Unofficial International WordPress Day. That can only mean one thing, right? One day - Tuesday, July 1 - out of the whole year to celebrate the existence of WordPress. But, like the title says, this isn’t official or anything. Your boys over here at WPCandy just wanted to have a little fun within the community.

What’s This All About?

We want to dedicate a day to just thank the awesome folks over at Automattic for putting together some really awesome projects, such as WordPress, bbPress, etc. I bet they work their asses off and I think they deserve a little bit of appreciation (not that they don’t get any, but there’s never too much appreciation).

Where You Come In

If you love WordPress as much as we do, then we invite you to blog about it with us on Tuesday, July 1. It doesn’t have to be too formal or anything, just make a simple (or incredibly long) post about WordPress. Here are some topics your post could cover:

  • Why you use it and prefer it over other CMSs
  • How it’s helped your business or blog
  • A thank you letter to Automattic
  • Your top-secret tips and tricks

Remember, the point of the whole thing is to publicly express your love for WordPress :)

Donate to WordPress

As you all know, WordPress is free and open-source, and there are many people behind the scenes working their asses off simply because they love WordPress. With that said, we’re asking you to please join us in donating to WordPress. These folks really deserve it. It doesn’t have to be a huge amount - in fact, any amount will do - but not only will it help them out, it’ll also show how much we appreciate all they’ve done.

What We’re Doing

WPCandy is hosting an activities day on Unofficial International WordPress Day. We’ll have coloring sheets, crossword puzzles, and…no, that’s not right. How about some giveaways? We’re lucky enough to have a pot of TWENTY premium themes, theme packs, plugins, ad spots, and more. How do I enter, you ask?

It’s simple. Simply post a comment below about how you love WordPress and thank Automattic and you’ll automatically be entered into the contest.

Or, if you’re in a good mood, you may choose to write a blog post about WordPress. You can use some of the suggested topics above or do whatever you want. Then, in your post, link back to this article. We will be notified of the incoming link and will include it in the drawing.

We have a growing pot of 20 prizes to give away. Yes, 20! WPCandy is fortunate enough to have an awesome set of sponsors who have donated premium themes and plugins, ad spots, theme packs, and more. Here’s what we’re giving away:

Again, we’ll be collecting all of the comments and trackbacks and picking random winners. Note: WPCandy is the sole judge of who “deserves” to win these prizes. If we feel your post or comment isn’t meaningful enough, is spam, or is a cheap shot at entering the contest in any way, we’ll just skip you and move on to the next person. So please, make it nice. :)

Thanks to all of our sponsors for graciously donating some of their products to make WordPress Day so much better.

Unofficial International WordPress Day

http://wpcandy.com/articles/wordpress/unofficial-international-wordpress-day.html

(Photo by Donncha)

Dan Philibin June 24th, 2008 Articles, WordPress

133 Responses to “Unofficial International WordPress Day”

Eric Odom
Posted on June 24th, 2008 at 8:28 am

Sweet! I’ll post it up in a few places. Should be done sometime today.

Stefano, WordPressMania.it
Posted on June 24th, 2008 at 9:15 am

Our beloved WP and the great folks at Automattic really deserve a celebration day!

I’ll be posting in Italian, as I usually do at WordPressMania.it, hope you guys keep me in the contest anyway ;-)

Stefano

liam
Posted on June 24th, 2008 at 9:55 am

Great idea, and it’s on my birthday too! I feel privileged to share such a day :) Good luck with this hope it works out nicely.

Brady Valentino
Posted on June 24th, 2008 at 10:34 am

Yay, it’s finally posted. Can’t wait for July 1st. :)

Binny V A
Posted on June 24th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

Nice idea - I had an idea for a WordPress post - I think I’ll delay the posting till 1st July.

Nantucket Art
Posted on June 24th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

Great idea - here’s our post

http://nantucket-art.com/2008/06/24/free-wordpress-goodies-premium-themes-and-plugins/

Michael Cromarty
Posted on June 24th, 2008 at 5:16 pm

haha nice concept guys, hope it goes well.

Andor
Posted on June 25th, 2008 at 12:33 am

yeah great idea, maybe i would post it on july 1st

Alexis
Posted on June 25th, 2008 at 4:02 am

Love it! Here is my Post.
http://www.eliseos.net/destacadas/dia-wordpress-premium-themes-plugins-gratis/

Right now for non-english readers.

