Dan Knauss (@dpknauss) – WordPress user profile

Bio

I am a Solution Architect for Multidots, an enterprise WordPress agency. I have been a WordPress enthusiast since its very beginning.

Interests

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

WordPress Origin Story

I started freelancing as a web designer in the late 90s. 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 (before he founded 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.

My first client was a state medical research and teaching institution that needed me to scope out a Magento eCommerce project, write an RFP for it, and shop it out to preferred vendors, one of which has since become a major WordPress enterprise agency, and today I have colleagues there who I’ve met at WordCamps. In retrospect, this was a great early experience that forced me to learn about relevant laws (contracts, liability, data and personal information privacy, HIPAA, PCI) from the start.

Doing web projects on the side grew into a full-time service-oriented consultancy for me in 2004-06 thanks to open-source content management systems. I remember trying b2 and hearing about WordPress emerging from it as a fork, but I didn’t get deeply into it right away. I started building blog sites with WordPress but preferred Textpattern for a while, and I dipped into Drupal. Most of my work projects used the Joomla CMS (and its forked precursor, Mambo) until WordPress 2.9 came out at the end of 2009. Joomla’s plugin architecture and third-party product ecosystem made them incredibly versatile and simple to deploy for all kinds of projects. (Mambo even had an auto-installer.) After the WordPress 2.9 release with auto-updates from WP.org, WordPress also had these key qualities and features. Coupled with a robust theme and plugin market, the 2.9 release made WordPress viable as a CMS for client work. Within a few years, I was WordPress-exclusive.

Consulting and building sites for clients was my main focus from roughly 2004 to 2014, which allowed me to work at home and be a full-time parent active in my local community. By the end of that period, I was doing WordPress projects almost exclusively after working with many others — Movable Type, Drupal, Mambo, Joomla, Textpattern, and a number of eCommerce systems.

Later, I worked as a technical generalist for Liquid Web’s StellarWP family of brands, weaving between marketing, product development, and design teams, writing, editing, and QA in each area. I mostly focused on SolidWP, Solid Security, and Infosec topics.

From 2016 to 2023, I was the editor of Post Status, a wonderful part of the WordPress community for people making a living with WordPress and learning together. There, I learned, wrote, and did podcasts on the business and culture of WordPress.

I’m an organizer for the Edmonton WordPress Meetup and WordCamp Canada.

I blog about living with (and medical research related to) Charcot Marie Tooth (CMT) and other neuromuscular diseases at https://cmt.blog.

I still like to get back to the nineties’ coding simplicity when I can. I have a strong attraction to flat-file CMSes and any simple or minimalistic tech, but WordPress has been my go-to web publishing tool for over a decade as a consultant, writer, editor, volunteer, teacher, and parent.

Contributions Sponsored

Multidots sponsors Dan Knauss to contribute 5 hours per week to the following teams: Community and Documentation.

Member Since: September 14th, 2007
Location: Edmonton, Alberta • Canada
Website: dan.knauss.ca
GitHub: dknauss
Job Title: Senior Solution Architect
Employer: Multidots
Find me on:

Contribution History

Core Contributor
Documentation Contributor
Meetup Organizer
Photo Contributor
Translation Contributor
WordCamp Organizer
WordCamp Speaker

