Author: mjepson

I get a lot of questions on what tools we use to work remotely at WooCommerce and Automattic, and Beau has written an extensive post about the tools we use for remote work, which sums it up better than I could.

Paolo also wrote a great post about the difference between distributed vs. remote work.

In 2008 we launched WooThemes, a premium theme store for WordPress, and in late-2010 we set out a plan to add eCommerce functionality to our themes to be able to sell more themes. WooCommerce was released to the public on September 27th, 2011.

Today is 10 years since that launch day, and here is a great recap from Paul on the time that have elapsed since that day.

Automattic raised $288m at a $7.5bn valuation earlier this year, a valuation much helped by the growth of WooCommerce, which has received tailwinds during the pandemic.

This new investment gave Automattic the opportunity for a $250m share buy-back, giving employees, past-employees, advisors and investors the ability to sell some of their equity.

I’ve helped Stavanger Golf Club through the years with webdesign and admin, and it was due for a refresh.

I decided to try a no-code approach with WordPress. I first designed the site in UXPin (see version here), and then installed a fresh Local install of WordPress to get started.

I used Astra theme along with Elementor as the page builder. The header and footer was built in the WordPress customizer, and the front page was built with Elementor. All inner pages are built using Gutenberg blocks.

Apart from a few lines of custom CSS in a child theme, there was no code used! A very good process to first design the layout in UXPin, and then build a no-code version on top of WordPress.

My home sim and gym room. Some comments say a bar is missing…

In 2007 I sent an email which led to something big. I recently did a podcast with Mark and Adii, my two co-founders of WooThemes & WooCommerce. We chat about how a bootstrapped lifestyle-business developed into WooCommerce and what we are up to these days.

The show was hosted by BobWP who does «Do the Woo» podcast, which you can listen to here.