Topher DeRosia is a web developer with over 30 years’ experience and 15 years deeply involved in the WordPress community. He’s attended nearly 80 WordCamps worldwide, contributed to projects like HeroPress, and champions the value of open source and remote work. In this conversation with Nathan Wrigley on the Jukebox Podcast, Topher reflects on how working in public and contributing to open projects can shape careers, create unexpected opportunities, and sustain meaning over the long term.

Discovering the Community
Topher didn’t know about the WordPress community for several years after first using the software. A friend suggested starting a WordCamp and that single introduction changed his life. Since then he’s been “all in”: building, speaking, traveling, and contributing. The community impact extends to his family—his wife and children have also been involved and personally benefited from the network of global friendships and support.

Why WordPress Communities Work
Topher attributes the strength of WordPress communities primarily to people. He’s observed similar dynamics in other communities—higher education technology events and smaller open-source projects like Umbraco. What differentiates open-source communities is that they enable people around the world to access and build with the same tools, leveling the playing field and creating a shared purpose.

Gratitude and Motivation
A recurring theme is gratitude: small acknowledgments and real-world stories—such as a person whose life changed after learning WordPress from Topher’s videos—validate contributors’ work and motivate continued giving. Topher didn’t make content for acclaim; he made it to help. Still, hearing the impact of that help sustains contributors through the slower, less glamorous stretches.

Doing Things in Public: Serendipity and Opportunity
Topher emphasizes that much of his career growth came from being visible and producing useful work publicly, rather than deliberate self-promotion. Examples include:
– Making videos for OS Training led others to notice his skills and later invite him to create content for new projects.
– HeroPress grew organically through essays and interviews, eventually becoming a widely known resource without any initial plan to “become famous.”
– Small plugin contributions and public photos or blog posts accumulate into a recognizable body of work. Topher collected his scattered output on topher.how so people can see his work in one place.

These public contributions create long-tail effects: they make it more likely that someone across the world will find you when they need the specific skills or perspective you’ve documented. Topher tells a vivid example of a client in Bangladesh who hired him because of years of community interaction and reputation.

Community-Known vs Fame
Topher rejects the pursuit of fame for its own sake. Instead he describes “community-known” as being recognized within a specific circle for concrete contributions. That recognition is rooted in the corpus of work—a pattern of helping, teaching, and building—not in chasing attention. Being community-known opens doors: clients, collaborations, and opportunities arise because others have seen demonstrated value over time.

Commercial Tension in Open Source
The conversation acknowledges a persistent tension: WordPress blends philanthropic, volunteer-driven culture with commercial activity. Businesses can scale from small plugin projects to companies with employees and investors, which introduces pressures—hard decisions about layoffs or reorganizations—that can make once-beloved organizations feel like “just another company.” Topher stresses that money inevitably matters for sustainability, and running a responsible business often forces difficult choices. He also cautions against resting on laurels: WordPress has systemic problems like anyone else’s ecosystem and must keep improving inclusivity and fairness.

Why Continue Contributing?
Despite changes—Gutenberg, AI, shifting business models—Topher believes in staying involved because of who benefits: the next person discovering WordPress, often in circumstances where free resources truly change lives. He imagines a 17-year-old in a library finding WordPress and building a future; that possibility keeps him contributing.

Long-Term, One-Step-at-a-Time Approach
Topher’s path illustrates a slow, steady approach. He didn’t plan a career around viral growth or instant influence. He made videos, wrote essays, helped people, and kept doing the work. Over years, those pieces compounded into reputation and opportunity. He warns against expecting instant success; instead he recommends consistent public contributions that accumulate value.

Current Projects and Practical Advice
Topher follows a rule born from support experience: if he receives the same question three times, he turns it into documentation. That habit sparked a new project—short, practical tutorial videos for beginners covering basics like adding links or images. Originally intended as a paid course for his clients, a hosting partner sponsored the videos under the condition they appear on his YouTube channel and that they remain public. Three weeks in, he’s publishing content multiple times a week and building subscribers. This is a contemporary example of doing work in public to help novices while also enabling future opportunities.

He also recommends collecting and centralizing your work (as he did at topher.how) so people can easily find your past projects. Small contributions—plugins with a few installs, photo contributions, blog posts—are all meaningful. They signal competence and willingness to help, which attracts collaboration and work.

Balancing Ideals and Reality
Topher recognizes the difficulty in reconciling large financial success for some with foundational unpaid contributions by others. He suggests WordPress is better than many parts of the tech world but not perfect. The community must keep working on inclusivity and remain generous without becoming complacent.

Closing Thoughts
Topher’s experience shows that public contributions yield both intrinsic rewards (making a difference, gratitude, friendships) and extrinsic benefits (clients, invitations, recognition)—often in unexpected ways and over long timescales. He advocates for generosity, consistency, and a focus on helping beginners: those are the acts that grow a community and, over time, a career.

