Meta Q&A:
John Faulds

Meta Q&A is back in the new year! We're excited to get to know more of the amazing ExpressionEngine community - all over the world. To kick of 2012, we're heading down under to chat with John Faulds (@tyssen) of Tyssen Design.

MQ: Tell us about your work in 140 characters or less.

JF: Freelance web designer and ExpressionEngine developer working with private clients and other agencies.

MQ: How/why did you get into the web industry? Why do you stick with it?

JF: My first job working on the web was in 1998 with SportLive, a sports website set up by The Express newspaper in London just before the 1998 World Cup. I was already working on The Express' Art Department so it was an internal move. My job involved a bit of graphic design, learning front-end coding, content creation, sub-editing, and also user-testing the content management system (they weren't even called that back then).

What I do now is quite different from what I did then and there's been quite a lot of job changes in that time too, not all of them involving working on the web. But I am a freelance web developer now because I like working with the web and learning new and improved ways to do things, like working with people that I want to work with, like the flexibility that working for yourself provides, particularly with having a young family, and don't miss commuting!

MQ: Why do you use ExpressionEngine?

JF: Because I can do nearly everything with it and have total control over the code it outputs. If there's anything I can't work out how to do or need advice with, there's always someone who can help out.

MQ: What was the first EE site you ever worked on? What was that experience like?

JF: It was 2006 I think, and the first site I tried it out on was actually a blog for NRG (dance music) reviews and I have to say I really struggled with it and think I even asked an exasperated question on the forums that was along the lines of "How can I possibly do this if ExpressionEngine does that?" Anyway, that build (using the free core version) never got completed. It wasn't actually specifically requested, I was just testing EE out for my own interest, so not finishing didn't really matter.

I'd already been using Wordpress for a while at that point and had built my own site on it, so I put it aside for a while and it wasn't until about a year later that I came back to it and built a church site on it. The main draw for me at that time was that it had its own integrated forum and the photo gallery module.

Being such a while ago I don't remember the specifics but I know I still struggled with some aspects of it, particularly with comments and setting up the forum. I'm not sure whether I had the 'a-ha' moment that many seem to have during that build or a little bit later.

MQ: What does a typical workday look like for you?

JF: My typical work day for the next few months is a bit different from what it would normally be because our house (which is also where I work) is being renovated and we can't stay there right now. So currently my day is being split between three different houses all within a couple of minutes walk of each other (we've got good neighbours).

But a normal normal day would usually involve using EE. I do a lot of subcontracting work for other agencies and nearly all that work involves using EE. All that work for others has meant that I've had the opportunity to work on a variety of different sites (80+ EE sites all up) with lots of different requirements so I'm always learning new things with EE, which is great.

MQ: How do you stay passionate about your work? What do you do to refocus when you're having a bad day?

JF: As mentioned above, I think the variety I've had always makes it interesting. As far as bad days go, I always stick to a fairly strict schedule so I always knock off at 5 pm and take the dogs for a walk, which is usually good for leaving the troubles of the day behind. Then it's family time when they get back from work/day care/school and that helps too.

MQ: My favorite EE site I worked on is: _______ 

JF: One that launched late last year, Tennis Brisbane. I'd worked with the contact there on another site (which ironically turned out to probably be my least favourite) and it all came together really easily. I actually did nearly all the EE templating before a front-end design had even begun so that the whole basic shell of the site was in place so that the clients could enter content while the front-end design was being worked on.

MQ: My favorite EE site someone else did is: _________

JF: Um, there's heaps that I've seen along the way that have impressed me but one from recent memory that impressed is Natural High Safaris  by John D Wells of One Darnely Road.

MQ: If I could change one thing about ExpressionEngine it would be: __________

JF: Learning how to use Git for deploying sites with EE made a big difference to my workflow in the last year. I know this isn't a problem restricted to EE, but a way for deploying database changes between different environments easily would be cool.

Other than that, I have a fairly high irritation threshold, i.e. it takes a lot for something to bug me. So rather than get upset if something doesn't quite work, I just find whatever is the path of least opposition around that problem instead. Which is my way of explaining that I rarely ever catch myself saying: "I wish EE did..."

MQ: If I had once piece of advice for someone trying to break into the web industry it would be: ____________

JF: Take the time to try and think outside your own circle of experience. The way you view the world may not be the same as the way a site's visitors will so you have to remove your preconceptions when building stuff for the web.