2008: I worked as designer at a small agency. I had learnt to write HTML & CSS, and we had been building static websites for a couple of years, along with other design work. But around this time, our clients were increasingly expecting to update the content on their own sites. We needed a CMS, but there were no obvious choices back then. The alternatives were too expensive or super complicated. WordPress was very much considered a blog platform at the time. But after looking into our options, we still landed on trying WordPress and adapting it to our needs. Years later, I remember feeling like we had bet on the right horse.

2009: I started my own business that for a while was centered around making websites for clients based on WordPress. One of the earliest conferences I ever attended was WordCamp Norway 2012. After that, I came back to my hometown Bergen and started a WordPress meetup. WordPress was at the core my career, community and income — for quite some years.

Today — when I think of WordPress — what I want to remember is this:

2007: This was the first time I tried using WordPress. It was to set up a blog for an organization, over a year before we landed on learning it at work. But I couldn’t figure out how to do the installation. I remember trying a couple of afternoons, but I gave up that summer. On wordpress.org they boasted about a “famous 5 minute install”, but it was filled with words I didn’t know. The instructions were incomprehensible, the installation was impossible.

For me, the WordPress installation is a reminder that even though a thing can be completely out of reach, it can still later on be something I can easily accomplish in 5 minutes.