AP
Posted on June 27th, 2008 at 3:40 pm

So is the idea to post ON July 1 or BEFORE? Or can we do either? Thanks!

ThunderWolf
Posted on June 27th, 2008 at 3:55 pm

Great! Ill take a better look later, but i like the idea already.

Dan Philibin
Posted on June 27th, 2008 at 3:56 pm

You can post whenever you want! July 1 is probably best, but before that day is fine too.

brtak
Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 6:49 am

I like the idea already..

Twolane
Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 11:22 am

Thank you WordPress for a great product and one that makes maintaining upgrades a walk in the park.

Abhijeet
Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 12:14 pm

I think Matt and the entire Automattic team have done an awesome job ! Kudos to them for creating an excellent blogging software and offering it for free.

I love Wordpress ! And hats off to you for taking the initiative and announcing a day for Wordpress. Great going !!

Dave Moyer
Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 1:02 pm

Dan and everyone at WPCandy,

Wonderful idea! I can’t wait to see what posts people come up with. Of course, I’ll be writing about my wonderful experience with WordPress as well! Thanks for the holiday, and I’ll definitely talk about it on this week’s WordCast (http://wordcast.bitwire.tv/).

Gabe Jacobs
Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 3:16 pm

Before thanking Automattic, I just wanted t thank the WP-Candy Team for this wonderful day they have created. While wordpress is free, some wonderful themes and plugins are not. Let this day be the day that all wordpess user, rich or poor, have a chance to make their wordpress blogs even better than it already is. Thank you WP-Candy and I hope this will be a tradtion for many years to come.

Now on to Automattic…

You have made it so much easier for people to have their own space on the web. It used to be that it was so hard and complicated to make a blog that you would have to go to school to learn it! I don’t know a bit of code and I have a wonderful place online to write about what goes on in my mind. Not only does it work, but you can customize it to your hearts content, so that everyone has a different look and feel. Thank you soooo much! You have really made a difference and it must be obvious to you, since nearly every blog on the Internet is derived from your work. I think every blogger in the world owes you a beer….

- Gabe Jacobs
Monday; June 30, 2008
http://www.gabejacobsblog.com/

Keith Dsouza
Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

WordPress has always been a real great piece of Software, not only does it provide flexibility to the users but also gives plugins and theme developers access to the internals without having to modify the core.

The extendability of WordPress takes it a few notches above the rest. That said Matt and team have not sat back and have been adding in new features time and again.

I wish Automattic all the success and heartily thank them for giving us such a wonderful piece of software.

Kym Huynh
Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 6:47 pm

WordPress, God I love you. :) I praise the day WordPress was born.

Omar
Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 7:10 pm

Wordpress has saved me tons of time by being a flexible, with all the plugins and themes out there its realy easy to convert it into a CMS for major sites, rather then using other software thats way bigger and uses more resources unlike our beloved wordpress.

JamieO
Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 8:21 pm

Thank god for ‘unofficial’ eh? July 1 is also the official birthday of Canada so those two little mirrored (un) have just saved you from an international catastrophe, or maybe just an international apostrophe. I shall join the blogging festivities with beer firmly in hand in celebration of my country and content management system of choice simultaneously. Hurrah!

Dan Philibin
Posted on June 30th, 2008 at 8:25 pm

Comment of the day. ^^

Isaak Kwok
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 12:23 am

Basically, without Wordpress, I wouldn’t be blogging and encouraging others to blog in my workplace.

So, thanks to Matt and Automattic for a wonderful piece of social media tool!

Rice Blogger
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 12:32 am

wordpress is just a great piece of script for blogging.

Thanks Automattic for this great communication tool.

Dulce
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 1:08 am

Yay! I can’t imagine my life without WordPress. I heart WP. Congrats and more power! Happy “Unofficial” WordPress Day. :)

Sylvia
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 1:49 am

Thank Automatic…I think it is great to make July 1st Wordpress day. Been using it as a CMS for my business. It is easily setup and I could upgrade it in minutes.

thank you people at Automattic! Keep up the good work!

Rene
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 2:10 am

Thanks automatic for the development of WordPress.
Also thanks to the WP community for the great themes and plugins avaiable.
Booth keep up the good work.

Happy International WordPress day….

