Antonie Potgieter

WORDPRESS (WEBSITE) PLUGIN DEVELOPER

Full Description

USE THE ABOVE PLAYER BUTTONS TO LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW, or: Play in new window You Can Also Download This Interview Here. (The Duration/Length Of This Interview Is: 46:50 — 43.3MB)

FULL TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH ANTONIE POTGIETER

ADDITIONAL DETAILS ABOUT ANTONIE POTGIETER

You can also find additional information about ANTONIE POTGIETER at his website.

Please enjoy the audio interview with Antonie Potgieter. He provided a in-depth interview of someone who started at just 19 years old to develop his own WordPress plugin (a newsletter plugin system for websites) that quickly allowed him to build this into his company called Tribulant. (Antonie is from South Africa.)

Here’s an introduction directly from Antonie himself.

About Antonie Potegieter

When I was in school I did well academically but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be when I get older. I had some ideas of becoming an attorney, studying medicine, etc. but never had my head set on it.

By the time I came close to finishing school I knew that studying might not be an option as there weren’t funds and I had to start looking after myself from the age of about 17 – 18 so I had to work as a waiter in a restaurant to make money for rent and other expenses.

About a year later I started at a more stable job position as a sales person in a photography shop where we sold photography equipment and related products. We also developed both digital and analog photos in the shop for the public. Not long into the job I realized that I didn’t want to work for someone and it was frustrating to work such long hours including weekends for a very small and fixed salary.

So I quit my job and started freelance graphic design on the internet. I didn’t have any experience with graphic design at all, a very old computer and worked on a mobile internet connection through my cellphone which cost me an arm and a leg but I was determined to do it. I wouldn’t say I’m a very creative person and that I created very good designs as it would be a lie. I had a client tell me not to quit my day job after flopping a project of his while he was relying on me to create a professional graphic for his business. I cannot remember what it was but I just remember not being praised for it, the opposite in fact.

I did this graphic design work for roughly 6 months to a year when I started discovering web languages such as HTML, CSS, Javascript and then later on server side languages like PHP and MySQL. This lead me to WordPress (and other frameworks) and I immediately knew that this is something I love. I really loved the way that code worked. Writing something “ineligible” which created a result, something beautiful and useful at the same time.

Tribulant Software started when I built a newsletter plugin for WordPress. A very small and basic plugin with the purpose of being able to send bulk emails from within WordPress to a list of subscribers. This plugin expanded and became a commercial solution which resulted in additional development on other packages from my side. We do this up until today, 6 years later.

I wouldn’t say that there is anything I would change to be honest. Life is the way it is and everything happens for a reason. As long as you stay positive and enjoy the good things while dealing with the bad things you’ll be fine and you can enjoy your life and work at the same time.

About Tribulant

Tribulant Software is a software company which specializes in premium WordPress plugins. We develop, market, sell and support useful and purposeful WordPress plugins to the community of WordPress.

[br] The main goal of Tribulant Software is to continue developing on the current packages to expand and improve them based on demand and also launch new packages into the market that there might be a need for. We are considering other ventures as well such as developing on other frameworks/platforms in the future. [br] [br]

Here is a link to Tribulant Software’s website: http://www.tribulant.com for anyone that’s interested in taking a closer look at what we do, and the software we develop. [br] [br]

Additional Projects Being Worked On (at the current time) [br] [br]

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Rusties: http://www.rustenburg.biz [br]

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Rusties is a Rustenburg, North-West, South Africa internet marketing and advertising company. We do marketing for clients in Rustenburg by exposing their businesses, job vacancies, events, specials/promotions and more on the internet so that they can get the best possible potential clients for their services and/or products. [br]

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Flogo Design: http://www.flogodesign.com (to be launched soon) [br]

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At Flogo Design, we do professional and affordable logo designs for anyone who needs a logo. The concept is simple. You pay $99 once-off and within 72 hours or less you will receive at least 6 logo design mockups that you can choose from. We will then make infinite revisions and once you are happy we deliver the vector and raster formats of the logo to you which you can then use on your website, printing, signage, etc. We outsource designers for each logo design to get a range of different styles and ideas. [br]