Giving Back to the WordPress Community  ## Metadata - Author: [[Eric Dye]] - Full Title: Giving Back to the WordPress Community - Category: #articles - Summary: It was awesome. ? WordPress is open source and much can be done for “free.” Sure, there are premium plugins and services, but the entire CMS is an open source community movement of sorts. - URL: http://churchm.ag/terri-caissie/  I remember when I first started working with WordPress. It was awesome. WordPress is open source and much can be done for “free.” Sure, there are premium plugins and services, but the entire CMS is an open source community movement of sorts. After years of benefiting from WordPress and the WordPress community, it’s about time I gave back to it. **How about you?** ##### NextGEN Gallery  One of the first plugins I ever downloaded for WordPress was [NextGEN Gallery](http://www.nextgen-gallery.com/). With over 13 million downloads, > “NextGEN Gallery is the most popular gallery plugin ever for WordPress. Enjoy fully responsive design, a dozen gallery styles, a stunning full screen lightbox, commenting and social sharing for images, ecommerce, proofing, and more.” > > Just talking about it makes me want to upgrade my license! But do you know who is behind the plugin? Every plugin and theme you ever download, every release of WordPress, there are *real* people with *real* lives. It’s easy for our humanity to get lost behind all those 0’s and 1’s. ##### Meet Edward Caissie Edward Caissie is one of the humans behind NextGEN gallery. He’s the Photocrati Media / Imagely Lead Happiness Engineer for NextGEN Gallery and his wife, Terri, is facing [Hashimoto’s Encephalopathy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashimoto's_encephalopathy) (Autoimmune), a disease that effects only 200-300 worldwide. Here are a few of the symptoms: * Stuttering when meeting new people. * Typing words backwards without knowing it. * Pronouncing words backwards in sentences. * Short term memory loss. * Loss of basic math skills. * Medications impacting kidney function. **Can you imagine if you or your spouse was faced with such a disease?** ##### A Chance to Give Back I don’t know about you, but I’ve always wanted to give back to the world of WordPress. It has poured so much into my life, but I’ve never been able to pour anything back. I, like many of you, are good enough with this stuff to design and build a website, but build a plugin like NextGEN or contribute to WordPress Core? Forget about it. **But I *can* lend a helping hand to a WordPress neighbor who is in need.** Here’s how: ##### How to Help Edward Caissie’s Wife, Terri [](http://www.youcaring.com/terri-caissie-468821) A [YouCaring page](http://www.youcaring.com/terri-caissie-468821) has been setup to pay for medical devices and treatments needed. The goal is $2,500, so there’s plenty of room for you to help. This is the time of year to be giving gifts and an awesome opportunity to love your neighbor as yourself. So please, take a moment to give – no matter how much or little it is – to someone in the WordPress community who needs our help., Giving Back to the WordPress Community, Eric Dye, 01gnmcygzj8hjnkcka07ye1qnk.