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Profiles

WordPress Origin Story

In 2001, I taught myself PHP and MySQL so that I could build my own web publishing software to more easily share my writing and photos on the web and do away with the inefficiency of writing and uploading plain HTML files via FTP. I wanted to spend more time making the web a better place by sharing with others the things that I loved. Along the way I discovered Apache and Linux and learned of open-source.

In 2005, when I realized that spending time maintaining my own CMS software was taking away too much time from creative writing and publishing, I searched the web for an open-source alternative to my home-built CMS and discovered WordPress, a project that so happened to be built using PHP and MySQL, by a community who also wanted to help make the web a better place. It was love at first sight. I went on to eventually find a way to feed my family building and supporting open-source software. 🙂

In 2013, I designed and helped build the widely used open-source Independent Publisher theme. I’ve also been the lead developer on several popular WordPress plugins that have run on millions of websites and I’ve built and run several businesses using WordPress, including a web hosting business and a WP plugin business.

In 2018, in search of yet another WordPress adventure, I joined the Automattic family.

Badges

CODE
3 badges
Core Contributor '15 Plugin Developer Theme Developer

Current Job

Code Wrangler
Present
Automattic / WordPress VIP

Recent impact

Score weights high-impact work (commits, releases, approved translations, props) at 3x routine activity.

Last 30 days
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Last 90 days
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Last 12 months
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WordPress releases

Contributed to 4 releases
  • 5.4
  • 5.3
  • 3.9
  • 3.8

Contributions

Type
August 2025
Aug 07 Thu · 21:12
Forums med
Posted a reply to Php 8 – Independent Publisher, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Hi @amerlin, I am running the theme on PHP 8.1 without any problems. There is…
March 2025
Mar 12 Wed · 02:25
Forums med
Posted a reply to Eliminate space between paragraph blocks, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Hi @nancy54cat, Changing the style of the content in the post editor so that the…
Mar 04 Tue · 03:44
Forums med
Posted a reply to Eliminate space between paragraph blocks, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Hi @nancy54cat, The link that you included for the page you need help with is…
February 2025
Feb 11 Tue · 03:35
Forums med
Posted a reply to Dividing line between posts, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Hi @nancy54cat, You can change the color of that border using some CSS like this:…
January 2025
Jan 21 Tue · 00:55
Forums med
Posted a reply to Borders around images, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
@nancy54cat It should be possible to put borders around the images using some CSS styles.…
February 2024
Feb 04 Sun · 17:53
Forums med
Posted a reply to Replay Email HTML format is not working, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
I can confirm that the fix in v1.1 of this plugin is to replace this…
April 2023
Apr 26 Wed · 21:41
Forums med
Posted a reply to Styling Jetpack Subscribe button, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Hi @absentfriends, It looks like the other buttons in your sidebar are actually <a> elements…
February 2023
Feb 20 Mon · 14:13
Forums med
Posted a reply to Referrer-Policy header is being omitted, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
@siravecavec I'm sorry to hear that and I understand your frustration. I've sent an email…
November 2022
Nov 11 Fri · 01:31
Forums med
Posted a reply to Referrer-Policy header is being omitted, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Hi @temereva, I haven't been the maintainer of this plugin for several years now and…
October 2022
Oct 24 Mon · 21:41
Forums med
Posted a reply to Sticky post: show except instead of full post?, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Hi @thejokertm, I believe that's possible by overriding this function in a child theme and…