SE7EN
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 3:16 am

Before I found WordPress, I was struggling to find the right CMS for my site.
WordPress makes it very easy to me to start blogging.
It’s very flexible and versatile, with tons of themes and plugins

I can’t imagine my blogging life without WordPress from now on.
Thank you WordPress developers and contributors!

Xana
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 3:26 am

Me parece una idea genial…
Gracias a todos los desarrolladores de Wordpress por el magnifico trabajo.
Aqui mi post:
http://www.xanarts.com/dia-internacional-de-wordpress/

Peer Wandiger
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 4:33 am

Hi, I love WordPress, because it’s so flexible. You can do almost anything you want und there are so many good Plugins.

You can find my my article here: http://www.selbstaendig-im-netz.de/2008/07/01/blogs/international-wordpress-day-warum-ich-wordpress-liebe/

Rice Blogger
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 5:10 am

i just wrote my pos too

http://www.riceblogger.com/rice-blogger/wordpress-day-1st-july/

big thanks!

Stefano, WordPressMania.it
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 5:45 am

I’m with WordPress from it’s first release. I saw it growing from a little blog script to a robust CMS core. I founded WordPressMania to help spread the WP knowledge to italian-only readers. I feel to be part in one of the most collaborative, open and creative community around the net.
Thank you WP, thank you wonderful community!

Stefano

p.s. As many suggested don’t forget to leave some donation, too!

Ptah Dunbar
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 6:47 am

Everybody pretty much said what I wanted to say so instead of repeating the noise, I wrote about my upcoming WP News Theme!

WordPress is super awesome and I’m glad they continue to release awesome features and upgrades!

Mário Andrade
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 7:45 am

Great ideia, It’s always great to say thanks to the people that made blogging so much easier :)

Jovana
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 7:53 am

Wonderful competition! Here is my post :)
http://incomeadvice.co.za/

Fantastic competition! :)

Brandon
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 9:33 am

Wordpress makes my life so much easier. It makes all other blogging platforms look like those guys caught on “To Catch A Predator”.

Carlos Bastidas
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 9:46 am

Nice idea, I’ll do It today and start showing appreciation for those working bastards. Lots of love.

Dr. Wordpress (Mitch Canter)
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 9:50 am

http://www.thewordpressdoctor.com/2008/07/01/so-why-wordpress-my-post-for-unofficial-wordpress-day/

Happy WordPress Day to everyone. I can honestly say no piece of software has changed my life more than WordPress has. Without it, I may not be doing full time web-design like I am now. Kudos guys!

dktrooper
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 10:34 am

Maybe I am not qualified to win the prizes, as I haven’t been playing with Wordpress so much, but it’s ok. But this is all about expressing our loves with Wordpress right? So I will just share here about my senior’s success with wordpress. He is now a fully wordpress freelancer and has been making life from Wordpress! So I am just proud of him and wish that I could follow his success, not in any short time though as I still have to finish my study, two years to go. But if I were stranded on an island and could bring only one thing, it would be my laptop with wordpress installed locally!

I am really thanking Automattic for doing such a great job! And best of luck to you guys!

Lefteriz
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 10:50 am

I love Wordpress!!! :) This is my post for the competition! thank you Automattic for doing such a great job!

Syiok's Blog
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 11:30 am

happy birthday wordpress!

Thank you automattic for providing us with such a great software for free. I will repay you when I manage to earn some money out of my blogs. It is very user friendly!

Stephen R
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 11:42 am

I’ve been doing a series of articles and tutorials for WP plugin authors. Part 1 is here:

http://striderweb.com/nerdaphernalia/2008/06/on-plugin-design/

I think a good way to give back to WordPress is to put out good information for anyone who codes for it. I worked hard for some of this info, and I’m happy if others learn from it. :)

world2
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 11:44 am

Thanks Automattic - because of WordPress, even non-techies can have a voice on the internet and look professional.

Sonny Gill
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 12:32 pm

Awesome thing you guys doing here. Big thanks to Automattic!

