Interview With The Fragtastic Ozh

Ozh has been around the block a number of times. He is known as one of the longtime veterans of WordPress throughout the community. There are a few people who I look up to as role models within the community. Ozh is one of those people. At any rate, I got the chance to send him a few questions I had on my mind.

How long have you been involved with WordPress?

I began playing with WP 0.71 in early 2004, moments after realizing that a blog I was reading could assign multiple categories to a single post, something I had been dreaming of for years. In May 2004 I relaunched my personal site using WordPress* (version 1.0.1 at that time). A few months later in August 2004 I released my first plugin**

So all in all as of writing that’s five years and a half of WordPress hacking.

* http://planetozh.com/blog/2004/05/planetozh-v300/
** http://planetozh.com/blog/2004/08/ip-to-nation-plugin/

What the heck is your day job?

Bleh. At the moment my day job consists in planning stuff in a gigantic corporation that produces energy. I mostly dislike it, it pays well, it’s totally unrelated to computers, my boss is a jerk, my colleagues and I make an insanely fun group. Overall, it’s bleh.

One Of The Funniest Copyrights I've Read

One of the funniest things about your site is the renaming of comments to Blablas. There are numerous other examples on PlanetOzh of this snarkieness. Is this out of disregard for the usual or just the way you really feel about comments?

I never thought about it this way but yes, I think I’m mostly snarky :)

I definitely have a love/hate relation with commenters. On one hand they’re signs that a site is alive and interesting, but on the other hand they always post stupid questions because they just cannot read plugin manuals

How many years have you been a judge for the WeblogToolsCollection plugin competition?

This was the first time. I have an unreleased plugin I was hoping to release in the competition, but as one of the winners of previous editions I wasn’t eligible to compete this year.

So, I thought, if I can’t play, maybe I can watch others play? Last year I had written an unsolicited review of some plugins and this had been an interesting experience, so I was ready to do it again anyway.

Do you come across at least one plugin that impresses you each year?

Man, much more than one per year. Damn, I hope I don’t sound like the guy who’s never impressed or want others to think he’s never impressed. That’s what I love about plugins: there are a lot great ideas, a lot of great code, and sometimes both at the same time.

The Number Of Users Has Never Changed, Hmmm

What is it about WordPress that compels you to develop for it?

When I first started to use WP and was crafting my first theme, I realized I really liked the way it was coded so I decided to investigate PHP a bit (I was more of a Perl guy back in those days). The learning curve was pretty short when I began digging into WordPress, I found out that PHP was a fun language, and well, I never looked back.

I’ve been asked several times to port plugins to Drupal or Joomla, but I just don’t have enough free time to learn and master those CMSes.

How do you use PlanetOzh? Is it your public WordPress RSS reader?

Well, it’s just my blog. At the beginning it was less WordPress focused than it is now, but I think this just reflects what my hobbies and interests have become and are now.

Which versions of Quake do you play? I used to be pretty good at Quake 3 when I was younger.

I bet I pwn your ass!1!!1

I started to play Doom then Doom2 in free for all deathmatch over my school’s LAN. I briefly tried Quake 1 but had no internet connection at that time. Later when I got my first connection I instantly got hooked with the Quake community. I played *a lot* of Quake 2, then I played *a lot* of Quake 3, then gradually dropped it as Q3 was slowing down and Q4 didn’t take off. I didn’t play for about 2 years and now I’m back as a casual Quakelive FFA player (I typically play one or two FFA games in the morning before going to work, and 3 or 4 games in the evening when kids are in bed). Anyone fancy a game? Add me as a friend, my nick on Quakelive is “Ozh” from clan SARL

God I *love* Quake, I could talk about Quake for hours

What’s your favorite Quake weapon?

The most beautiful one is the shaft I think, but an air rocket is still the most enjoyable way to frag. Or maybe a quadded shotgun run?

Anything you would like to get off your chest or any shoutouts?

WP FTW! (too bad wpftw.com is already taken)