BROADCASTS.com

Dumitru\u2019s first coding job was in 2005, at a travel agency where he did some internal websites using PHP.
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\nDumitru\u2019s first WordPress job was in 2010 with WPZOOM, where he made themes. There he learnt that a lot of time goes into support.
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\nAt heart, he considers himself a PHP developer first, WordPress developer second.
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\nDumitru explains the difference between Romanians and Moldavians.
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\nDumitru reveals why a country as small as Moldova has produced so many developers.
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\nWhy Dumitru packed his bags in 2016 and moved his family to Dortmund, Germany.
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\nDonnacha antagonizes the entire population of Italy.
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\nWhy Dumitru decided to start his own theme company in 2013, and why he thought WordPress would be a good match for independent hotels.
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\nHow his decision to sell themes for $200, the most expensive price ever for WordPress themes at that time, sparked outrage.
\nTypically, theme companies spend 95% of their time on support, and 5% on development.
\nHow his choice of Hermes as a brand name was mocked, all those years ago, by some online idiot \u2026 who turns out to have been Donnacha!
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\nDonnacha wanders off into the completely unrelated news that a woman in Dortmund, Dumitru\u2019s new home, has set up the world\u2019s first sex doll brothel, and suggests that this qualifies Dortmund as a thriving center of innovation.
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\nAfter one year, Dumitru\u2019s impressions of Dortmund, the contrasts with Eastern Europe. Donnacha shares his impressions of life in Northern Thailand compared to Ireland or the UK.
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\nDumitru reveals his shameful lack of German. As a couple, they are mainly investing in his wife\u2019s German language education, so, he\u2019s going to be really screwed if she runs off with the milkman.
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\nWhy did Dumitru choose to live in Dortmund, and not somewhere in the south of Germany, closer to Moldova?
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\nHow big changes in the Google algorithm, in April of 2015, destroyed the independent WordPress theme business by undermining affiliate sites, and giving more power to the massive theme shop ThemeForest. Overnight, Dumitru lost half his sales and the effect on other independent theme developers was similar, encouraging many to sell or merge, marking a phase of consolidation and the end of what we now realize was a golden age for independent WordPress developers. The affiliate sites lost around 80% of their traffic, and everyone else became far more reliant on paid advertising \u2026 such as that sold by Google.
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\nDonnacha, predictably enough, suggests that Google probably knew exactly what they were doing, while Dumitru diplomatically demurs.
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\nDumitru reflects on whether the $200 price-point was a good move, and describes the breakdown on which types of customers actually required support.
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\nIs the hotel theme niche still a good opportunity?
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\nWhy WordPress hotel themes should not have anything to do with reservations.
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\nWhy WordPress is not the right solution for many situations, and we should resist the temptation to shoehorn it into every scenario.
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\nWhy Drupal users have Post-traumatic stress disorder.
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\nHow, over the past decade, WordPress enthusiasts have failed to notice it slowly becoming too complicated for new users.
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\nDumitru Brinzan
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\n@dumitru
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\nhttps://www.Brinzan.com/
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\n@hermesthemes
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\nhttps://www.HermesThemes.com/
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\nDonnacha
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\n@WordSkill
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\nhttps://www.WordSkill.