I just got into using WP last year and have been amazed at how great of a content management tool it is! I love WordPress and the capabilities & flexibility of it, which has made blogging a lot easier for me. Keep up the great work. :)

Lantrix
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 1:24 pm

Just for Wordpress day, I Wrote a new wordpress plugin to give something back :-)
It is for twitter. Autolink to @ usernames in your posts: http://techdebug.com/wordpress-plugins/

Lantrix
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 1:32 pm

Oh and I posted about it too :-) http://techdebug.com/blog/2008/07/01/twitter-wordpress-plugin-autolink-to-username/

Bruno Costa
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 2:27 pm

I started blogging about one year ago, and tried others publishing systems, but nothing compared to Wordpress. During this time, my personal (portuguese) blog was located at thisboyissmooth.wordpress.com and I’m very happy with it. But thanks to Automattic, now i’m moving to my own host and domain with wordpress!
The official lunch will be very soon.

sorry about my english

Pratheep
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 2:44 pm

You can say Wordpress is a wonderful blogging software, a great content management system or even the best software to create any web site. As true as that can be, Wordpress ultimately equals hope. Hope to be a better blogger, hope to be better web designer, hope to be a better internet entrepreneur. Wordpress has brought hope to a lot of people. With hope it has become an integral part of many peoples’ lives.

Not just blogging for fun, a lot of people earn their living with Wordpress, like internet marketers and freelance web designers. Then there are friends who communicate with each other through blogs, politicians use blogs to reach out to the people, businesses to their customers and potential customers. And many of these people choose Wordpress over any other similar products.

From .com to .org, Wordpress has truly influenced the lives of many many people. To blog is fun, but to blog with Wordpress is just awesome. And the Wordpress community is equally awesome.

Hats off to Wordpress, the community and the guys at Automattic.

Curtis Henson
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 3:14 pm

Happy WordPress Day everyone. I wrote a tutorial on making sections out of categories a la MSNBC’s site.

http://curtishenson.com/make-sections-msnbc-style-in-wordpress/

Leland
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 3:26 pm

Just made a post about Unofficial International WordPress Day on Theme Lab. Good luck everyone!

Joey Sichol
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 4:01 pm

Just wanted to add my two cents in and raise a toast to Wordpress.

The free product and the great community add up to a powerful platform.

Thanks to all the developers, free-theme writers, bloggers and plugin-writers who make Wordpress easy enough for ME to use!

Ben K
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 4:34 pm

This is a fun idea. I only blog for business and those blogs are powered by Wordpress. When I initially began my condo blog it was meant to be a complementary addition to my overall business marketing strategy. However, it has evolved to become my primary marketing vehicle and has also enabled me to create new partnerships. The Wordpress platform and inherent SEO benefits allowed my blog to quickly climb in Google’s SERPs . For many Seattle condo keywords the blog is usually among the top 2 organic results, driving significant traffic and business my way.
The RSS feed feature has allowed me to forge partnerships with local media, which would not have been possible otherwise. A local NBC affiliate is exclusively carrying my blog feed in a special condo section on their website and one of the two major daily newspapers has linked to my blogs. The feed has been republished by other online media sites as well.
Aside from those features, the greatest benefit is the ability to provide an interactive relationship, albeit virtual, between myself, the viewers and future clients. Implementing Automattic’s sidebar widget helps to foster that interactivity, so a big thank you out to Automattic. And, I also want to thank all those people who have invested their time and knowledge into creating a great blog platform.

ThunderWolf
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 6:48 pm

Hi all, like i said before on a comment, i have participated on this high valueable event. Sorry for my english by the way.

Today i wrote a post in my native language (portuguese from Portugal) about the Unofficial International Wordpress day that is sponsored by wpcandy. I talked about it, explained what Wordpress is and what it means to me and how you can get it.

Now its 23:46 and i just beated my record of visitors with my post. Great day! Thanks folks!

Mário Nunes

Wagner Santos
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 7:19 pm

Hi! I love wordpress, but I don’t speak english, so I like speak in portuguese:
Cara, Wordpress é o melhor, é o firefox dos blogs, seu sistema de plugins é o melhor. Gosto muito dele. Muito messsmo.

Abraços!

Nick Ohrn
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 7:22 pm

There are more reasons than I can list for why I love WordPress, but let me write out a few:

1. Amazing development community that is constantly making improvements and changes to the core code.
2. An extensive plugin system that allows me to make my living by doing WordPress extensions.
3. A wonderful website to host my open source plugins and allow me to share my WordPress knowledge.

