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Dan Knauss

@dpknauss on WordPress.org , @dpk on Slack

  • Member Since: September 14th, 2007
  • Location: Edmonton, Alberta • Canada
  • Website: dan.knauss.ca
  • GitHub: dknauss
  • Job Title: Editor
  • Employer: Post Status
  • Find me on:

Bio

Since 2015 I’ve been the editor of Post Status, which continues to be a growing and evolving role centred on the WordPress community and people making their living in it.

I still occasionally plan, design, build, and/or support websites that people enjoy using, that help them do great work, and are simple to maintain. This is work that goes back to the late 90s and was my main focus from about 2004-2014 when I was also a full-time parent. By the end of that period, I was doing WordPress projects almost exclusively.

I also have a background of experience in writing, editing, and teaching writing to university students, which I have gone back to from time to time. What might be called community activism, rabblerousing, or being a good neighbour has also accounted for a lot of side projects and shadow work. Like Robert DeNiro’s character in the Terry Gilliam classic Brazil, I have been known to practice heating engineering without a license.

Interests

Anything, everything? If there is something uninteresting in the world, that would interest me too.

WordPress Origin Story

After years of hand-coding in the ’90s, (and not counting the original blogger.com) Movable Type was the first extensible content management/publishing web application I used heavily, starting in 2001. A great community grew up around MT, which had some fantastic Perl plugins contributed by the late Alex King (who would found Crowd Favorite) and John Gruber of Daring Fireball and Markdown fame. A lot of that talent and vision came over to Dean Allen’s influential Textpattern CMS and then WordPress as people who cared about quality writing and open web standards realized the value of working together under an open-source license.

Nearly ten years of doing web projects on the side grew into a full-time service-oriented consultancy for me (New Local Media) in 2006, thanks to open source content management systems. I remember trying b2 and hearing about the birth of WordPress, but I didn’t get into WP until 2004 or so. I started building blog sites with WordPress and Textpattern the following year and dipped into Drupal as well, but most of my work dealt with the Joomla CMS (and its forked precursor, Mambo) until WordPress 2.9 came out. Their plugin architecture and ecosystem made them incredibly versatile and simple to deploy for all kinds of projects, just as WordPress would become in about 2009.

I still like to get back to the nineties’ simplicity from time to time with hand-coded pages, and I have a strong attraction to flat-file content management applications, but WordPress has been my go-to web publishing tool for over a decade as a consultant, writer, editor, volunteer, teacher, and parent.

Since the 00s, I’ve moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to rural Iowa, and now Edmonton, Alberta. Today I live and work in Canada as a sole trader with a dozen+ long-term clients who have stuck with me. I have been writing, editing, and helping to manage Post Status since 2017 as well. Post Status is a fantastic membership-driven WordPress news source and mutual assistance community supporting the work, learning, well-being, and happiness of WordPress professionals all over the world.

Contributions

Dan Knauss contributes 1 hour per week to the Documentation team.

  • Created issue #440 in the WordPress/Documentation-Issue-Tracker repository:
    Follow consistent naming for Navigation Block and Submenu Navigation Child Blocks

  • Wrote a comment on the post Giving FSE a More User Friendly Name, on the site Make WordPress Core:
    It depends what you consider "content," but when you're in FSE mode you can't currently…

  • Created issue #42345 in the WordPress/gutenberg repository:
    Single quotes in content following bold text get curled the wrong way

  • Submitted pull request #2816 to WordPress/wordpress-develop:
    Fix doc block for do_action

  • Wrote a comment on the post Join the Community Team for a #WPDiversity Writing Sprint: May 23 to May 30, on the site Make WordPress Communities:
    I'm happy to help write and edit things. 👋

  • Wrote a comment on the post Grow Your Story on WordPress, on the site Make WordPress.org Marketing:
    The form is not publicly shared. I'm seeing "You need permission. This form can only…

  • Wrote a comment on the post We’re applying to Season of Docs, on the site Make WordPress Documentation:
    What are the criteria for writers, and how do we apply?

