An Interview With Rohit Maharjan – WCKTM2022 Speakers

An Interview With Rohit Maharjan – WCKTM2022 Speakers

WordCamp Kathmandu 2022 concluded with huge success earlier this month on 4th September at Alice Reception, Garidhara, Kathmandu. We saw many inspiring speakers delivering amazing presentations and talks. Rohit Maharjan was one of the speakers at WordCamp Kathmandu 2022. The talk was about Introducing WordPress Full Site Editing & Developing a Block Theme. Thank you, Rohit, for delivering such an exciting talk at the WordCamp and helping us all learn and grow.

Rohit was born and raised in Kathmandu city. He is currently working as a Sr. Front End Developer at AF Themes. He has 5 years+ of design experience in WordPress Themes and Plugins. Since 2019, he was involved in WordPress Community Nepal. Also, he was one of the helping hands in #wcktm2019.

With that being said, here is the full interview with Rohit Maharjan, one of the amazing speakers of WordCamp Kathmandu 2022.

1. Can you please introduce yourself?

Hello and Namaste! I was born and raised in Kathmandu city. I’m currently working as a Sr. Front End Developer at AF Themes. I have 5 years+ of design experience in WordPress Themes and Plugins. Since 2019, I have been involved in WordPress Community Nepal as well. I was also one of the helping hands in WCKTM 2019. I am WCKTM 2022 Organizer and Speaker.

Cycling, Guitar, and PlayStation have been a thing these days aside from professional work life.

2. How did you find this WCKTM after Covid? Did it meet your expectation?

WCKTM2022 is the first biggest WordCamp event in all of Asia after the pandemic. So I find WCKTM2022 has become fruitful to all the organizers, talented speakers, sponsors, attendee and other good people in WordCamp. The Hunger we all had for WordCamp is erased with WCKTM2022. I see good and happy faces of foreigners in WCKTM2022. Also, I got connected on social media with foreign WordPress enthusiasts. They were happy to talk and share things about WordPress with us. WCKTM2022 has brought new branches on my tree that have connected with people from other Asian countries. That made me more excited for WordCamp Asia 2023.

Yes, It did meet my expectations. Did lots of work as a Designer Wrangler and Speaker Rehearsal. But it was worth it and upgraded my level of career building. Also, made lots of contributions. I made 4 Contribution Badges on WCKTM2022.

  1. WordCamp Organizer
  2. WordCamp Speaker
  3. Pattern Author
  4. Photo Author

Now, WordPress Contribution has become my new hobby.

3. How and When did you start your journey in WordPress?

It all got started from my very first office (Access Keys) with Regan Dai and other good friends. Regan dai trained me to design WordPress Plugins. After accomplishing the contract after 2 and half years, I came to AF Themes. Then I learn so much about Themes Design here from Shiva Shankar Dai. We (AF Themes) were speakers in WCKTM on a topic “Full Site Editing and Block Themes in WordPress”.

4. Do you think that full-site editing has made things easier for developers?

Did Full Site Editing make it easier for developers and designers? I say Yes and also No. Why Yes, Personally me as a front end developer, Now in Block Theme, I don’t need to write all the custom styling, media queries and all. Block Theme has the (stack on mobile) option, if we simply enable it, Boom! Now it’s responsive. No need for a Media Query. Mobile Menu is default given by WordPress. In the past days, we used to write custom styling for secondary colors, dark mode options. Now, in FSE we can simply choose the dark mode palette in color option. The JSON file is a new interesting thing for designers. There are lot’s of other good stuff which makes it easier for developers and designers.

Why No, It is now User focus, Style.CSS file is almost empty or even empty in some block themes. So, the coding is not required. Designer and developer are now replaced by users which might be a problem for developers and designers. For Developers, there are only 2 php files in Block Theme( i.e. index.php and function.php ) What to do?

5. What are your thoughts on Full site editing implementation in WordPress?

FSE is all about editing not coding. So, it is more user focused. If you don’t know the coding but are interested in building the website, then FSE gives that privilege but you will need a block theme for that. Isn’t Full Site Editing really interesting?

WordPress users have reached out to 43% of websites all over the world because it is easy to work with. WordPress is already easy to developers and designers and reached 43%. But, now FSE is easy for users as well. So I guess % will obviously go beyond 43.

In our classical themes or traditional customizer themes, there were limitations by the given options.
Now in Block Themes, the limitation is only imagination.

6. What do you think about the future of WordPress after 5 years?

WordPress will be more and more easy to use in upcoming years. But I guess and I hope it won’t wipe out Themes because no matter what comes out, it will always need it’s default appearance which is color, typography and layouts. Not every user has design experience so Theme will go on last long.

7. What do you hope the attendees will take away from your talk?

I saw a very good impact on people with our talk during the session. Yes! we were there (Shiva Shankar Dai, Bishnu Dai and Me). Some people did sort out their future problem regarding the perspective towards FSE Themes in our session. Also, many college freshers were inspired and attended our workshop. They later even got the Author Badge as a contributor in WordPress Profile. So, as far as I know the impact was really good on interested people.

8. What are your thoughts on the WordPress community in Nepal?

WordPress Community Nepal is the best tech community in Nepal with such a great event that helps people to connect with National and International WordPress Enthusiastic People. The WordCamp Event does help people in so many ways. Meetups and events are going on frequently which is really nice. Everything is going smoothly and easily. But we can implement new ideas to make it even better, to give better Attendees Experience in WordCamp.

9. And lastly, what would you like to share with our audience?

We must go with the FSE Theme in upcoming days. Not only WordPress but the technology is always changing and we must go with it, we must be up to date with it. We can’t get too saturated with coding to the end. We have to be more user based. Better User Experience will take place in the future. Full Site Editing didn’t just show up out of the blue. It was launched after working for many years.

DevotePress would, once again, like to thank Rohit Maharjan, one of the speakers of WordCamp Kathmandu 2022 for taking out his time for this interview. We wish him all the very best for his future endeavors.

Want to know more about Rohit? You can find him on Facebook ,WordPress.orgInstagram, and Linkedin.

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