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grierson

Head of Global Expansion at Automattic

@grierson joined Jan 2018

james.blog github.com/griersongithub Slack: @James Grierson

    Interests

    Music, Drumming, Ice Hockey, Building Stuff

    WordPress Origin Story

    I actually started using WordPress in 2007 and joined the community while working for Bluehost in 2008: https://profiles.wordpress.org/bluehost (that started as my personal account and it was later turned into a corporate account thus I created this new profile later). A few of the things I have been a part of include:
    – Been helping WordCamps as a sponsor since 2007
    – Volunteered at WordCamps to help others since 2008
    – co-Founded SimpleScripts with Ben Merrill which helped millions of people install WordPress and other open source software remotely
    – Pushed for and signed the agreement for Bluehost to be the first Global WordPress.org sponsor
    – Personally took on the challenge to upgrade 2.5 million WordPress websites on Bluehost back in 2016 and open sourced our code that made it possible. I worked directly with a talented group of system admins and developers at Bluehost to make it happen https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bluehost-develops-open-source-script-to-update-two-million-wordpress-sites-300219229.html

    Badges

    CODE
    1 badge
    Core Contributor '20

    Current Job

    Head of Global Expansion
    Present
    Automattic

    Recent impact

    Score weights high-impact work (commits, releases, approved translations, props) at 3x routine activity.

    Last 30 days
    0contributions
    high0
    medium0
    score0
    Last 90 days
    5contributions
    high3
    medium2
    score11
    Last 12 months
    5contributions
    high3
    medium2
    score11

    WordPress releases

    Contributed to 1 release
    • 5.5

    Contributions

    Type
    May 2026
    May 21 Thu · 13:55
    Meta med
    Wrote a comment on the post Sandbox request for WordPress.org edits, on the site Make WordPress Systems:
    @yaniiliev I will DM you in slack.
    May 21 Thu · 13:55
    Meta med
    Wrote a comment on the post # Sandbox request for WordPress.org…, on the site Make WordPress Systems:
    #prio 1
    April 2026
    Apr 18 Sat · 07:08
    Meta high
    Committed [14820] to Meta SVN:
    Add AI crawler directives to robots.txt for wordpress.org - explicitly allow GPTBot, ClaudeBot, anthropic-ai, Google-Extended, Applebot-Extended, PerplexityBot, Bytespider, CCBot, and Copilot
    Apr 13 Mon · 19:57
    Meta high
    Committed [14811] to Meta SVN:
    WP.org: Add llms.txt mu-plugin following the llmstxt.org specification.
    Apr 09 Thu · 22:20
    Meta high
    Wrote a new post, Please provide access to a…, on the site Make WordPress Systems:
    Please provide access to a .org sandbox for me as I have some work to…
    December 2023
    Dec 11 Mon · 19:41
    Forums med
    Created a topic, Quick and easy migration., on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    I was able to migrate a site from Bluehost to Pressabl…
    March 2023
    Mar 20 Mon · 05:12
    Forums med
    Posted a reply to Fallo al generar el CSS crítico, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Thank you for reporting this issue. There was a server side issue on the 16-17th…
    Mar 20 Mon · 05:12
    Forums med
    Posted a reply to Failed to generate Critical CSS, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Thank you for reporting this issue. There was a server side issue on the 16-17th…
    July 2022
    Jul 08 Fri · 19:43
    Forums med
    Posted a reply to [Jetpack Search] finally an easy and cheap solution, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
    Thank you for the feedback Sergio! You are correct, we are working to add a…
    June 2020
    Jun 06 Sat · 11:05
    Core high
    Mentioned in [47919] on WordPress SVN:
    Bootstrap/Load: Introduce `wp_get_environment_type()` to retrieve the current environment type.