  • Created a topic, 2.2.0 and Genesis framework, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    The latest release seems to generate a fatal error in …

  • Posted a reply to Coblocks.com feature slides, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    So it seems! At first I thought it looked like Bootstrap CSS and jQuery; I…

  • Created a topic, Coblocks.com feature slides, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    What's being used to create the button-toggled slides …

  • Posted a reply to Gutenberg integration plans?, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    That makes a lot of sense — great ideas! Using widgets this way is ingenious…

  • Created a topic, Gutenberg integration plans?, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Instead of just bypassing the backend page editor, do …

  • Created a topic, Breaks publish date selection list, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Activating this plugin makes the date picker dropdown …

  • Posted a reply to Hubspot Screen is now Blank (Multiple WP installs), on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    To be clear, this problem was caused by a recent Chrome update as the new…

  • Posted a reply to Hubspot Screen is now Blank (Multiple WP installs), on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    I thought I had removed AdBlock in Chrome, but I hadn't disabled all of it.…

  • Created a topic, Hubspot Screen is now Blank (Multiple WP installs), on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    This plugin shows only a blank screen in the WP admin …

  • Posted a reply to Conflict: Jetpack Related Posts gets between event body and host details, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Currently it seems to be showing only related events (not posts or other content types)…

  • Posted a reply to Conflict: Jetpack Related Posts gets between event body and host details, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Yes, this is still happening -- related posts are injected below the_content in other post…

  • Posted a reply to How to deactivate or delete this plugin?, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Nope, but it may have had to do with the way the managed hosting environment…

  • Created a topic, How to deactivate or delete this plugin?, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    If I delete this plugin, it reactivates. If I delete i…

  • Created a topic, Several Minor Bugs/Defects, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    The is a good plugin for doing something important ver…

  • Created a topic, Conflict: Jetpack Related Posts gets between event body and host details, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    With Jetpack's Related Posts feature active, individua…

  • Posted a reply to Jetpack Contact Form not sending email, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Same here -- no emails going out from Flywheel, which uses Mandrill for this. Is…

  • Posted a reply to How do I display a name with commas in the suffix?, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    How are you storing suffixes now? I would just add them to the the full…

  • Created a topic, Filter is not applied with external services like WP.com and Postmatic, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Bylines do not replace the user assigned author in Wor…

  • Posted a reply to Post content in slides, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    The only decent option I'm aware of is Bill Erickson's old Display Posts Shortcode plugin.

  • Posted a reply to Post content in slides, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    What content shortcodes have you tested? I'm not having any luck with this.

  • Posted a reply to Best FREE 2FA alternative to replace Clef?, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    There are some Google authenticator plugins, and you could also use Jetpack. Most sites are…

  • Posted a reply to Didn't meet my needs, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Thanks!

  • Posted a reply to Post content in slides, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Thanks, that is helpful.

  • Posted a reply to Extra fee instead of discount?, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Thanks, I learned those things after posting here. It also violates the PayPal TOS.

  • Posted a reply to Didn't meet my needs, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Please let us know when these changes are in.

  • Created a topic, Extra fee instead of discount?, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Is it possible to ADD a fixed fee or % for certain pay…

  • Created a topic, Co-Authors and Make theme, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    If you want to use the Co-Authors Plus plugin with The…

  • Created a topic, SPAM Magnet!, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    In addition to the other criticisms about the difficul…

  • Posted a reply to ReCaptcha for emma, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Yes, this is a major problem. Lots of spam subscriptions.

  • Posted a reply to Recent updates result in plugin being uninstalled, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    The latest update, performed internally, worked without a problem. Usually updates are made remotely, via…

  • Posted a reply to Recent updates result in plugin being uninstalled, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    No I have not made those tests. It would require creating a staging site and…

  • Posted a reply to Leads 2.7.3 is broken with WP 4.6.1, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Go back to 2.6.9. Versions 2.7.1 and 2.7.2 both break your site, at least under…

  • Posted a reply to Update broke my site, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Go back to 2.6.9. Versions 2.7.1 and 2.7.2 both break your site, at least under…

  • Posted a reply to Update broke my site, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Seems to be a widespread problem. Rollback to previous version.

  • Posted a reply to Leads 2.7.3 is broken with WP 4.6.1, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Same here.

  • Posted a reply to Does not update without page refresh when images are inserted from media library, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    I fully understand you may not want to support compatibility with these other plugins, but…

  • Posted a reply to Does not update without page refresh when images are inserted from media library, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Sorry, this was a while back and I'm not sure what I was trying to…

  • Created ticket #28491 on Core Trac:
    Only local image uploads are possible with the customizer

  • Created ticket #2347 on bbPress Trac:
    phpBB importer conflates all deactivated users as single user "anonymous"

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