Courtney Robertson (@courane01) – WordPress user profile

Courtney Robertson

Open Source Developer Advocate, WordPress Teacher at GoDaddy

@courane01 Chambersburg, PA USA joined Apr 2009

courtneyr.dev github.com/courtneyr-dev slack: @Courtney

Teams Community Core Documentation Marketing Meta Test Training TV

Bio

Courtney Robertson, an accomplished Open Source Developer Advocate at GoDaddy, a dedicated WordPress Training Team Faculty Member, and a co-founding board member of The WP Community Collective, effortlessly engages audiences with her relatable insights on getting involved and supporting contributors in the open source community. Staying true to her roots as a professional educator, Courtney seamlessly merges her teaching expertise with her passion for technology.

Serving developers, website creators, and open source enthusiasts, Courtney delivers immense value by drawing from her rich background as a computer science educator and full-stack developer. She is driven by a strong commitment to onboarding the next generation of contributors and advocating for sustainable funding solutions for open source developers.

Interests

Away from the screen, Courtney embraces her creative side, whether it’s by playing her 7-string electric violin, exploring the possibilities of 3D printing, hiking through nature, or tending to her abundant vegetable garden. Her multifaceted interests and genuine enthusiasm make Courtney a truly inspiring contributor in the open source community.

WordPress Origin Story

In 2006, I stumbled upon open-source software while teaching high school business, computer, and information technology. I was on the hunt for tools that could serve as an extension of my classroom. That’s when I discovered WordPress as the perfect solution for a blog for my students.

The four freedoms of open source, granted by the GPL, caught my attention and got me thinking about the potential of a new societal framework. As a teacher, it was crucial to have access to no-cost licenses for classroom use. On top of that, most of the software I used never let me peek at their code to study how they worked.

During my early years with WordPress, I found that documentation was pretty scarce. There were no handy five-minute installs back then! While I was comfortable teaching HTML and CSS, PHP was uncharted territory for me. I knew how to work with databases and write queries, but PHP code remained a mystery. It took me years to decipher the code and find helpful training materials. My initial challenge was registering sidebars to add widgets to a website using the Revolution theme, but soon, I became hooked on enhancing WordPress.

Fast forward to 2009, and I found myself attending two WordCamps. WordCamp Mid-Atlantic had just sold out of tickets, but I was eager to be there. I offered to volunteer at the event and ended up checking attendees in at the door, which turned out to be an amazing networking opportunity. A few months later, I attended WordCamp NYC, where I had the chance to chat with Matt Mullenweg.

In 2014, I was back at WordCamp NYC, this time participating in the contributor day. Although I felt intimidated by the discussions about the upcoming REST API, I decided to join the Marketing or Training teams. Having taught marketing as part of business education, I was torn but ultimately settled with the Training team. I learned how to keep attending meetings and began writing lesson plans on using post formats, later adding theme support and designs for developers. By 2015, I became a team rep.

Early in 2016, I had the fantastic opportunity to teach WordPress at a vocational career technical school for high school students. We built and modified websites, and students were assessed through projects and quizzes using WordPress as a learning management system (LMS). They learned to install plugins, rate and review them, and tweak the code to suit their needs. We also experimented with multiple themes.

Later, I joined The Events Calendar, working in support and marketing release communications. I managed the knowledgebase, product pages, and staff training on release changes. While creating technical documents, I got to test new features and report any bugs I found to the developers.

In the spring of 2020, I found myself teaching WordPress in a high school classroom once again. My students were paid interns learning to build websites, and they even presented at WordCamp Philly that summer. I continued with the same bootcamp, instructing a front-end developer curriculum that covered HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, Git, and WordPress. However, I still felt a need for better educational materials and standards for bootcamps funded by government organizations. I knew I needed to get closer to the source.

By 2022, I joined GoDaddy as a Developer Advocate. Now, my work involves contributing to Training and other teams, advocating for WordPress as open source software, sponsoring events, and communicating with developer-oriented customers and our internal developer staff.

My WordPress journey has taken many twists and turns over the years, but it’s helped me acquire the skills I need for my current role. I’m passionate about onboarding contributors and supporting people at all skill levels in achieving their goals. Collaborating across teams and with friends around the globe is what makes it all worthwhile.

Badges

CODE

6 badges

Core Contributor '21 Core Team '23 Meta Contributor '21 Meta Team '21 Pattern Author '22 Plugin Developer

CONTENT

3 badges

Marketing Contributor '21 Photo Contributor '22 WordPress.tv Contributor '23

COMMUNITY

3 badges

Community Contributor '24 WordCamp Speaker '14 WordCamp Volunteer '25

PRACTICE

4 badges

Sustainability Contributor '24 Test Contributor '21 Training Contributor '19 Training Team '20

Current Job

Open Source Developer Advocate, WordPress Teacher

Present

GoDaddy

Recent impact

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

Last 30 days

1contribution

high1

medium0

score3

Last 90 days

11contributions

high4

medium7

score19

Last 12 months

23contributions

high8

medium15

score39

Specializations

share of activity across teams · last 365 days · 15 attributed contributions

Meta 100% of attributed activity

Contributions

Type

May 2026

May 21 Thu · 00:33

Meta high

Received props from @amykamala in Slack:
Props to @huzaifaalmesbah @narenin @azharderaiya @riko910 @Bhavik Panchal @dhavalkapadane @vishitshah @jigar9998 @vaibhavsweb @hage @shailu25 @Valer1e…

April 2026

Apr 17 Fri · 14:38

Meta med

Wrote a comment on the post WordPress Core Dev Environment Toolkit: A Faster Path to Your First Core Contribution, on the site Make WordPress Core:
We added a hard-wire to the Core table at WCUS 24 Contributor Day for that…

Apr 10 Fri · 12:50

Meta med

Wrote a comment on the post Where are we going?, on the site Translate WordPress:
A slightly off-topic question: Have we looked at other parts of the tooling that make…

March 2026

Mar 23 Mon · 21:20

Forums med

Created a topic, Partytown sandbox triggers “Uses deprecated APIs” Lighthouse warning, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
I'm running Google Site Kit on my WordPress site and n…

Mar 20 Fri · 22:04

Meta high

Received props from @amykamala in Slack:
Props to @abduremon, @courane01, @ruba1956, @ellatrix, @desrosj, @SergeyBiryukov for helping test Beta 6 during the…

Mar 12 Thu · 16:01

Meta high

Received props from @chaion07 in Slack:
Props to @azharderaiya, @snilesh, @rahan00123, @jigar9998, @huzaifaalmesbah, @themearts, @mobarak, @zuveria, @aion11, @shailu25, @abduremon, @zunaid321, @vishitshah,…

Mar 11 Wed · 20:05

Meta med

Wrote a comment on the post It’s time to test real-time collaboration!, on the site Make WordPress Test:
I would like to see more details for testing the performance as well in various…

Mar 10 Tue · 20:19

Meta med

Wrote a comment on the post Help Test WordPress 7.0, on the site Make WordPress Test:
https://youtu.be/YEAuit7P98Y?t=2274 is the timestamp for the icon block. It needs some help with showing the…

Mar 10 Tue · 15:10

Meta med

Wrote a comment on the post Call For Feedback: Increasing Value of Release Party Testing Phase, on the site Make WordPress Core:
Noting too that https://playground.wordpress.net/release is ready with release related plugins and content preloaded, such as…

Mar 05 Thu · 16:10

Meta med

Wrote a comment on the post Help Test WordPress 7.0, on the site Make WordPress Test:
Just noticed this on a livestream while walking through the direction. Can the author of…