Yannick Lefebvre is a tech enthusiast and the author of the WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook, published by Packt Publishing. He has been blogging since 2003, started using WordPress in 2004 and published his first plugin, Link Library, in March 2005. Since then, he released seven other plugins, all hosted on the official WordPress.org site. He absolutely loves using WordPress to develop web sites and find PHP to be a most liberating language compared to more traditional languages such as C/C++.
Follow @ylefebvre on Twitter.
Yannick will be giving a talk titled Plugins: A Double-Edged Sword.
What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?
I have really been enjoying the new media manager in version 3.5. I find it to be a great improvement over previous versions.
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?
I have been using WordPress since the early days and have always wanted to give back to the community, first through my plugins, and now presenting at my fourth WordCamp Montreal. Year after year, I have been getting great feedback from attendees who have appreciated all of the tidbits of plugin knowledge that I have shared in my talks and I hope to be able to deliver once again.
What is your talk going to be about?
I will be talking about the good and bad sides of plugins. While plugins are part of what makes WordPress so special, they are also what make many users cringe with all of the problems that they can bring to a web site. My talk will explain to users and integrators how to deal with the various types of issues that they might encounter around plugin deployment and how to create a stable environment.
What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?
That plugins can really enhance a web site when you know how to take control of them.
Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?
Long-time plugin developers like Joost de Valk (@yoast) and Takayuki Miyoshi (@takayukister) have always been an inspiration to me. They have created amazingly popular plugins, such as WordPress SEO and Contact Form 7, that so many people rely on everyday on their site.
What new feature would you like to see in the future?
A built-in form builder to be able to create things like contact forms. While plugins like Contact Form 7 are great, I feel like form-building should be added to basic WordPress functionality.
