Sajid Javed

Introduction:
I have 3+ years experience in providing WordPress support and 3+ years experience in WordPress design and development (yeah, its been more than 6 years loving WordPress).

I started my carrier as a PHP intern after graduation in a local software house name AKITs. After 3 months, I become junior PHP developer and joined the team officially. In early age, we used to create custom CMS in PHP, MySQL and TinyMCE editor (I can't imagine we lived that era) where we struggle to display the content on front-end with same formatting client see in back-end.

One day, my EX-Boss and mentor Dr Junaid call me in his office and said, Sajid start learning WordPress. Like every one else, I was worried about my future and I asked, Okay Sir, but does it have any scope in the future ? (lol) He said, yeah it is most popular content management system on the web (it was version 3.0). I trusted on his words and I am now thankful that I did. Long story short started learning WordPress and fell in love like a true lover.

I worked two and half years in AKITs, during this period, I become WordPress lead and I remember every 9 out of 10 new projects were being developed in WordPress in our office. In AKITs I have the honour to set WordPress as our main domain (and still it is - as far as I know).

This saved thousands of dollars of the company paying for a project by doing it traditional ways taking months to finish with unlimited revisions and ongoing frustration.

Freelancing:
After quitting the job there, I started freelancing that introduced me to a whole new world of opportunities and challenges. I learned and worked with other CMSs like Magento and PrestaShop but could not love more than WordPress (in fact it increased my trust and confidence on WordPress).

In this phase, I designed and developed hundreds of websites by creating themes and plugins from scratch. Developed lots of stores in WooCommerce and developed lots of extensions according to my clients requirements by using hooks and templates of WooCommerce (love the extendibility of WordPress and WooCommerce). At this time, I were not really aware of the power of WordPress repository and I regret that :(.

I went beyond the simple CMS type site to fully functional web applications. For example, created a bankers system with full branches, cities and bankers management.

I learned third party APIs like MailChimp, InfusionSoft, Facebook etc. Oh my god, we can do really cool stuff on another website right from our computer, this was awesome and courageous.

WordPress Support:
While doing freelancing, I got a job invitation from Nick Roach Founder & CEO of Elegant Themes on ELance (now Upwork) for technical support position on their private member only support forum. After successful interview I joined the team as part time Technical Support and been part of the team for one & half year.

I really enjoyed helping members so decided to start this full time (inspired by Ipstenu (Mika Epstein)) and applied as WordPress Support at Incsub the parent company of WPMU DEV (current job) and joined in May 2015.

Currently, I provide support in our support forums, emails and live chat session. I have one dedicated hour per day and twice a week chat session one dedicated of design and other one general WordPress and BuddyPress.

Here I answer questions regarding our products and services as well as general WordPress, WordPress MultiSites, BuddyPress, WooCommerce and literally any thing WordPress related.

I write detailed bug reports, explaining the issue, versions numbers along with system information and exact steps to reproduce the issue for developers. If necessary and possible, I provide a quick patch meanwhile the bug has been fixed and released publicly to calm down members.

During this period, I really enjoyed helping members on forum and solving their problems. When members praise you with fabulous words along with up-vote, a fluffy feelings arose inside that intrigue me to help more and more members.

Easy Facebook Like Box plugin:
This is my first plugin I hosted on WordPress.org as a give back to community. Before this plugin, I was like that, huh, who is going to use my plugin ? but this plugin destroyed that perception and opened a new dimensions in front of me.

It was at first just a Facebook Like Box (now page plugin) widget and shortcode that generates the HTML5 embed code by getting the fan page parameters via easy administration user interface.

I remember when I uploaded this plugin, it was just 2 downloads first day and it was on fourth page of the search results page with exact search term. I made it to come up as second result on the first page by rewriting the targeted description and providing active support.

The users of this plugin really praise the active support I provided free of cost by leaving a positive reviews. For example this one:
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cool-plugin-fast-support-too/

One of my friend said, this is a tiny plugin, I did not care of his opinion. There is nothing big or small, its you who make it bigger or smaller, I proved it and I am really proud of it (I still have to work more on it and have lots of plans).