Find Topher at topher.how, his personal blog topher1kenobi.com, and HeroPress for essays and resources.

The Jukebox Podcast from WP Tavern welcomed Topher DeRosia—an experienced web developer and long‑time WordPress community member—to discuss how working publicly and contributing openly can influence careers, create opportunities, and build meaning.

Topher’s journey
Topher has been a web developer for roughly 30 years and involved with WordPress for about 15. He only discovered the community after a colleague suggested organizing a WordCamp; soon he was fully immersed. He’s attended nearly 80 WordCamps worldwide, built projects like HeroPress, created plugins, made tutorials, and contributed photos and documentation. His family is also part of the community—his wife and children have spoken at WordCamp US—illustrating how integrated the network became in his life.

Why the community works
Topher attributes WordPress’s unique culture largely to the people and the open source nature of the software. Open source combined with remote work levels the playing field: someone in Malaysia can pick up WordPress and compete with a developer in New York. He’s noticed similar community dynamics across other open source projects (for example, Umbraco), arguing that passionate users and contributors create the welcoming, recurring connections that define WordCamps and meetups.

The effect of working in public
Topher emphasizes that few of his contributions were born from a strategic plan to build fame. Instead, consistent public work—videos, blog posts, plugins, and speaking—created a body of evidence that showed he “knows what he’s doing.” That visibility led to invitations and paid opportunities years later. Examples he shared:

– OS Training videos he made as client work later caught the attention of others who commissioned him.
– Someone who learned WordPress from his tutorials thanked him for helping them support a family—an emotional reminder that public contributions matter.
– A company in Bangladesh hired him for on-camera videos because they already knew his work through community involvement.
– Small plugin and documentation contributions, even with modest downloads, signal competence to peers and potential clients.

Topher consolidated many past outputs into a single portfolio (topher.how) so anyone can see his work across platforms and time. His advice is practical: make things public. Over time, those artifacts accumulate, show competence, and open doors, even if the contributor never set out to become “famous.”

Motivation: gratitude and meaning
Topher reflected on motivation: contributors don’t work for thanks, but recognition reinforces that their efforts make a difference. He recalled being deeply moved when a stranger credited his tutorials for helping their family through hardship. Gratitude and community connection are powerful motivators that sustain long-term contributions.

“Community known” vs fame
Topher and the host distinguish between fame for fame’s sake and being “community known.” The latter means having a reputation grounded in tangible work—videos watched, plugins used, essays written—within a given community. That kind of recognition opens opportunities without the downsides of celebrity.

Tensions between commercial and philanthropic goals
The conversation acknowledged a long-standing tension: WordPress is both an open source ecosystem and a thriving commercial marketplace. Successful plugin companies and product businesses can provide livelihoods and drive innovation, yet when they face hard choices—layoffs, restructuring—community members can feel betrayed. Topher notes that once a business scales, it carries responsibilities and pressures that can shift perceptions.

Despite the friction, he believes WordPress often does better than many tech communities on inclusivity and support, although complacency is risky. He urged ongoing work on diversity and community health rather than resting on past progress.

The long game: slow, steady contributions
Topher’s career demonstrates the value of persistent, slow growth. He didn’t chase immediate subscriber counts or quick monetization; instead he steadily produced work. HeroPress began as essays and accumulated into a large, meaningful repository over years. That “long tail” effect means small, consistent contributions compound into influence and impact.

Current projects and approach to monetization
Topher continues to favor free resources aimed at beginners and those in less affluent regions. He started building a beginner-focused video series—short, practical clips on using WordPress—after noticing clients frequently asked the same questions. Initially planning a paid course, a sponsor encouraged him to publish the videos on YouTube and fund production instead. He chose to keep the content free so it remains accessible to people who might otherwise be unable to pay. His new channel uploads several short videos per week and exists as another public record of his expertise.

Practical advice
– If a question comes up repeatedly, make documentation. Topher’s personal rule: after three repeated questions, he documents the answer.
– Do things in public: blog posts, tutorials, plugins, photos, talks. These artifacts form a portfolio that invites future opportunities.
– Aim to help beginners. Free, accessible resources can materially change lives and expand the community.
– Focus on the long game. Incremental, consistent work often yields results over years rather than months.

Closing thoughts
Topher’s story highlights how open source and public contribution can create serendipitous career moments, meaningful relationships, and a safety net beyond family. He advocates continuing to make resources available—especially for newcomers—while recognizing the complex interplay between commercial ventures and community values. For Topher, being “community known” is about impact: the cumulative work that helps the 17‑year‑old discovering WordPress for the first time.

Find Topher at topher.how or by searching Topher1Kenobi, and explore HeroPress and his essays and tutorials for examples of public contribution in practice.