordPress?

Connor Turner: To be honest, I don’t think WordPress would be as widely adopted within the industry if it weren’t for the community of designers and developers creating solutions. If you look at CMSes like Drupal, Joomla or even Expressionengine, many of these CMSs have inherent aspects that are far better than WordPress from a developer or designer standpoint, but WordPress’ community is what really sets it above the rest out there.

And because of the vast community and its open mind set, it only takes a few minutes on Google search to find the solution to any issue, one can possibly come across. The ecosystem surrounding WordPress is really what sets it ahead of any of the other CMS available.

Cloudways: WordPress has now become a trendsetter in CMS industry. With WordPress 4.0 already in the market, the progress continues. Where do you see WordPress in the next 5 years? Also tell our readers, which features you like the most in WordPress 4.0?

Connor Turner: I can see WordPress’ popularity continuing to grow over the next few years. I can honestly see WordPress becoming almost the go-to content management system for the casual user, looking to develop a website for business and personal reasons. But like all technology I do wonder if we’re about to reach the peak.

While I love WordPress and it is my go-to CMS for projects, it has been around for close to 14 years now, with it’s first roll out of version 2.0 about 7 years ago. So I have to wonder if we’ll start seeing the end of WordPress as a the go-to CMS for many people.

Will a new tool come out that surpasses WordPress’ usability and intuitive nature? I’m not sure, but I can see it happening. Everyone remembers when ICQ, GeoCities and AOL dominated the Internet and were the de facto tools, so I wouldn’t be shocked if something else comes and disrupts WordPress’ dominance. But either way, it’s going to be an interesting few years for the community and I think it has the support to grow past these concerns.

In regards to the WordPress itself, I think we are really going to see a more concentrated push towards improving themes and interfaces for mobile and tablets. I also feel like there will be even more improvements from a mobile-based content publishing perspective.

I also hope that in the next few years, WordPress continues to introduce features and fixes to further improve the end-user experience, in particular improving the difference between the HTML side of page content and the WYSIWYG phenomenon.

Cloudways: Nothing is perfect and WordPress is no exception. WordPress sites are vulnerable to security threats. Is there any plan laid out so that these sites are protected against potential security threats?

Connor Turner: It’s pretty hard to have a 100% security without compromising the end-user experience for clients. It’s always good to employ complex passwords and also to utilize plug-ins for added security, but the best tactics are to ensure the all WordPress installs are up to date with the latest versions and that all plug-ins are automatically upgraded when a new version is released.

A tool I love to use is, WP-Remote as it allows you to simultaneously update all WordPress installs and plug-ins in a single click.

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Cloudways: There are a lot of aspiring individuals, who want to kick start their career in WordPress. What will you advice and suggest to such newbies?

Connor Turner: My biggest piece of advice is to Fail in Obscurity.

What that means is to make your mistakes before people are watching. So if you’re interested in becoming a WordPress developer or designer, go grab a friend or family member who desperately needs a web site and just start building them something. Spend your nights and days, learning, developing, designing and coding everything related to WordPress.

Understand the basics of the theme templates and how a simple template can do more than a purchased theme. So don’t worry about the latest plugins or jQuery animation. Just focus on the core elements of WordPress and become an expert in basics.


You can follow Connor Turner on Twitter.

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Waseem Abbas

Waseem Abbas was WordPress Community Manager at Cloudways. He loves to help people with their WordPress worries. He is a self-proclaimed "food explorer".

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