Introducing Russell Aaron I didn’t learn WordPress at a fancy college or career academy. I graduated from the University of YouTube. My internship was the Las Vegas WordPress Meetup and WordCamp Vegas. The rest I learned building mortgage company platforms, working for casinos, inside managed WordPress hosts, and at some of the best WordPress development and support shops on the planet. Show Notes For more on Russell, check out his website: https://russellenvy.com Transcript: Topher DeRosia: All right. Here we go. Hey folks. Russell Aaron: And three, two, one. Topher DeRosia: Hey folks. Welcom
Introducing Rob Ruiz Meet Rob Ruiz, a seasoned Senior Full Stack Developer with nearly two decades of expertise in WordPress innovation and open-source magic. As the Lead Maintainer of WP Rig since 2020, Rob has been the driving force behind this groundbreaking open-source framework that empowers developers to craft high-performance, accessible, and progressively enhanced WordPress themes with ease. WP Rig isn’t just a starter theme—it’s a turbocharged toolkit that bundles modern build processes, linting, optimization, and testing to deliver lightning-fast, standards-compliant sites that shine
Introducing June Liu June Liu is the Creative Strategist at backpocket ACE, where she helps projects run smoothly and accessibly. She’s also the co-editor of WP Wonder Women and co-founder of Speed Network Online. Show Notes Backpocket Ace LinkedIn WP Accessibility Day Bio Transcript: Topher DeRosia: Hey everybody. Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m your host Topher, and my guest today is June, and I’m going to make you say your last name. June Liu: Okay. Hi everybody. I’m June Liu. Yep, Liu. It’s the easier way to pronounce it. You don’t want to do the Mandarin way. Topher: I do. What is it? June:
Introducing Amber Hinds Amber Hinds is the CEO of Equalize Digital, Inc., a company specializing in WordPress accessibility and maker of the Accessibility Checker plugin. She is the lead organizer of the WordPress Accessibility Meetup, board president/co-lead organizer of the WordPress Accessibility Day conference, and participates in the WordPress core accessibility team. Through her work at Equalize Digital, Amber is striving to create a world where all people have equal access to information and tools on the internet, regardless of ability. Since 2010, she has led teams building websites an
Introducing Joni Halabi Joni Halabi works at Georgetown University where is the web web content manager for the office of the president. She also volunteers on the WordPress Accessibility Day project, managing the translation of transcripts into a variety of languages. Show Notes Joni’s LinkedIn WP Accessibility Day 2025 WP Accessibility Day Translation Page Transcript: Topher DeRosia: Hey everybody. Welcome to Hallway Chats. This is your host Topher, and this week I am with a new friend that I don’t know at all. Can you tell me your name? Joni Halabi: Hi, my name is Joni Halabi. Topher: Excel
Introducing Toby Cryns Toby Cryns is owner of The Mighty Mo!, a WordPress and SEO lead generation agency in Minneapolis, MN. He wrote for WPTavern.com and helped plan BuddyCamp, WordUp, and the first few WordCamps in the Twin Cities. Show Notes https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobycryns https://themightymo.com/ Transcript: Topher DeRosia: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher, and I’m here today with Toby and I’m going to make you say your last name. Toby Cryns: Cryns [CRINES]. It’s a one-syllable German name. Topher: All right, cool. I know very little about you. I met you when we were both in the
Introducing Nancy Lyons CEO and co-founder of Clockwork, an enterprise web development company in Minneapolis MN. We’ve known her through the internet for years, and it was a delight to get to talk to her in this episode. Show Notes https://www.nancylyons.com/ https://www.clockwork.com/ Transcript: Topher: Hey everybody, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher, your host, and my regular co-host is Nyasha and she’s here. Nyasha: Hey, I’m Nyasha. Topher: And I stepped on her introduction, and I’m sorry. Nyasha: It’s okay. Topher: Before we get going, I want to say thanks to Nexcess for our hosting,
Introducing Evelyn Maina Evelyn is a very unusual guest in that we brought her into the WordPress community! Years ago when Liam and Tara started this podcast they hired Evelyn as their transcriber. Since then, Evelyn has gotten to know more than 175 WordPressers by transcribing their interviews here on Hallway Chats. Her perspective as an “outsider” was quite heartwarming. Show Notes https://havenscribe.com/ https://glowfaceportal.co.ke/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/evalyn-maina/ Transcript: Topher: Hey everyone, my name is Topher. Nyasha: And my name is Nyasha. Topher: And this is Hallway Cha
Introducing Aisha Adams and Marcus Burnette at WordCamp Birmingham In February Topher and Cate went to WordCamp Birmingham and Topher was able to interview both Aisha Adams and Marcus Burnette in the hallway. Aisha’s Links: https://aishaadamsmedia.com/ https://wordpress.tv/speakers/aisha-adams/ https://www.facebook.com/aishaadamsmediagroup Marcus’ Links https://mburnette.com/ https://profiles.wordpress.org/mdburnette/ https://wordpress.tv/speakers/marcus-burnette/ Transcript: Topher: Hey folks, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m your host Topher. This week we have an interesting collection of Hallw
Believe it or not, this is Robert's second time on Hallway Chats! His first was back in 2017 with Liam and Tara. Since Ny and Topher had never talked to him on here, we decided to give it another go!
