This week it’s the turn of another developer – Ulrich Sossou. Ulrich is a key part of the development team and has recently been doing great work on the “Rebranding WordPress Multisite” suite of plugins. Let’s hear from him:

1. Where in the world are you?

I live in Cotonou, Benin.

2. Before working with Incsub what did you do?

I worked as freelance. And before that I founded and managed a small web design agency of 20 employees from Feb 2006 to Dec 2009, TAKITIZ SARL . I am still non-executive chairman of that company.

3. How did you end up working with Incsub?

I saw a proposal request from James on Elance where I have a profile . Having heard of WPMU DEV and Incsub before, I figured it might be a good experience.

4. What is your role within Incsub?

I develop and maintain plugins.

5. What is a typical working day like for you?

I wake up at around 5-6am and work almost non-stop until 1-2pm. Then I work again in the evening, usually around 5-8pm.

6. What is your favorite aspect of working with Incsub?

Solving problems for users which are not very technical and trying hard to keep the solutions simple, interacting with them. And the team is great.

7. What do you like about working with WordPress?

Its flexibility and ease of use. It is now a full-featured “framework” which can be used to build almost any website/web app one can imagine.

8. What is your favorite software/development tool/plugin/aid?

Geany text editor. It is simple, small and fast.

9. Apart from working at Incsub what do you love to do?

Designing new products/services, mentoring junior developers here in Benin, reading and learning everything programming and business related.

10. If you had an alternative life, what do you think you’d be doing?

Exactly what I am doing now.

We know that the world has been clamouring to learn just a little bit more about the Incsub Team. We are happy to oblige. This week you get a chance to meet our Lead Developer/Development Manager, Aaron Edwards. He’s the one who starts to have sleepless nights when WordPress announces that it’s releasing an update.

1. Who are you and where in the world are you?

I live and work from home in Dallas, Texas.

2. Before working with Incsub what did you do?

I worked in IT for FritoLay Research & Development, part of PepsiCo. I also did side work with my business UglyRobot Web Development.

3. How did you end up working with Incsub?

As I was doing more work for UglyRobot and was a member of WPMU DEV participating in the forums there. James saw some of the work I was doing and snatched me up. After doing some trial projects I started working full-time with Incsub.

4. What is your role within Incsub?

After a year of developing projects like Supporter, Anti-Splog, MarketPress, and the WPMU DEV membership systems, I’ve taken on the role of the Lead Developer/Development Manager for Incsub. I’m still doing some dev work myself, especially when it comes to improving our services like WPMU DEV, but I spend a lot more time managing the ongoing work of all our developers here. I’m responsible for development and the technical aspects of all our projects, WPMU DEV, Edublogs, BuddyDress, WP.MU, WPPlugins, etc. Luckily we have a very good team here and they can handle most of their responsibilities without too much hand holding!

5. What is a typical working day like for you?

I try to work a normal schedule, Mon-Friday 9-6 so I can still have time with my family and all. I wake up, get ready for the day, get the kids to school, then head up stairs to my home office to get busy. Of course with all our servers and systems something inevitably goes wrong so I end up working a few hours here and there at off times.

6. What is your favorite aspect of working with Incsub?

We have a great team here, and I love my job. I’m a developer at heart so I think I get the greatest joy is just to be able to solve problems with code. There’s something rewarding about coding something from scratch and seeing it just work or do cool things. I also love the flexibility of working from home at hours I can choose, but most of all to be free to travel, as I can still do a lot of work on the road.

7. What do you like about working with WordPress?

I don’t think I have a specific love for WordPress, it’s just what I’m familiar with. Though I do appreciate it and the fact that it’s enabling me to do the work I love and get paid for it too.

8. What is your favourite software/development tool/plugin/aid?

I’m a pretty simple guy in that regard. I develop in Windows, and appreciate the WAMP Server for my local development install. Other things I use every day are TortoiseSVN and a simple text/code editor. Though I do need to get around to learning a better one as my current (PSPad) kinda sucks but i’m just used to it.

9. Apart from working at Incsub what do you love to do?

Well my other passion is doing missions work and traveling, and my WPMU site is kind of an outlet in that regard. Just this fall I spent a month in India, Thailand, and Burma on some pretty crazy adventures.

10. If you had an alternative life, what do you think you’d be doing?

Pretty much what i’m doing now, but with more time for my other passion.

We were very excited to reveal the new design of WPMU.org this week. The new design is clean, up-to-date and very shiny. As one of the top sources for WordPress, Multisite and BuddyPress news we knew that it would be important for the new design to reflect the great content, and Richie, our designer, has certainly achieved just that.

Our visitors land to be greeted with the latest feature post that our writers have cooked up. Underneath there’s all of the latest WordPress news, tips, tricks and the occasional opinion on what’s been happening across the WordPress community.

We’ve also used this as an opportunity to show off our writers to their best:

Want BuddyPress News and Tips? Scroll down to the bottom for all of the latest.

And, of course, WPMU.org is an integral part of the Incsub family.  There’s loads of information about the latest releases from WPMU DEV as well as links to our popular manuals.

Get over there and check it out for yourself!

WPMU DEV Members have been treated to an update this week. CustomPress is one of the most popular CMS plugins in the world, ever. It lets users take full advantage of WordPress’ custom post types and custom taxonomies, turning any WordPress installation into a full blown CMS.

This week as seen a major update that allows per site Content types. WPMU DEV members have been hankering after this for a while so it’s great to see it included as part of the plugin. Users can now decide which post types they want to show on their home page.

There have also been a number of improvements to the code and the GUI.

Not familiar with CustomPress?

CustomPress is a WPMU DEV Premium plugin that allows users to take full advantage of the WordPress’ custom post types and custom taxonomies. It has the following features:

• Easily create custom post types
• Assign features to be supported on each of your custom post types
• Create and assign individual taxonomies to individual post types
• Customize all labels
• Use custom menu icons
• Create and assign custom fields as a text box, multi-line text box, checkboxes, radio button, drop down selection box, or multi selection box to different custom post types
• Place inside your WordPress loop using auto-generated taxonomy and custom field embed code
• Easily create a theme file for custom post types

Another example of WPMU DEV Premium looking after its happy customers.

On 1st January 2011, WordPress 3.1 Release Candidate 2 was released to the world. The is the last stop before the next major WordPress update. Are we excited? Yes!

Just a few of the new WordPress features we’re looking forward to seeing in 3.1:

• New network admin menu
• A network admin screen for managing themes
• A front page admin bar similar to the one on WordPress.com
• Post Formats
• Easy linking for internal content

And there’s quite a bit more – you can read about them here.

There are also a number of bug fixes, modifications, enhancements and adjustments.

At WPMU DEV the team has been working away to get all of our plugins and themes ready for the release of WordPress 3.1. This means plugin developers, theme developers, documentation specialists and just about everyone has been working round the clock (we like to work them hard!) to get everything up to scratch so that none of our plugins or themes fall apart with the update.

We’re just about done so you can expect fully functional updates when you update your WordPress website or Multisite network to the much anticipated WordPress 3.1.