Contributing to the WordPress Ecosystem (My Thoughts)

Last week, I attended WordCamp US in Portland. It was a wonderful event overall, and I had great conversations with so many friends, WPBeginner users, and many new members of the WordPress community.

Since the event, there has been a lot of conversations happening around the topic of Contributing to WordPress, so I wanted to share my perspective as an observer and participant of this community software movement that is WordPress.

I accidentally discovered WordPress in 2006 when I was 16 years old. Over the last 18 years, I have seen WordPress evolve and grow to power well over 43% of all websites on the internet.

That is remarkable growth. But what’s even more incredible is how it all came to be, and what we can all do to keep it growing.

Many WordPress users and beginners don’t realize that WordPress is a free open source software. It’s built by the amazing WordPress community that consists of thousands of developers, designers, and website builders who volunteer their time to make WordPress the best website operating system on the planet.

When I explain this to a normal business person or investor, it blows their mind to learn that the WordPress movement is entirely community driven (Open Source + Open Hearts).

“If you want to go fast, go alone. If you go want to go far, go together” ~ African Proverb

Our WordPress community is truly special, and I’m forever grateful for the impact WordPress has made on my family’s life.

Today, I want to share my WordPress contribution journey, why we choose to giveback, and how you can support WordPress as well.

What Does it Mean to Contribute to WordPress?

I personally believe that anything you do to help grow the WordPress community & ecosystem forward is a contribution.

Here are some ways to contribute to WordPress:

• Tell others about WordPress – write a blog post about your experience, help someone else start a WordPress site, share your WordPress story.
• Wear a WordPress shirt or hoodie – we need more WP swags.
• Attend a local WordPress meetup or WordCamp (see all events). If you’re a parent of a high school or college student, encourage them to attend as well.
• When purchasing premium plugins, hosting, themes, or services for your WordPress site, support companies that give back to WordPress. I wish there were some sort of badges that WordPress could offer to display which would bring more awareness to the cause.
• Leave a review for your favorite plugins & themes on WordPress.org
• Help others in the official WordPress forum, or even in unofficial communities like Facebook groups, Reddit groups like /r/WordPress or the WPBeginner subreddit, etc.
• Make a Donation to WordPress Foundation – even $10 per year goes a long way.
• Help translate WordPress in your language – see translation handbook.
• Help with WordPress documentation – see documentation handbook.
• Help organize your local WordPress meetup or event.
• Help with testing new releases, writing code, fixing bugs, and more. See how to become a WordPress contributor.
• Create a free plugin or tool for WordPress.
• Create a business around WordPress (i.e agency, products, etc).

All contributions no matter the size are important because they help shape the ripple effect of WordPress’ growth.

WordPress grows because of the community!

Now I do believe that depending on how much you benefit from the WordPress ecosystem, you should try to give back accordingly to pay it forward.

My WordPress Contribution Journey

When I started using WordPress in 2006, I was a true beginner and learning my way around WordPress.

Over the next two years, I evolved my workflow to exclusively use WordPress for all websites that I built (personal & client projects).

In 2009, I had a realization that most WordPress tutorials were written for developers by developers. This gave birth to WPBeginner, a way to give back by sharing my knowledge and teaching non-techy users about WordPress because I could see the impact WordPress was beginning to have on my own life as a college student.

I started attending local WordPress meetups as well as WordCamp events across United States. I simply fell in love with how welcoming and helpful everyone in the community was.

Some of my closest friends and co-founders of my various product businesses, I met at WordPress events. For example, I met Thomas Griffin (my co-founder in OptinMonster) at WordCamp Atlanta. I met Jared Atchison (my co-founder in WPForms) at the first-ever WordPress community summit hosted on Tybee Island, Georgia.

As our WordPress product business grew, we started giving back in more ways through speaking at WordCamps, evangelizing WordPress at other industry events, sponsoring local WordCamps, organizing local WordPress meetup groups, and even volunteering to help organize WordCamp conferences.

At each step of the journey, I believe the more we gave back to the WordPress community, the more it helped our business grow.

Today over 25 million websites use the software and plugins created by my companies.

