Miriam Schwab Interview – “Let’s solve some of the top performance and security issues in WordPress”

Miriam Schwab is the mastermind behind it strategic, a company that turns your dynamic WordPress website into a static one. This might not sound too tempting at first, but the idea has been around for a while, and it’s actually a great way to make your website work a lot faster.

After the birth of my fourth child, I realized that I needed more flexibility and opportunities in my work. I wanted to be able to take time off to attend school events, look after my children when they are ill, and work whenever I could outside of normal hours, e.g. B. after the children have gone to sleep in the evening. I also wanted to work in a field that would give me the opportunity to continue learning and work with interesting people. So instead of returning to my job after she was born, I quit and went freelance.

At first I worked as a copywriter and translator for companies, but my passion has always been technology, so at the same time I started teaching myself how to create websites. Eventually I felt confident enough to start building websites and I quickly realized that I needed to give my clients the ability to edit their own websites.

That’s when I started exploring the options and found the open source direction particularly appealing. After trying the big three open source CMS – Joomla, Drupal and WordPress – I fell in love with WordPress and started offering WP development services to my clients.

I was one of the first in Israel to offer WP services to businesses. So when companies started to proactively switch to WP I was well positioned to take over this business and I grew from a simple person to an agency.

For me, productivity means maintaining an overview and driving projects and processes forward. I also want to be as efficient as possible. Here are some of the tools I use to automate and offload Headspace:

• Google Calendar – what’s not in my calendar doesn’t happen. I have two calendars – one work and one personal, and as soon as something needs to be planned, it goes in.
• Gmelius – This app for Gmail redisplays emails awaiting a reply to remind me to follow up.
• TextExpander – Shortcuts for text I use repeatedly, like my email address, our website URL, my bio, etc.

I try to make sure I get enough sleep as I get up at 5:30 am every day. I also go for a walk every morning, it gives me energy for the day and I try to take breaks when I feel my productivity is slipping after spending long hours in front of my screen.

I don’t really think about whether I’m successful or not. But when I make a positive impact on the people around me, whether it’s my family, friends, co-workers, or clients, I’m happy with where I am. I am very grateful that I love my work and am constantly learning new things. It’s a journey, and the journey continues to be fun and interesting, and the joy of my work makes me feel successful.

I always laugh when people ask me what my hobbies are. I’m a co-founder of a growing startup and a single mom. So I don’t have much free time. When I do that, I enjoy spending it with my kids, family and friends, whether it’s going to the beach with my kids or meeting friends for coffee.

I recently saw someone describe WordPress as the largest no-code project on the web. It’s true! People are always looking for the next great no-code solution and WordPress gets overlooked even though it has existed and grown as the most popular and widely adopted no-code solution!

Also, the community is great. It makes working with WordPress even more enjoyable.

Well, I created Strattic to solve some of the top performance and security issues in WordPress, so that’s it 🙂

WordPress has always been on track to remain a flexible CMS with a very robust ecosystem. However, usability became an issue as drag-and-drop web builders proliferated and WP’s editing experience started to feel really dated and clunky.

I think the push to make Gutenberg a priority was the right strategy to strengthen WP’s position and future.

Get to know the communities around WP. The community is very diverse in terms of location, experience, background and business models and there is so much to learn.

Ha, that’s the million dollar question (literally!). Strategies and tactics that worked yesterday may not work today, and there is a constant need for testing and adjustment. One person’s product may appeal to one type of user, while another product may not appeal to them at all.

So there is no uniform direction. However, there is one tactic that always seems to be effective in one way or another, and that is creating quality content.

As I mentioned earlier, I started a WordPress development agency and created custom websites for businesses for many years. Over these years, websites have demanded more and more of our constant attention in terms of security, maintenance and performance. At some point I wondered if it was the right way for our customers to continue working exclusively with WordPress.

I started researching other solutions and came across an emerging trend of static site generators (later called Jamstack, Headless and Decoupled). I was really excited since these sites solved all the issues mentioned above – static sites are pre-rendered so they’re fast, WP and the server stack are gone so there’s virtually nothing to hack, and they scale infinitely.

But when I looked at what it means to create these pages, I realized that they are incredibly complicated and using them would mean reinventing the wheel on many things. And not only are they expensive and complicated to build, they also require a lot more developer resources to maintain.

So I’ve come to the conclusion that WordPress is still the best CMS out there. Yay! And then I thought – well how about we turn WP into a static site builder so we can get the best of both worlds – all the ease of use, familiarity and tools of WP with the speed, security and scalability of static sites . And so Strattic was born. 🙂

I don’t know exactly because I don’t want to do anything else. I am very fortunate to have a great partner, Josh Lawrence, and we work together on all strategic matters. Our CTO is Zeev Suraski who co-developed PHP and brings a wealth of experience and wisdom to the table.

We’ve worked hard to hire amazing, smart, nice people to join our team and create a friendly, supportive work environment for everyone, which makes all the difference in our day-to-day experiences.

We sometimes refer to our culture as “nice and nerdy.” 🙂 It is very important to us that our work environment is respectful and supportive. We are also very family oriented – as family people we know your family deserves attention too and are not only very flexible in this regard but see this as an integral part of our team’s life that needs to be recognized and supported.

A quality WordPress website is lightweight and effective. It is a site that is efficiently constructed and also strategic in its structure in support of business goals.

At Strattic, we truly love all of our customers. We love that they use cutting edge technology and look forward to trying a whole new, different and modern approach to deploying their WordPress websites. We love how engaged so many of our customers are with us, and the questions they ask help us to keep getting better and continue to serve the WordPress ecosystem.

Don’t run WordPress live 🙂. What? Yup. When you run your site on Strattic, your live production site is completely separate from the WP server and backend, meaning there is basically no attack surface. This is the safest way to run WP.

WP has been developed by the community for eighteen years, so it’s constantly moving in a direction that serves a large number of users. As a result, it continues to be the best CMS in its class thanks to its open-source nature, extensibility and tools, and an active community.

It has always been important to me to support other women in their careers. I have volunteered for many years on the steering committee of a very active professional women’s community, mentoring women who are looking to take the next step in their careers or start a business. I also speak at events aimed at empowering women, particularly in technology.

I’m excited to bring static and headless architecture to the WP ecosystem. I believe it helps people do their jobs better and makes the internet better for everyone. I also love my team and think it’s great that I can learn something new every day. It’s incredible.

Finding the time to do all the millions of things I’d like to do. On the one hand, I know I have to be realistic. On the other hand, it’s frustrating that I can’t do more in one day.