Introducing Faces of WordPress, the People and Projects behind WordPress

As of 2017, WordPress powers over 28 percent of the internet. The success of WordPress, like all open-source projects, is a testament to the collaborate work of the community that surrounds it.

Since WordPress first launched more 14 years ago, tens of thousands of people have participated in the project. While we couldn’t find a specific number indicating exactly how many people have participated in creating WordPress, consider this, in 2016 alone there were 115 WordCamps in over 41 countries and 3,193 Meetups in 52 countries. And, in November of 2016, 17,000 people got together to help translate WordPress into over 50 languages.  These numbers demonstrate the size, scale, and power of the WordPress community.

The WordPress community is comprised of designers, developers, writers, marketers, and enthusiasts – all of whom contribute to the project in different ways. Today, we are excited to announce Faces of WordPress, a community-centered project that celebrates the people behind WordPress and the projects they create that collectively drive WordPress forward in a way that directly benefits the community or the core software.

In an effort to humanize WordPress and spotlight some of the key projects that are shaping the future of the CMS, Faces of WordPress underscores the importance of collaborative development by sharing different stories from individual contributors around the community.

Each story explores a different project from a unique perspective, shedding light on how they first got involved with the project and how that project benefits the WordPress community more broadly.

Faces of WordPress will bring attention to the different projects that make WordPress successful today and will drive its success in the future – from the REST API and WP-CLI, to WordCamps, Polyglots, and beyond. Learn more about the projects that improve WordPress possible and the people who make it possible:

• Daniel Bachhuber, Co-maintainer of WP-CLI
• Rachel Cherry, Creator of WP Campus
• Jason Stallings, Contributor in WordPress.org Hosting Group
• Ahmad Awais, Contributor to the Gutenberg Project
• Weston Reuter, Contributor of The Customizer
• Petya Raykovska, Lead Contributor to Polyglots

Explore their stories here.

Each week, we will share a new story. Help us humanize WordPress. Whose face do you want to see featured? Who is working on something great for the community? If you’re working on a project that directly benefits the community or WordPress core, we want to hear from you. Submit your story here!