This was only possible because the entire WordPress ecosystem grew, thanks to the larger WordPress community. For perspective, the WordPress marketshare grew from 17.4% in 2013 to over 43.5% of all websites today.

As the saying goes, a rising tide lifts all boats.

If you benefit in any way from WordPress, then you’re part of the hidden WordPress economy worth well over $597 billion, and I believe it is all of our jobs to nourish the ecosystem that has done so much for us.

Our Contributions to WordPress + Open Source

As each year passes, my goal is to continue increasing our contributions to WordPress. Here are some of the ways we’re currently giving back to the WordPress community.

Global Sponsorship of All WordCamps

As of last year, WPBeginner is a Gold sponsor for all WordCamps around the world. We do not do this for advertising because as a bootstrapped company, it’s not possible for us to attend WordCamps across the world.

We provide this financial contribution because I believe community events are central to the growth of the WordPress ecosystem, and we need more events all over the world.

Five for Future Pledge

My company, Awesome Motive, now contributes 204 hours per week to the open source WordPress project. We have team members that are part of the Core Team, WordPress plugins team, WordPress security team, and more.

We are currently the #1 bootstrapped company in the numbers of hours contributed, and we rank #3 overall only behind Automattic (parent company of WordPress.com and WooCommerce) and Newfold Digital (parent company of Bluehost) who continue to do so much for the WordPress ecosystem.

Creating 100% free WordPress Training

All tutorials on WPBeginner are completely free. You can take our WordPress 101 video course and numerous other courses at no cost.

There are hundreds of free video tutorials on YouTube as well and thousands more written ones on WPBeginner.

WordPress Free Importer projects

I want as many people to switch to WordPress as possible.

This is why I asked my teams to create free platform importers for WordPress including: Shopify to WordPress, Weebly to WordPress, and Medium to WordPress.

These tools are used by thousands of people worldwide including developers and even hosting companies.

Free WordPress Support & Help

We offer free WordPress help and support through our website contact form as well as WPBeginner Engage Facebook Group (over 98k members). We have a team of full-time employees and contributors who are there to help users with basic questions.

Of course, we also offer premium WordPress support at very affordable prices when someone needs help, and you’re guaranteed to get someone knowledgeable about WordPress.

Numerous Completely Free Utility Plugins

Our team has created and maintain numerous totally free open source projects & libraries including:

Let’s Encrypt Sponsorship

In the past, most website owners would have to pay for SSL which hindered the eCommerce capability of WordPress sites for small business. This is why starting in 2016, I decided to sponsor Lets Encrypt and encouraged numerous hosting partners to start supporting it.

Fast forward 8 years, Let’s Encrypt now provides SSL certificates to over 450 million websites, and almost every major WordPress hosting company offers free SSL for your WordPress site.

Symbiotic Mutualistic WordPress Contributions

Even though my various businesses do benefit from these contributions, I believe they all help bring more people into the WordPress ecosystem.

Freemium Plugins

I have either created, acquired, or invested in dozens of freemium WordPress plugins. These plugins add tremendous value to the community in the free version which are great for those just starting out.

The WordPress Plugin ecosystem is one of the best things about WordPress when it comes to DIY website building.

Of course, we generate revenue from the small portion of users who do upgrade, and I’m truly grateful for the support of the WP community. Want to help support us? See all my premium WordPress plugins.

For example:

• AIOSEO – is the leading SEO plugin for WordPress when it comes to innovation. Now with our keyword rank tracking and other powerful SEO features, we’re helping small businesses get rid of expensive SaaS tools and manage all their SEO needs within WordPress (free version here).
• WPForms – is the leading drag & drop form builder plugin for WordPress. You no longer need to pay expensive SaaS form or survey tools to build high-converting forms. It comes with over 1900+ pre-built form templates that you can use to create any type of form (free version here).
• Uncanny Automator – is a no-code workflow automation tool inside WordPress. Think of it as a Zapier but inside WordPress … and without the high costs. (free version here).

These are just some of the examples. I’m extremely grateful that over 25 million websites trust our various plugins when building their WordPress sites.

