When I look back on the past five years I’ve been working with WordPress, I feel the real weight of the journey I’ve had to get where I am. Much of it has been filled with challenge of both of the difficult and welcome variety. I’m an optimist and problem-solver to the core, but I…
You ever have a moment where you blink your eyes and you wonder how you’ve gotten to where you are today? I’m having one of those moments right now as I sit here to share my story with you. It’s bizarre to think of how far I’ve come because I truly thought that I was…
My first website was built using Frontpage. Then I discovered Geocities, which at the time made it easy to break and fix code and have it instantly live for others to find on the world wide web. It was an optimal learning environment for me. I learned HTML and CSS by copying, pasting, and then…
WordPress wasn’t the first blogging platform I tried. My very first blog was set up using Blogspot (now Blogger). I didn’t even know I wanted a blog to tell you the truth. But let me take a step back. I am a techie. A very “untechie” techie, but a techie nonetheless. I actually went to…
There are times when I hear a story from the WordPress community and I think “That’s a HeroPress story”, whether it has been or ever will actually be posted on the site. Some stories are just so great that you think “Wow, that’s just really great”. This week’s essay is one of those stories, but…
I have always embraced an entrepreneurial spirit. As a kid in the 1970’s, I tagged along with my parents to craft shows on the weekends where they made and sold hand-stamped leather belts to earn extra income and I made macrame necklaces and sold those too. When I was 14 I told my dad I…
Did you know there are still several states in the US where employers can fire me for being gay? Legislation and protections have improved in the past several years, but there are still large gaps throughout the United States for queer and trans people. In addition, I hear horror stories of toxic workplaces that my…
The first time I ever made a WordPress site, I got 180,000 views in 2 days, 253 comments, and (give or take) 7 death threats. It was 2014 and I was working on an MBA at Florida State University during the peak of the Jameis Winston controversy, where a football quarterback was accused of rape…
I grew up in a small country town in Poland, where life was pretty simple. People would know all the neighbors, they would pay each other visits every week to talk about what’s been going on in the community and to have a beer or two. It all seemed great until the moment when I…
I did not spend my childhood wanting to grow up to be a WordPress consultant. Given that I was born in 1967, long before the World Wide Web even existed, I would have had to be clairvoyant to aspire to any kind of web development. I was intrigued by computers when I first encountered the…