Activity
Photos
Courses
Favorites
Translations

Wrote a new post, Ticket sales are OPEN for WordCamp Canada, on the site WordCamp Canada 2025:
It's the moment you’ve been waiting for… 🎟️ Tickets for WordCamp Canada 2025 are on…
5 days ago
Translated 10 strings on translate.wordpress.org.
2 weeks ago
Suggested 33 strings on translate.wordpress.org.
2 weeks ago
Wrote a new post, WordCamp Montréal 2025 est de retour, on the site Français du Canada:
Montréal aura son WordCamp en présentiel cet été du jeudi 26 juin 2025 au vendredi…
1 month ago
Created a topic, Mastodon “Likes” in WP New Comment Notifications, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
When I get a "like" on Mastodon, WordPress sends a com…
1 month ago
Wrote a new post, WordCamp Canada 2025 Call for Speakers #WCEH, on the site English (Canada):
WCEH's Call for Speakers is open until June 15. Ready to inspire and be inspired?…
2 months ago
Wrote a new post, WordCamp Canada 2025 Call for Volunteers #WCEH, on the site English (Canada):
Like the WordPress software project WordCamp Canada (WCEH) is an open source event. It’s planned,…
3 months ago
Joined the organizing team for WordCamp Canada 2025 (FR)
3 months ago
Wrote a new post, WordCamp Canada 2025 Call for Sponsors #WCEH, on the site English (Canada):
The WordCamp Canada 2025 (WCEH) organizing team has issued a Call for Sponsors. A prospectus…
3 months ago
Completed the course Open source basics and WordPress on learn.wordpress.org
3 months ago
Completed the course Open source basics and WordPress on learn.wordpress.org
3 months ago
Completed the course Community team Program Supporter tasks on learn.wordpress.org
3 months ago
Completed the course Writing in the WordPress voice on learn.wordpress.org
3 months ago
Completed the course Community team event mentor training on learn.wordpress.org
3 months ago
Completed the course Community team event mentor training on learn.wordpress.org
3 months ago
Completed the course Community meeting etiquette on learn.wordpress.org
3 months ago
Completed the course How decisions are made in the WordPress project on learn.wordpress.org
3 months ago
Joined the organizing team for WordCamp Canada 2025
3 months ago
Confirmed as a speaker for WordCamp Canada 2024 (#WCEH)
3 months ago
Wrote a new post, Call for Sponsors, on the site WordCamp Canada 2025:
WordCamp Canada 2025 (WCEH) will take place on October 16-17, 2025 in Carleton University's Richcraft Hall…
3 months ago
Wrote a comment on the post WordPress 6.8 will use bcrypt for password hashing, on the site Make WordPress Core:
Ditto! This is a big win.
4 months ago
Created a topic, Fata Error after activating, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
In a Studio environment — WP 6.7.1, PHP 8.0, MySQL Lit…
5 months ago
Pull request #67711 merged into WordPress/gutenberg:
Update README.md
6 months ago
Submitted pull request #67711 to WordPress/gutenberg:
Update README.md
6 months ago
Created a topic, Nothing else comes close, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Akismet just works. You may never hear from it. You al…
8 months ago
Pull request #366 merged into WordPress/Advanced-administration-handbook:
Update users-and-roles.md
9 months ago
Wrote a comment on the post Meetup Organizer Newsletter: August 2024, on the site Make WordPress Community:
Thanks, this was helpful Julia. :-) So was watching Nada ElSharkawy's “Starting a WordPress Meetup:…
10 months ago
Posted a reply to Column creation issue, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Hey, did my tips in Dev Edmonton Slack help? :-)
10 months ago
Submitted pull request #366 to WordPress/Advanced-administration-handbook:
Update users-and-roles.md
11 months ago
Posted a reply to Will it protect from cookie theft / stealing active sessions?, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
@markussss, I have been looking over plugins like this to see how they might defend…
11 months ago
Suggested 2 strings on translate.wordpress.org.
11 months ago
Suggested 1 string on translate.wordpress.org.
11 months ago
Pull request #344 merged into WordPress/Advanced-administration-handbook:
Update hardening.md
11 months ago
Completed the course WordPress meetup organizer training on learn.wordpress.org
12 months ago
Wrote a comment on the post Reactivating Inactive Meetup Groups, on the site Make WordPress Community:
Thanks!
12 months ago
Wrote a comment on the post Reactivating Inactive Meetup Groups, on the site Make WordPress Community:
What’s the best way to connect with those trying to reboot a local group? Mine…
12 months ago
Created a topic, Simply the Best, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
This is the best ultra-simple (and free) way to stop c…
1 year ago
Submitted pull request #344 to WordPress/Advanced-administration-handbook:
Update hardening.md
1 year ago
Created a topic, Absolutely Essential!, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
If you are not using another 2FA system, this is the s…
1 year ago
Suggested 72 strings on translate.wordpress.org.
1 year ago
Created a topic, SECURITY RISK: This Plugin is Vulnerable and Appears Abandoned, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
There is an unpatched vulnerability in this plugin tha…
2 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Proposal: establishment of a formal WordPress Sustainability Team, on the site WordPress.org Project:
I support the proposal. Noting what others have said about the breadth of the term…
2 years ago
Submitted pull request #10 to WordPress/wp20-book:
Update BB-Chapter-11-The-WordPress-Economy.md
2 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Proposal: Creating a WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program, on the site WordPress.org Project:
1. Sounds great! 2. Success probably means significant buy-in and mentors-mentees seeing a process through…
2 years ago
Created issue #440 in the WordPress/Documentation-Issue-Tracker repository:
Follow consistent naming for Navigation Block and Submenu Navigation Child Blocks
3 years ago
Created issue #42345 in the WordPress/gutenberg repository:
Single quotes in content following bold text get curled the wrong way
3 years ago
Submitted pull request #2816 to WordPress/wordpress-develop:
Fix doc block for do_action
3 years ago
Created ticket #28491 on Core Trac:
Only local image uploads are possible with the customizer
11 years ago
Created ticket #2347 on bbPress Trac:
phpBB importer conflates all deactivated users as single user "anonymous"
12 years ago