Affordable Pro Services

When I started building websites nearly 20 years ago, I would charge $500 for the website. Most WordPress agencies and freelancers start with low prices, but as their business & skills grow, they raise the prices.

This leaves a huge gap for WordPress beginners who end up switching to proprietary website builders that offer affordable custom website design services.

This is why I invested in Seahawk Media and launched WPBeginner Pro Services to offer affordable websites for small businesses starting at $599.

In no way am I saying that enterprise WordPress websites cost this low. Our service is intended to fill a gap for small businesses who simply can’t afford the high prices, but still want a trusted provider to build their WordPress site.

I have great respect for our friends at 10up, Human Made, rtCamp, WebDevStudios, MultiDots, CrowdFavorite, and others who offer enterprise WordPress services. They’re awesome, and if you’re working on a large project, check them out.

WPBeginner Growth Fund

In the early days of WordPress, investors simply didn’t understand the WordPress community. I would say many still don’t.

This means that most WordPress founders have no clear exit path or route to getting friendly investment partners who understood the ecosystem.

This is why I created the WPBeginner Growth Fund. We provide founder-friendly investments and exits to WordPress founders (many of them are our friends whom I have known for years).

This is a far better option than exiting to a private equity firm because each company continues to operate independently while having support from someone experienced who values the WordPress ecosystem.

We’re fully bootstrapped (i.e no investors or debt). My goal is to invest our profits into supporting the WordPress ecosystem growth by providing investments and exits to other WordPress business owners.

This creates the ultimate win, win, win situation for the customers, for the entrepreneurs, and for the community.

Why I changed my mind on WordPress Contributions

As a bootstrapped founder, my first priority is always our team and our customers. It’s normal to focus on our internal growth metrics above all.

However when operating in a larger ecosystem, it’s also important for us to ensure the health of the WordPress project is sustainable and moving in a positive direction.

We’re not a young ecosystem anymore. WordPress is 21 years old.

There is going to be natural transitions that happen with contributors retiring or moving on to focus on other areas of life.

Same applies to WordPress product & agency owners wanting to exit and move onto the next chapter of their lives.

This creates a vacuum that can lead to an unsustainable future which hurts all of us.

In times like this, it’s more important than ever for us to focus on fostering the community.

We must work together, encourage positivity, and show appreciation for anyone who contributes in any form.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.” — Abraham Lincoln

I was inspired to contribute more after my conversation with Matt Mullenweg (co-founder of WordPress) at a TED conference in Vancouver in 2022 where both of us passionately shared our love for the WordPress community.

There’s no one who contributes more to the WordPress ecosystem than Matt himself. Automattic donates 4,000+ hours a week (that’s over 208,000 per year) to the open source project.

I really like Matt’s thoughts on Ecosystem Thinking.

I believe that symbiotic mutualistic contributions are crucial for a healthy ecosystem because all parties involved benefit from it.

Let’s continue to work together in contributing to WordPress and helping democratize publishing & commerce across the world.

As always, I want to thank you for your continued support of WPBeginner, and we look forward to continue serving you for years to come.

Yours Truly,

Syed BalkhiFounder of WPBeginner

Misc Notes / P.S.

* If you run a website on WordPress and want to help support companies that contribute to WordPress, please see the Five for Future pledges. I can say this about my product companies that what we earn through our premium plugin sales, it help us give back to the community, and I appreciate your support.

** It’s important to emphasize that I’m an investor in Automattic. Of course I want a great return on my investment, but I believe in Matt’s vision that both good return and incredible contributions can happen at the same time.

*** If you’re a WordPress business owner who’s looking for an exit or investment, and don’t want to deal with private equity folks, I encourage you to look at my WPBeginner Growth Fund. We’re fully bootstrapped independent creators with a mission to help small businesses grow & compete with the big guys.

**** It was great seeing everyone at WCUS. Thank you for everyone who said hello and for the kind conversations. The event always feel like a family reunion. Some photos below:

Photo credit: The ecosystem image is created by Jordan Hillier from Automattic, and I found it on Matt’s blog post which I linked above.