Profiles

Around 2003 I started working on a content management system called phpGolem. I was disappointed by the state of CMS options at the time, and I had an idea of a core extension engine where everything was a module on top: phpGolem. That same year, Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little forked b2 (see: “The Great Renaming”, commit 601) and released WordPress 0.70. Clearly I wasn’t the only person feeling CMS options weren’t good enough.

A friend of mine then suggested to have a look on how WordPress was handling filters, as it was a good model. I did, and stared discovering WordPress. In December 2004 phpGolem released 0.4 beta, while WordPress reached 1.2. I was really proud about phpGolem, it had a lot of good things going on, but one thing that I missed at the time was the community. WordPress already understood how important that was.

Years later, when I co-founded Baker Framework, I didn’t do the same error, and we managed to create a lively open source community around it. But that’s another story.

Over time WordPress became so good that phpGolem with me as single developer couldn’t compete in any way anymore. By then however I had studies ins and outs of WordPress, so I wrote an exporter and switched everything to WordPress. The rest is history.

In 2008 I spoke at the first Italian WordCamp with a presentation about “WordPress as a CMS”, and that’s where I met for the first time Matt.

Later I worked for 8 years in Automattic, before leaving in 2021. It’s been a great journey to see it grow from 200 to 1,500 people, but even more because it allowed me to dedicate more time to the WordPress Community. In particular, I helped work with the Customizer and later I helped lay the foundation of Gutenberg with the “Parrot” concept aggregating the input of the many designers in the community.