ManageWP.org

A story I enjoy retelling is how a friend of mine tricked me into using WordPress. At the time, I was working with him on a career mentorship project. He’d written a book that I was publishing, and we wanted to add a premium video series to go along with it. We just needed a way to host those videos online.
I was still very new to web development. I had built my own portfolio site in PHP, having learned PHP through a series of emails from a good friend in Arizona. My business partner was excited about the prospect of a dynamic website and turned me loose to find the right tool.
I settled on … not WordPress.
A few days later, he invited me to lunch downtown. Having no real job and, since our project wouldn’t be launched or profitable for a few months, I had no money and was thrilled at the thought of a free lunch. I parked downtown and met at an obscure office building … where the first ever WordCamp Portland was being held.
Spending the day with a bunch of WordPress geeks was fun and excited me about the tool. I switched gears and rebuilt our site on WordPress. I rebuilt my own site on WordPress. I started publishing plugins and a few themes for WordPress.