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26 Oct 2021 ~ 2 min read

In Search of Monsters


I love experiments!

This is why I try to conduct experiments every time I pitch a conference talk. Not only does teaching a difficult topic the fastest way to master it yourself but conferences are perfect little laboratories. There is nothing like a conference talk for streamlining an idea, testing its validity, and gaining instant feedback.

In most cases, the crazier the talk idea, the better the presentation.

When I started getting serious about doing talks, I was playing around with an idea that would extend WordPress by using a little-understood feature called Multisite. This was a way to take a single WordPress code-base and leverage it across multiple domains and sub-domains.

My concept was to package up WordPress Multisite installations using certain pre-defined design patterns I was calling monsters.

This idea took me to my first big stage at WordCamp Asheville in Asheville, North Carolina. In a talk, I called Monsters of WordPress I was able to encourage other WordPress developers to explore the possibility of creating turn-key website solutions using pre-defined WPMU sites.

I even had different monster names for each pattern such as Wakemaker, Sea Dragon, and Kraken.

As an experiment, it was incredibly successful. I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that WordPress Multisite was a dead end. The wicked complexity of WPMU proved to be too much for most developers to maintain.

Although the results were disappointing, the feedback was priceless.

I love teaching audiences interested in ways to tackle wicked problems but I love getting real feedback even more.


Headshot of Kyle Bondo

Hi, I'm Kyle. I'm a UX Designer, Software Engineer and Podcaster based in Fort Worth, Texas. You can listen to me on War Yankee, see some of my work on GitHub, or read more about me on my website.