Yesterday, Andrew Nacin celebrated his first full year of WordPress contributions. To quote Nacin, “It’s been one hell of a ride, and I don’t intend to slow down.”
Nacin’s WordPress career began on November 16th of 2009 with an almost insignificant twelve-character patch. Just three months and about a hundred patches later, Nacin was asked to become a WordPress core developer. Fast-forward to today, Nacin is one of the most recognized core developers with about seven hundred contributions and six WordCamp presentations under his name.
When not contributing to WordPress, Nacin can often be found blogging about WordPress, tweeting about WordPress, publicly speaking about WordPress, supporting WordPress, editing a book on WordPress plugin development, working on the WordPress Core Contributor Handbook, and dodging a humorous onslaught of #blamenacin tweets.
So, how did Nacin learn to contribute to WordPress?
I learn first by reading, and second by doing. If you want to contribute, I strongly encourage it. More important is when you submit that first bug report or patch, not necessarily when it makes it into WordPress — it’s a community effort, and that first step is important.
Do you want to be the next Andrew Nacin? All you need to do is start contributing to WordPress. Even if you don’t know how to work with the code, the community could always use your help with the Support Forums and documentation.
Happy WordPress birthday, Andrew Nacin! We really appreciate everything you do for this awesome blogging platform!