In November 2022 Topher went to WordCamp Italy in Milan. While there he had several conversations with attendees and sponsors. Episode Transcript Topher: Hey folks, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m your host Topher. This week is going to be a little bit different from usual. This last November, I had the opportunity to go to WordCamp Italy in Milan, or WordCamp Italia in Milano, depending on how your mama says it. While I was there, I got to have some actual in-person hallway chats with a number of people. And this week is going to be an aggregation of five of them. So you’re going to get to meet
Topher and Sophia met with Benjamin Zekavica and Moritz Bappert, both WordCamp Europe 2023 volunteers. Show Notes Episode Transcript Topher: Hey everyone! Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher and my co-host is Sofia. Sophia: Hello. Moritz: Hi. Nice to meet you. Benjamin: Nice to meet you two. Topher: It’s great having you here. Once again, our guests are from WordCamp Europe. Please tell us your names and what your role is for WordCamp. Benjamin: I’m Benjamin. I’m 24 years old, and I’m a volunteer here at the WordCamp. I am the photographer and photographer organizer to take the picture from t
Show Notes Episode Transcript Topher: Hey everyone. Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher and my co-host is Sofia. Say hello, Sophia. Sophia: Sorry. Hello. I was trying to look at the show. Topher: Okay. Our guests today come from WordCamp Europe. Please tell us your names and what your role is for WordCamp. Evangelia: Hi, my name is Evangelia Pappa. And for WordCamp Europe 2023, I am one of the global leads this year. So I’m responsible for the teams of budgets, sponsors, and the community team. Topher: Okay. Lena: Hi, I’m Lena Lekkou. I’m responsible for the design. I was the design lead team
Show Notes Contact Info: Website WordPress Twitter Episode Transcript Topher: Hey everyone, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher and my co-host today is Sophia. Sophia: Hello. Topher: She waved. Before we get started, I want to say thanks to our sponsor Nexcess. They’ve been good to us for a couple of years now. And I’ve been really, really happy with their hosting. Their servers are really fast. They give me all the special tools that I really like in a host, and they have some really great specialized things for WooCommerce like automated testing, which is pretty unique. I’m not sure of any
Show Notes Contact Info: Website LinkedIn Twitter Episode Transcript Topher: Hey everyone, welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Topher, your host today. My regular co-host Nyasha is sick today, so it’s just gonna be me and our guest. Before we get started, I want to say thanks to our sponsor Nexcess. We’ve been hosted with Nexcess for a couple of years now and it’s been extremely good. To put it bluntly, their servers are fast, uptime is great, good communication when there needs to be downtime. A couple of times over the couple of years we’ve had midnight outages for 20 minutes while they redo somet
Show Notes Contact Info: Yoast Profile Episode Transcript Topher: Hey folks, welcome to Hallway Chats. My name is Topher. This week we have another hallway chat that was actually recorded on-site at a WordCamp. This one was recorded at WordCamp Italia in Milan and we were outside in a beautiful courtyard at an ancient university. My guest is Iolanda Sequino. She works for Yoast and was there at WordCamp working the booth and we got into a great conversation and I said, “Hey, we should record this.” So here we are, and you get to listen in. Hey everybody, this is Topher, I’m at WordCamp Italia
Show Notes Contact Info: https://www.wp1x1.de/ @MajaBenke Episode Transcript Topher: Hey everyone! I’m Topher. Welcome to Hallway Chats. This episode is a little bit different. It’s another one that was recorded in person, so it’s just me and the guest. Last summer, I visited Barcelona and I spent about a week wandering the city and seeing the sights with Maja Benke, who was from Germany. We basically just moved from cafe to cafe throughout the week trying food and beverages and just talking about everything. So this is a recording of one of those conversations. Before we get started, though,
