This week we are joined by Joe Casabona. Joe is a web developer, author and teacher at University of Scranton.

Q & A:

• 23:14 I’m starting to take my sites performance more seriously and I’m having great success compressing and caching everything, except when it comes to “defer parsing for javascript” for both internal and external resources. I’ve been reading up on it but since I don’t know javascript that well I’m having a hard time implementing. Currently I enqueue the scripts in the footer (wordpress), but apparently thats not enough.
• 30:21 I want to move from static sites to building wordpress sites. What’s the best way to transition?
• 35:10 When I design websites for clients, I almost always work with wordpress. One reason is that wordpress is so widely used. Can you recommend any CMSs that are worth checking out that specifically have a similar widespread use and staying power?
• 40:53 I’m thinking about more seriously getting into freelance work. What would you say are the most important skill sets?
• 45:50 A deployment strategy is pretty much required for something like Ruby on Rails, where you’re precompiling assets, restarting servers, etc., but what about wordpress? What do you do about databases, plugins, or version control?
• 55:00 Why has the html email section of the web not been talked about in the web standards? Is this something that I should start evangelizing about fixing or has someone already been heading this fight? What are some free / cheap solutions to check my email code cross platform?

Sponsors:

28:26 lynda.com – The best online learning resource. Check out great courses like:

• Creating and Editing Custom WordPress Themes

• Google Analytics Tips

• Shooting With Blackmagic Cameras (4K)

• Revit Construction Modeling Tools Get a free 7 day trial now!

39:10 E4H – Responsive Web Design Summit – 3 days, all day long. Environments for Humans brings together some of the Web’s most notable experts in and for an all-new, three-day online conference, the RWD Summit 2014! Bring the experts to your desktop April 1-April 3, 2014 from 9AM to 5PM (CT). Use coupon code SHOPTALKSHOW and grab a ticket for 20% off!

Show Links:

• Joe’s Website
• Joe on Twitter
• Building WordPress Themes from Scratch
• Responsive Web Design with WordPress
• CSS-Tricks: “Icon System with SVG Sprites”
• Coda
• MAMP
• Varying-Vagrant-Vagrants
• Campaign Monitor HTML Email CSS Guide