Whose Who of WordPress

This is extremely incomplete. I’d welcome recommendations for individuals who should be added to this list (and I suppose any who should be removed :)).

Individuals

  • Agbonghama, Collins.
  • Alexander, Carl
    • Writes high quality articles on WP development.
  • Awais, Ahmad
    • Created popular create-guten-block toolkit, also WPGulp.
  • Bahl, Jason.
    • Created the popular WPGraphQL plugin.
    • Currently works for Gatsby full-time (working on WPGraphQL).
  • Balkhi, Syed
    • Founder of WPBeginner, OptinMonster, WPForms, IsItWP, RafflePress, and so on. – 3/18/20
  • Barron, Brenda
    • Prolific author of WP related articles, quality is high.
  • Blackbourn, John (johnbillion)
    • Currently at Human Made. – 9/26/19.
    • Formerly employed by Code For the People and WordPress.com VIP.
    • Author of the popular developer tools Query Monitor and User Switching.
  • Bueltge, Frank
    • WP Core Contributor. – 9/26/19.
    • Author of a number of WP plugins including Adminimize, AddQuicktag, and Search & Replace.
  • Chan, Lester
    • Prolific WP plugin author including WP-DBManager, WP-PageNavi, WP-Polls, WP-PostRatings, WP-PostViews, WP-Print, WP-Sweep, and WP-UserOnline. – 9/26/19.
  • Coleman, Jason
    • Co-author of Building Web Apps with WordPress 2nd Edition. – 9/26/19.
    • Author of Paid Membership Pro plugin.
  • Condon, Elliot
    • Author of the extremely popular WP plugin Advanced Custom Fields (ACF). – 9/26/19.
  • Coyier, Chris
    • Founder of CSS Tricks, co-founder of CodePen, co-author of Digging Into WordPress. – 3/18/20.
  • Dils, Carrie
  • Erickson, Bill
    • Popular and long-time author of tutorials on WP, frequent WordCamp speaker, has authored 24 free WP plugins. – 3/18/20.
  • Flores, Nile.
    • Formerly of Yoast, serial WordCamp speaker, WP blogger.
  • Godley, John
    • Author of popular WP plugins including Redirection and Search Regex. – 9/26/19.
  • Goldman, Jake
    • President/Founder of 10up, author of numerous WP plugins, and contributor to WP core. – 9/26/19.
  • Haden, Josepha
    • Executive Director for WordPress. – 3/18/20.
  • Hayes, David
    • Prolific writer on WP development at WP Shout! – 9/26/19.
  • Hou-Sandi, Helen
    • Director of Open Source Initiatives at 10up, WP lead developer. – 3/18/20.
  • Hughes, John
  • Hulse, Dion.
  • Jaquith, Mark
    • Member of the WP Core Team. – 9/26/19.
    • Author of a number of plugins including Page Links To and Subscribe to Comments.
  • Krogsgard, Brian
    • Founder and editor of Post Status. – 3/18/20.
  • Krol, Karol
  • Lefebvre, Yannick
  • Lema, Chris
    • Currently a VP at Liquid Web. Previously with Crowd Favorite, author of popular tutorials, speaker at WordCamps. – 3/18/20.
  • Little, Mike
    • Co-Founder of WordPress, currently at Human Made. – 9/26/19.
  • Losoviz, Leonardo
    • Leonardo writes consistently about whats to push WordPress using modern paradigms whether that be serverless, modern PHP, etc.
  • McCollin, Rachel
    • Author of WordPress 4.0 Site Blueprints (2015), WordPress: Pressing the Limits (2013), WordPress Mobile Web Development Beginner’s Guide (2012), and WordPress Theme Development Beginner’s Guide (2013).
    • Also prolific author of high quality WP articles across the web.
  • McCue, Ryan
    • Currently at Human Made, developer of WP REST API. – 9/26/19.
  • McFarlin, Tom
  • Messenlehner, Brian
    • Co-Founder and President of AppPresser, co-author of Building Web Apps with WordPress. – 9/26/19.
  • Meyer, Fred
    • Prolific author of WP development articles on WP Shout!
  • Mills, Alex (Passed: 2/2019)
    • WP Core Contributor, author of a number of popular WordPress plugins (Developer, Regenerate Thumbnails, SyntaxHighlighter Evolved).
  • Miyoshi, Takayuki
    • WP Core Contributor. – 9/26/19.
    • Author of the popular plugins Contact Form 7, Flamingo, and Really Simple CAPTCHA – 9/26/19.
  • Mullenweg, Matt
    • Co-Founder of WordPress, CEO of Automattic. – 9/26/19.
  • Nacin, Andrew
    • Currently with the U.S. Digital Service, lead WP developer. – 3/18/20.
  • Nimesh, Rakhitha.
  • Ozz, Andrew
    • One of the lead developers of WordPress. – 9/26/19.
    • Author of popular plugins including Classic Editor and TinyMCE Advanced. – 9/26/19.
  • Pataki, Daniel
    • CTO of Kinsta. – 10/26/19.
    • Prolific author of WP development articles, formerly editor of Smashing Magazine’s WP section.
    • Author of several plugins including some for ACF.
  • Pines, Ben.
    • Founder of Elementor.
  • Pollock, Josh
    • Core Contributor. – 9/26/19.
    • Currently with Saturday Drive. – 9/26/19.
    • Plugin author (Caldera Forms).
    • Written numerous articles on WP.
  • Ratnayake, Rakhitha Nimesh
    • Author of WordPress Web Application Development, currently in its 3rd edition. – 9/26/19.
  • Richard, Ohz
  • Sabin-Wilson, Lisa
  • Savchenko, Andrey “Rarst”
    • Longtime WP developer.
  • Schlesser, Alain
    • Contributor to a number of WP projects including WP Core and WP-CLI.
  • Starr, Jeff
    • Prolific author of WP plugins including BBQ: Block Bad Queries, Blackhole for Bad Bots, Custom Fields for Gutenberg, Disable Gutenberg, GA Google Analytics, and User Submitted Posts.
  • Stathopoulos, Ari
    • Best known for his plugin Kirki Customizer Framework he has written several other plugins including WordPress Reset.
  • Sternberg, Justin
    • Previously worked for WebDevStudios.
    • Prolific plugin author including CMB2.
  • Tadlock, Justin
  • Torbert, Michael
  • Unver, Baris.
  • de Valk, Joost
    • Founder of Yoast SEO. – 9/26/19
  • Williams, Brad
  • Williamson, Pippin
    • Founder of Sandhills Development.
    • Author of Easy Digital Downloads.
  • Wood, Samuel (“Otto”)
    • WP core contributor.
    • Authored several plugins including PHP Code Widget and Theme Check.
  • Yingling, Jason.