Show Notes HeroPress Essay: The good and the bad of open source WordPress Contact Info: http://lesley.pizza @lesley_pizza Newsletter Glue Episode Transcript Topher: Hi everyone! My name is Topher. Nyasha: And my name is Nyasha. Topher: And this is Hallway Chats. Before we get started, I want to draw your attention to Nexcess. They are our sponsor and we greatly appreciate it. I am a user of their services. The HeroPress site is around their servers. And it’s fantastic. I really like it. They’re super fast. They have all the cool tools that I really like as a nerdy web developer. They have some
Show Notes HeroPress Essay: How I tried, applied, got involved. Realizing one of my childhood dreams. Contact Info: @Alice_Ridice WordPress.tv Episode Transcript Topher: Hey folks, this is Topher. This week’s episode of Hallway Chats is a little different. This is a live recording from working in Italy last November. Nyasha wasn’t there with me so it’s just me and my guest, Alice. And I hope you enjoy this one because it was really fun to make. We were outside in an atrium sort of place. It was pretty cool. Before we get started, I want to remind you that our host is Nexcess, and they’re super
Show Notes Silence Commentary, from Cassandra Decker Tom’s Socials: https://twitter.com/tomfinley https://wptoots.social/@tomfinley Websites / Projects: https://prufcreative.com https://tomfinley.co https://dcbeer.com Episode Transcript Topher: Hey, everyone. My name is Topher. Nyasha: And my name is Nyasha. Topher: And this is Hallway Chats. Before we get going, we want to thank our sponsors at Nexcess, a Liquid Web brand. They have some new tools for ECommerce that really make them stand out from other options. WooCommerce automated testing, sales performance monitor, and plug-in performance
Show Notes This was a live, in-person Hallway Chat between Topher and Vassy at WordCamp Europe 2022 in Porto, Portugal. Vassy’s Site: https://valchanova.me/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vasvalch/ Twitter | @vasvalch Episode Transcript Topher: All right, what is your name? Vassilena: It’s Vassilena, but I use the short version Vassy. Topher: Oh, right. Vassilena: First off, it’s easier for internationals to pronounce, and also because when someone uses my full name in our language it’s almost as if they’re mad with you. Topher: Oh, yes. Vassilena: So like I always get the flashback of
Show Notes This episode of Hallway Chats kicks off a new era with a new co-host Nyasha Green! And this week we talk with Matt Mullenweg. Matt Mullenweg is co-founder of the open-source publishing platform WordPress, which now powers over 40% of all sites on the web. He is the founder and CEO of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, WPVIP, Day One, and Pocket Casts. Additionally, Matt runs Audrey Capital, an investment and research company. He has been recognized for his leadership by Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek, Inc. Magazine, TechCrunch, Fortune, Fast Company,
Show Notes This episode of Hallway Chats is a little different from previous episodes. Recently Cate and Topher had the opportunity to go to WordCamp Europe in Porto, Portugal, where we had some literal hallway chats. This 4one is with Grzegorz Ziółkowski. Piccia’s Site: https://gziolo.pl/ Twitter | @gziolo Episode Transcript Topher: All right. So tell me your name. Greg: My name is Greg Ziolkowski. But I go by Greg because it’s just easier for everyone. Topher: Yes. Yeah. All right. And now what do you do? Greg: So I work at Automattic and I also do work full time on WordPress Core, and in pa
Show Notes This episode of Hallway Chats is a little different from previous episodes. Recently Cate and Topher had the opportunity to go to WordCamp Europe in Porto, Portugal, where we had some literal hallway chats. This one is with Piccia Neri. Piccia’s Site: https://designforconversions.com/ Twitter | @Piccia Episode Transcript Topher: So I have heard your name pronounced seven different ways today. So first order of business, state your name. Piccia: Pea-cha. Topher: Pea-cha. Piccia: Like peach with an A at the end. And it’s quite interesting. Like for you and me, English Italian, is quit
Show Notes This episode of Hallway Chats is a little different from previous episodes. Recently Cate and Topher had the opportunity to go to WordCamp Europe in Porto, Portugal, where we had some literal hallway chats. This one is with Sofie Couwenbergh. Sofie’s Site: https://letmewritethatdownforyou.com/ Twitter | @SCouwenbergh Episode Transcript Topher: So what is your name? Sofie: I’m Sofie Couwenbergh. Topher: Where do you live? Sofie: I live in Lisbon. I’m from Belgium originally, but I moved to Lisbon two years ago. Topher: So you didn’t have to come very far? Sofie: I did not have to com
