Dan Knauss (@dpknauss) – WordPress user profile

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

I work for Liquid Web at StellarWP as a Technical Generalist and maintain a consultancy, New Local Media. I was the editor of Post Status from 2016 to 2023 — a wonderful part of the WordPress community for people making their living in it and learning together. I started freelancing in the late 90s, and that 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 still occasionally plan, design, build, and/or support websites that people enjoy using, help them do great work, and are simple to maintain.

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. Many of those activities have involved WordPress too.

Since the 00s, I’ve moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to rural Iowa, and now Edmonton, Alberta. Originally from upstate New York, I’ve also lived in New Jersey, North Carolina, and Micronesia.

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.

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. Today I still have a dozen+ long-term clients, including several who have stuck with me since that time. 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 use 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, it also had these key qualities and features, which led to its increasing usefulness as a CMS for client work. Within a few years, I was WordPress-exclusive.

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

Contribution History

Photo Contributor

Activity
Photos
Favorites

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…
4 days ago
Submitted pull request #10 to WordPress/wp20-book:
Update BB-Chapter-11-The-WordPress-Economy.md
1 week 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…
4 months ago
Posted a reply to Fatal Error on New Post Creation, PHP 8.x, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
It looks like this error emerges only in relation to the Newsletter Block whenever the…
7 months ago
Created a topic, Fatal Error on New Post Creation, PHP 8.x, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Current plugin: Genesis Blocks (version 1.5.3) PHP ver…
7 months ago
Created issue #440 in the WordPress/Documentation-Issue-Tracker repository:
Follow consistent naming for Navigation Block and Submenu Navigation Child Blocks
9 months ago
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…
10 months ago
Created issue #42345 in the WordPress/gutenberg repository:
Single quotes in content following bold text get curled the wrong way
11 months ago
Submitted pull request #2816 to WordPress/wordpress-develop:
Fix doc block for do_action
12 months ago
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. 👋
1 year ago
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…
1 year ago
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?
3 years ago
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 …
3 years ago
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…
4 years ago
Created a topic, Coblocks.com feature slides, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
What's being used to create the button-toggled slides …
4 years ago
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…
5 years ago
Created a topic, Gutenberg integration plans?, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Instead of just bypassing the backend page editor, do …
5 years ago
Created a topic, Breaks publish date selection list, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Activating this plugin makes the date picker dropdown …
5 years ago
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…
5 years ago
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.…
5 years ago
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 …
5 years ago
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)…
5 years ago
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…
5 years ago
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…
5 years ago
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…
6 years ago
Created a topic, Several Minor Bugs/Defects, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
The is a good plugin for doing something important ver…
6 years ago
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…
6 years ago
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…
6 years ago
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…
6 years ago
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…
6 years ago
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.
6 years ago
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.
6 years ago
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…
6 years ago
Posted a reply to Didn't meet my needs, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Thanks!
6 years ago
Posted a reply to Post content in slides, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Thanks, that is helpful.
6 years ago
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.
6 years ago
Posted a reply to Didn't meet my needs, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Please let us know when these changes are in.
6 years ago
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…
6 years ago
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…
6 years ago
Created a topic, SPAM Magnet!, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
In addition to the other criticisms about the difficul…
7 years ago
Created ticket #28491 on Core Trac:
Only local image uploads are possible with the customizer
9 years ago
Created ticket #2347 on bbPress Trac:
phpBB importer conflates all deactivated users as single user "anonymous"
10 years ago

Total photo contributions: 2

View all photos contributed by Dan Knauss to the WordPress Photo Directory →

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Bio

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WordPress Origin Story

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