Organizations

  • 10up
  • Automattic
    • Company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Jetpack, Longreads, VaultPress, Akismet, Gravatar, and numerous other software/products.
  • Awesome Motive
    • Parent company of WPBeginner, WPForms, MonsterInsights, SeedProd, and OptinMonster.
  • Beaver Builder
  • Elegant Themes
    • Creators of the popular Divi Builder.
  • Elementor
  • Envato
    • Runs ThemeForest, CodeCanyon, and Tuts+.
  • Human Made
    • Created Altis “the next-generation digital experience platform.”
    • Created S3-Uploads, Cavalcade, Smart Media, Limit Login Attempts, Asset Manager Framework, React WP Scripts, hm-gutenberg-tools, roles-to-taxonomy, batcache, and so on.
  • IncSub
    • Parent company of WPMU Dev, CampusPress, and Edublogs.
  • Kinsta
    • Managed web hosting.
  • Modern Tribe
    • Authors of The Event Calendar.
  • OnTheGoSystems
    • Parent company of WPML, ICanLocalize, and WP Types.
  • Pagely
    • Focused on enterprise services for WP including managed hosting.
  • PostStatus
  • PressLabs
    • Web hosting company focused on WP that has open sourced a number of powerful tools for WordPress, most recently the Presslabs Stack built on Kubernetes.
  • Rocketgenius
    • Creators of Gravity Forms.
  • Sandhills Development
    • Creators of Easy Digital Downloads, AffiliateWP, and Restrict Content Pro.
  • Themify
  • Torque
  • UpdraftPlus
  • Web Dev Studios
    • Creators of Custom Post Types UI, CMB2, Automatic Featured Images for Video, etc.
  • Wordfence
  • WPBeginner
  • WP Engine
    • Managed hosting provider, acquired Flywheel (managed hosting), popular Local dev environment.
  • WP Mayor
  • WP Ninjas
    • Creators of Ninja Forms.
  • WP Shout
  • WP Tavern
  • WPMUDEV
  • Yoast

Further Study / Partial Bibliography

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