The WordPress Open Source Project

A bit about Michele Butcher ❖ WordPress Specialist at WP Security Lock❖ Lead Organizer for Southern Illinois WordPress Meetup❖ Designer and Content Creator at 13 Core❖ Blogger for Can’t Speak Geek❖ Community and Teaching Contributor for WordPress❖ WordCamp Speaker❖ JALC Beginner’s and Intermediate WordPress instructor

About one-fourth of all the websites are running WordPress

Almost 50% of all CMS ran sites are on WordPress

Over 60 Million sites are Powered by WordPress

WordPress Core is written and used in over 180 different languages.

It is NOT just for bloggers

Vouge The New York Post

Time Magazine Sony Music

Wil Wheaton Georgia State University

Flickr

There is virtually no limit to what you can build.

Built with MySQL and PHP it’s origins lays with b2/cafelog.

Using W3C standards for XHTML and CSS ensures sites are easily rendered across most

platforms.

WordPress Core is licensed under the GNU General Public License.

Being OpenSource means more can work on the Code and Core is ever evolving.

Anyone can copy, edit, or distribute the Core files.

Great tutorials for most anything WordPress related codex.WordPress.org

The Codex can show how to dig deeper as a developer for the WordPress Project

Anyone can request features and report bugs. This is how many of the lead developers start

out. core.Trac.WordPress.org

Constantly being updated: 3 major releases to Core in the past year.

785 people helped contribute to these updates

Over 34,000 plugins and 2,700 themes for site customization in the repo alone.

This is not counting premium plugins and themes.

The WordPress community is one of the largest international professional communities.

Anyone can join, help out and contribute to WordPress which is

why it is the most popular.Anyone is able to work on the core code, API, mobile responsiveness,

support and documentation

make.WordPress.com

WordCamps. The best $20-$40 spent for any conference.

Upcoming WordCamp Schedule at central.WordCamp.org

Over 20,000 people make their living using WordPress

and that number is rising.

What does all of this mean to you?

There are at least 4 companies just in the Carbondale area that

make WordPress based sites.

WordPress is one of the most requested skills in the world.

Just behind knowing MS Office

Companies both big and small are looking for designers, developers, and content creators to help them

stay in competition.

It is not a build it and forget world for websites anymore.

Many clients now want access to their website for content creation.

Most bloggers, freelancers, and small businesses chose WordPress

over Joomla and Drupal.

Most designers make $100k a year designing a WordPress website.

Most developers make between $300k and $400k per year.

Community support when you can get answers 24/7/365

Code or a forum post has already been made for most issues.

Most answers can be found in the forums.

Answering the Forum questions is easy to.

The users, developers, and community is always growing.

Building one simple plugin or theme build can change a future.

Getting started now in Contributing to WordPress can lead to many great things

after graduation including remote positions with a high starting pay.

Southern Illinois WordPress Meetup http://www.meetup.com/Southern-Illinois-WordPress-Meetup/

Next Meetup will be December 9, 2014 at Pagliai’s Pizza from 6pm-8pm

Questions?