About
Who am I? (TL;DR version)
My name is Ali Alaa. I am a front-end web developer based in Cairo, Egypt. I have been working in the field for around 12 years. I am currently focusing on creating online learning content. I publish online courses, articles and free tutorials on my youtube channel .
I also do freelance work from time to time. If you are interested in working with me, feel free to get in touch with me.
The Beginnings
I was first introduced to web development during my time studying telecommunications engineering around 2010. During that time I discovered themeforest and I was intrigued by some of the WordPress templates that I saw there. Shortly after, I decided to start learning web development and WordPress in parallel with my university studies. I learned through online tutorials and courses. As far as I remember, tutsplus & Lynda were my two biggest sources of learning.
First Milestone
At the time I graduated university; I was able to get a jQuery plugin & a WordPress template published on themeforest. This of course happened after multiple rejections which looking back I consider were important for my development. This was a huge milestone for me. Although my theme didn't do well, but I knew that I have reached a good point in my career.
During that time I was looking for a job and I wasn't yet decided on which field I would like to carry on with. I was applying for jobs for both telecommunications and web development fields.
First Job
I got my first job at a web development agency in 2014. I worked on tons of WordPress projects. At the same time I was still working in my free time on WordPress themes for themeforest. I managed to publish another WordPress theme and a WordPress plugin. However, I started to lose interest in WordPress stuff and I was more interested in learning more about JavaScript and different front-end aspects that I wasn't aware of like accessibility, JS frameworks and hybrid mobile application development. Luckily, that was also the direction of the agency I worked for. We were getting more web app and hybrid mobile app sort of projects.
“I have been in the tech space for the past 10 years, worked with more than 100 developers. Ali is THE best frontend developer I have worked with. He has great knowledge, helpful and has a distinguished work ethic.”
Publishing themes on themeforest also wans't a very good idea if you are an individual. To succeed on such a competitive marketplace, you have to have a team of designers, developers and customer support and that wasn't possible for me at the time. So I decided to quit themeforest and focus more on expanding my front-end development knowledge.
Working at an agency was a really beneficial step in my career. Working on real-life projects, dealing with clients and collaborating with different teams taught me a lot. But after a while I decided to take my next step and start freelancing.
Freelancing
After few years of having a regular job, I gained a lot of experience and worked on a lot of big projects. Nevertheless, I started getting tired of the routine. I felt like I needed a new challenge at this point. So I decided to start freelancing. When I took that decision, I had no idea what to do and how to find clients. I started applying for jobs on Upwork. And given my empty Upwork profile, It took me around 6 months to be noticed and hired by a client. It was a very difficult period in my life. I was barely getting any income and I started to doubt my decision. But during these 6 months I did a lot of things that helped me a lot later. I created a website for myself which was shared by Wes Bos , wrote some articles on medium, created a CSS grid cheat sheet which was shared by Smashing Magazine and so on. All of that gave a bit of exposure and helped me have some stuff to show the clients that I was applying for their jobs. Since I got my first job, things went a lot better for me and I was able to get clients easier. A lot of times I didn't have to search for jobs, clients started to get in touch with me either from an article I wrote or from my Upwork profile.
“Ali is the best freelancer I had the opportunity to work with. He produces quality code, maintains an excellent communication and always delivers in time. It is a real pleasure to work with him.”
“I would work with Ali again. He is a really good developer and has strong technical skills.”
Course Creation
After about a year of freelancing; I was thinking about something new to do. One of the things that I thought of was creating online courses. I wasn't sure if I was gonna be able to do it. I haven't done anything like that before. But after some research and demos, I decided that I am gonna give it a try. And I started preparing for my first course which was about creating WordPress themes. It took me a very long time to prepare and record that course. I was very unconfident about how I was doing things and I kept re-recording and re-editing a lot. But after the first few sections I started to get used to it and I finally released the course on Udemy.
I struggled a bit at the beginning with sales, but after a while the course started getting some traction and also some good reviews. Few months later I decided to do more courses. Although it's a very stressful process to create and edit a course on your own; but I really enjoyed the outcome of it. Helping students and getting positive feedback is a really satisfying experience.
I have made a handful of courses so far and I really enjoyed each one of them. When you create a course about a certain topic, you really learn a lot about this topic. When you are willing to explain something to people, you have to have a very deep understanding of it. And that makes you learn things wouldn't have learned otherwise.
I am currently focusing on creating more courses. I am also planing to do free tutorials on youtube and write more articles here on my website 🙂.
“This is the best course "I have ever seen on Udemy"..not just for GitHub Actions, but in general for all. It contains everything.. almost all possible scenarios. Every section have concept explained, implementation and execution. I have recommended this course to everyone in my team, kind of made it mandatory to all of them. Pretty good work!!.”
“Ali's course stands out as an exceptional learning resource. Not only is the content incredibly informative, but Ali's teaching style is both engaging and transparent. He has a unique knack for breaking down complex topics into easily digestible segments, making the learning process seamless and enjoyable. I particularly appreciate the clarity with which he explains things, ensuring that learners at all levels can grasp the material. Highly recommend for anyone looking to deepen their understanding in the subject matter!.”
“Fantastic course! I was familiar with Azure DevOps basics but didn't know anything about Github actions, this course has helped with that! It has very easy to follow instructions and the material is taught and presented in a way you can understand. I highly recommend this course, it helped me pass my DevOps Engineer Interview!”