In this interview, Giuseppe Mazzapica shares his introduction to WordPress in 2005, when he helped a friend transition to the platform, which led to his first experience with PHP and custom theme development. He discusses his early contributions to the WordPress community, such as translations, and highlights his impactful projects, particularly Brain Monkey. Giuseppe offers valuable advice to new developers, stressing the importance of maintaining well-being while contributing to open source.
Can you share your first experience with WordPress, and what made you choose it?
Circa 2005, a friend had a blog on some proprietary platform they were not happy with. A popular blogger in Italy made a post about this new blogging platform called WordPress and how good it was. My blogger friend asked their “geek friend” (me) how they could use it. I spent a couple of weeks learning about WordPress, setting everything a blog for my friend, and even coming up with a custom theme. I had to learn some PHP in the process because I had never used that language before then.
How did you start contributing to open-source projects, and what was your first contribution to the WordPress community?
It took me a lot before I felt confident enough for any of my code to be publicly visible. I think my first public contributions were about translations. If my memory does not fail me, one of the first Italian translations for WooCommerce was mine.
What are some important projects or contributions you have made within the WordPress ecosystem?
I love to think that I had an impact on people by sharing my ideas in conversations in person or online, with my answers on WordPress Stack Exchange, or in my talks. Looking at more “concrete” contributions, I think Brain Monkey is probably the project of mine that had the largest impact on the community.
What advice would you give to developers who are new to WordPress or open source?
I would advise them to be mindful of their well-being. It is easy to feel responsible and spend countless hours contributing to open source without any (monetary) compensation. And there are a lot of people out there who feel entitled to demanding free labor because they “need” this or that. Don’t let them. I think that any open-source contribution should give you back joy or money, ideally both.
What can we do to ensure that WordPress continues to work well with new technologies and stays ahead of trends? (Programming methods, new tech areas, headless, etc.)
I would start asking back if we really need WordPress to stay ahead of all trends. I think WordPress needs to keep up its promise of being a tool focused on user experience. Accessibility and performance are user experience, for example. Maybe it is time for WordPress to become the “grown-up guy” on the scene, boost professionalism and stability, and focus on its strengths instead of chasing trends. Maybe this could cause a little drop in the overall usage statistics but could raise the numbers in the academic, government, and business/enterprise areas.
It does not mean that WordPress should become a “fossil software”. There are “modern” applications that can be pursued keeping WordPress on its strength. For example, social media are nowadays a fundamental component of our society. In recent years, we have seen how problematic can be when a minute number of private companies entirely control that aspect of our lives. Maybe WordPress could lead the way towards a future where all the big companies, institutions, the governments, all self-host their social media servers on the fediverse. This is boring technology, but a revolutionary concept. Things like this can make a real impact on society.
What can we do about that? Well, let’s start by talking more about it. Let’s try to bring these topics to WordCamps or other events.
