Pavel Ciorici is the founder and CEO of WPZOOM, where a team of creative professionals makes best-in-class themes and plugins for individuals and businesses. In this interview, he tells us why he created WPZOOM, his experience with WordPress, and lastly about his personal life. Let’s read on!
Cloudways: Hello Pavel, thank you for taking the time out for this interview. Before we start, how about you tell the readers about yourself?
Pavel: Hi! I’m the founder of WPZOOM, a WordPress theme shop I launched in 2008. We also developed a few WordPress plugins which are available for free on WordPress.org and are used on about 200.000 websites.
I have 2 kids and I enjoy raising them in the beautiful Amsterdam, where I moved about three years ago from Moldova. I’m a big Formula 1 fan and like hiking, cycling, and playing squash.
Cloudways: You are the Founder and CEO of WPZOOM. Tell us something about your company? How do you manage your responsibilities? Can you share any of your interesting stories?
Pavel: WPZOOM started as a simple blog on which I shared my passion for WordPress. Eventually, it turned into a very successful business and today our themes are being used by over 75,000 customers. At WPZOOM, we create professional and beautifully designed themes.
A typical workday for me starts by taking care of different administrative tasks, including replying to some emails which require my attention or providing feedback to my team on different things they’re working on at the moment.
I also like to be involved in all of the development processes, so from time to time I also do different design or coding stuff.
An interesting story? How about a few interesting facts about WPZOOM?
- I bought the wpzoom.com domain for $1.99 in 2008.
- I used a domain name generator to come up with this name. I remember I was simply looking for some nice combinations of “WP” + some generic words.
- Also in 2008 I think, someone offered me to purchase the website for a couple of thousands of dollars. It was just a regular blog about WordPress at the time, so as a student, of course, this sounded like a good deal to me. Now I’m really glad I pursued my dream as I really wanted to try my luck in the premium themes business.
Cloudways: You said, “in 2008 you launched WPZOOM and this changed my life completely”. May I know how you got this idea?
Pavel: Keeping in mind that I started WPZOOM as a side project because I was still a student at the time, of course, I’m thankful that it puts food on my table and my colleagues till today. A crucial moment in this story is when I launched my first premium theme in 2009. I was really motivated to launch a new theme that I designed because it was something totally different from how most of the Premium Themes at that time looked like.
So I’d say that I was simply motivated by creating something new and different from what everyone else was already doing.
P.S. Here’s one of my tweets from 2009:
I’m gonna revolutionize these WordPress themes 🙂
— Pavel Ciorici (@ciorici) April 3, 2009
Cloudways: Website speed has been a hot topic among SEOs for years now. What is your take on the issue and what do you suggest for optimizing a website?
Pavel: Even though our themes are very simple and lightweight, we still feel it’s our responsibility to educate them and make sure they know about the importance of website optimization.
I think WordPress needs to work more on this subject and make sure that no website goes live with a poor PageSpeed score. I’m pretty sure there is a way to integrate a PageSpeed checker in the Site Health section or at least provide some tools to quickly minify and combine resources.
It just amazes me what a big difference simple optimization like caching or minify can make in terms of site performance, yet a lot of people aren’t aware or don’t consider them important enough.
Cloudways: Being an experienced WordPress developer, could you please share some key points that every developer must focus on before starting any WordPress project?
Pavel: A big importance for me has the duration of the project. I think it’s very important to set launch date as this definitely helps the team focus on what’s important, instead of spending too much time on minor details that only waste time.
It’s very important to know as many details about the project and the features. Without knowing these, you can easily end up in a trap where you’re working just for the sake of work, and you don’t actually follow a specific goal. Of course, this happened to us frequently, so it’s also important to know when to say “No” to an attractive idea.
Cloudways: In your opinion, WordPress requires a lot of careful optimization techniques on application level and also on the server level. What do you think about Cloudways in terms of being an optimized WordPress Hosting Platform?
Pavel: I really like this idea! Even though I don’t have too much experience with Cloudways, nor with cloud hosting, as I’m not very good at managing servers, I think I will give it a try one day. I like that you remove all the hassle in managing cloud hosting and offer users a friendly way to build websites.
Cloudways: Whom should we interview next and why?
Pavel: I don’t think I’ve seen any interviews recently with Pippin Williamson of Sandhills Development (aka AffiliateWP and Easy Digital Downloads), so I’m really curious to learn what he’s doing these days.
Cloudways: It’s hard to take out time from work, but we all need to relax once in a while :). What do you like to do in your free time?
Pavel: I spend most of my free time with my kids. I’m trying to find the right balance between activities that are interesting for both me and them. Usually, this can be trips to discover new places or going to the beach for long walks. As I’ve mentioned in the beginning, I’m also a big Formula 1 fan but also enjoy cycling and playing squash. When it’s cold outside or rainy (and we get a lot of rain in the Netherlands), we like to build different things from LEGO.
Cloudways: Lastly, Just to acknowledge our readers, can you please send us an image of your workspace. No cleanups! 🙂
Pavel: No big issue for me, as I usually keep my desk tidy. 🙂
Here’s how it looks when it’s cleaned:
Mansoor Ahmed Khan
Been in content marketing since 2014, and I still get a kick out of creating stories that resonate with the target audience and drive results. At Cloudways by DigitalOcean (a leading cloud hosting company, btw!), I lead a dream team of content creators. Together, we brainstorm, write, and churn out awesome content across all the channels: blogs, social media, emails, you name it! You can reach out to me at [email protected].
