Today marks nine years since my first commit to WordPress Core. In that time I’ve made 406 commits which puts me 26th in the list of most commits. The majority of the commits came in the first few years (I had 283 on my third commitiversary). I’ve settled into a role where I try to impart historical knowledge and help commit code from time to time. Today was one of those days where I picked up a patch to improve some unit tests.

While I continue to have conversations about my next steps for work (get in touch if you think we should work together on either a long-term or short-term basis!), I have been spending more time working on WordPress Core. Most is behind the scenes, but I have made 5 commits this release cycle.

Instead of celebrating code, today I am celebrating three people-related contributions to WordPress Core.

Over the last handful of large WordCamps, I’ve tried to get some of the dormant committers to come out of retirement and also help ensure that people at contributor days can get code reviews and ideally get code committed. Helping people get their first props is a great feeling. It’s especially amazing when you get to see their faces as they become a code contributor to WordPress.

The other contribution is all the work I’ve put into the WordPress Core Handbook. The knowledge that lives in my head is knowledge that isn’t going to help anyone else. Documentation of how things have worked and ideally why they work that way, will help others avoid the mistakes of the past.

Finally, this year at WordCamp US / WordPress Community Summit I organized dinner for all the committers in attendance. These 30-plus people are responsible for the code that powers 43.1% of the internet. We laughed, we shared stories and we ate tacos. It’s where the photo at the top of this post was taken. I also gave a short toast:

After the most recent WordCamp Europe, i got a chance to spend some time with Mike Shredder and Joe Dolson. One thing we discussed was how nice it is to get a chance to spend a bit of social time with other committers. With the people who we have been in the arena with.

It’s also easier to work with people you have broken bread with, so today we are breaking tortillas together. 

I want to thank GoDaddy for sponsoring. I also want to thank Mike, Joe Dolson, Jon, and to a tiny degree Nacin for helping me organize this. 

Finally, I have long done a toast at WordCamps and I think it’s an appropriate one for us today, so please raise your glass to why we can do what we do, the GPL.

So with that, I encourage you to celebrate the GPL and contribute to WordPress. Perhaps I’ll be lucky enough to contribute with you.

I’ve previously reflected on three years, seven years, and eight years as a committer.