I’ve used WP since 1.5 and love the way things are going. I’ve turned so many other people onto WordPress that I feel like an evangelist of the software. Thank you Automattic for leading the development of this software.

Neil
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 7:56 pm

It goes without saying that the guys over at auttomatic and wordpress ROCK!! But in the last few days i have forgotten to thank them, so guys, THANK YOU

Naresh
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 8:52 pm

Thank you Automattic for making a superb and well supported blog system! My favorite thing about it is how it fits almost any type of site with a bit of tweaking. It’s *the best* content management system out there, and I used to recommend it to people looking for software to make websites when I worked retail.

Thanks!
- Naresh

Dan Coulter
Posted on July 1st, 2008 at 10:52 pm

I love WordPress! Whenever I start a new project for a client, the first thing I think is “Could WordPress run this site and make it easy to use?” The answer is usually “yes”. Thanks to all the WordPress Devs.

Eddy De Clercq
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 at 2:36 am

Hi,

Wordpress made a grumpy old man like me happy and enabled me to make a website with ease. This enables me to be grumpy on things that really matter.

Eddy

Wessley Roche
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 at 3:02 am

I was reading my feeds backwards, and now I understand the reason for so many “International Wordpress Day” articles… haha ;-)

tom hermans
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 at 4:58 am

keep up the very good work, automattic-dudes.

nice initiative btw, wpcandy !

grtz,
T.

autworld
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 at 7:25 am

great idea! Love it! Stop the world for one Unofficial International WordPress Day :)

chakresh
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 at 7:28 am

Use Wordpress - Don’t press your word, let it fly in the sky
Use Wordpress - Online free press for all your words
thanx to automatic to bring out a great software to propagate the revolution of freedom across the world.

Michael Castilla
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 at 1:52 pm

Hey everyone, thanks for participating yesterday! We had a pretty sweet turn out. Don’t forget, if you want to participate in our contest, you have until this Friday to enter. Keep those comments and posts coming!

LaTara
Posted on July 2nd, 2008 at 2:29 pm

I love WP because it makes setting up and starting a content blog, simple, easy, and very fun. I find that I am learning code more and I have a goal of starting my own WP Blog Customization business.

aman
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 at 3:33 am

happy wordpress day everyone.. :D

Michael
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 at 5:02 am

Man I love wordpress!

Dan Philibin
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 at 10:30 pm

Hey everyone - comments are now closing while we draw the winners. Thanks for all your support! We’ll be posting the winners shortly.

Chuck
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 at 10:35 pm

Wordpress is THE blogging tool.

I used it, got hacked, (not the fault of wordpress) and now I am back.

-Chuck

Claude Gelinas
Posted on July 3rd, 2008 at 11:03 pm

Since I blog with WP every week day, I celebrate this awesome PHP & MySQL script by using it to publish my thoughts on just about anything which I believe will be of interest to others — and yes, I’m a WP Fan!

Tom - StandOutBlogger.com
Posted on July 4th, 2008 at 8:41 pm

great idea. Wordpress is an integral part of the blogging arena now! thanks wordpress and automattic

Gabe Jacobs
Posted on July 8th, 2008 at 3:18 pm

so what is going on, who won the prizes?

Dan Philibin
Posted on July 8th, 2008 at 3:21 pm

We already have the winners chosen, and they will be posted sometime this week. Thanks to all the participants.

Kulpreet Singh
Posted on July 16th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

I love WordPress, but for next year please change it to July 2nd. July 1st is taken by … UM… CANADA !!

J
Posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 6:23 pm

Any update on the winners?

Dan Philibin
Posted on July 23rd, 2008 at 6:24 pm

The winners were posted a few weeks ago: http://wpcandy.com/news/wordpress-day-prize-winners.html

Sarah
Posted on October 3rd, 2008 at 7:20 am

Hey, I’ve recently was introduced to a website that is promoting Jobs in Canada. I searched through the site and it is genuine with real jogs in Canada. I just wanted to let people know the site is available at http://www.interwork1.ca and the applications are real. I tested them myself just to be sure. Good luck.

Ari Rochmann
Posted on October 5th, 2008 at 9:01 pm

This helped me out immensely, it’s good to finally read something this enlightening, thanks!

Retirement Housing
Posted on October 13th, 2008 at 5:10 pm

word press is doing a great job im new to it but im really likeing all the tools and apps

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