Podcast E600 – Interview With Adam Warner  ## Metadata - Author: [[Podcast – Kitchen Sink WordPress]] - Full Title: Podcast E600 – Interview With Adam Warner - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/6b9a52b7-b0aa-4e62-a25c-5086115564c7 ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Early WordCamp Memories** - Adam Warner remembers early in-person WordPress moments like sharing a minivan and riding to a bird sanctuary at WordCamp Birmingham. - He describes meeting many community members in person and feeling starstruck the first few times he spotted forum avatars in real life. Transcript: Adam Silver Today I am joined by Adam Warner, who's been shaping the WordPress and marketing space for over two decades. He is now leading field marketing at GoDaddy, bringing equal parts strategy, empathy, and curiosity to the work. Mr. Adam Warner, it's great to have you here. Welcome to the KitchenSync WP Podcast. Adam Warner Thanks, Adam. Adam Silver It's great to be here again. Again? Sort of. Sort of. I was a fly on the wall one time. Oh, this is true. That was a different podcast. We'll get to that. Oh, okay. Sorry about that. So as I always start interviews with on how I might know the guest and in this case, we have met in person many times. We've known each other for a long time, but I'm not sure when we first met. But I do recall sleeping in the same room as you, which was Pressnomics 5, is where you were the fly on the wall when I recorded with Kyle Maurer. Anyway, do you know when we first met? Because I don't. Adam Warner No, I don't recall the exact moment. I do have a memory of, and I don't even know what the location was. We were at a WordPress event, a WordCamp in some city. It was a city-based event. And I recall riding in the middle of the backseat of your minivan and someone else was in the front. And I believe we were going from the venue. No, I believe from the hotel to the after party or pre speaker sponsor dinner at a bird sanctuary. Does that ring a bell? Oh, yes. Adam Silver That would have been WordCamp Birmingham. Yes. WordCamp Birmingham. Yes. Wow. That was my minivan. Adam Warner Yeah. Adam Silver I recall going up some windy roads to get to the sanctuary because it was, it should be in the middle of the woods. That was Birmingham, yeah, okay. But we met before that, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, we did because we also met at WordCamp San Diego. We worked at Phoenix because we were. Yeah. Adam Warner I was just going to say it may have been a WordCamp Phoenix. That was one of, I think it was the second ([Time 0:02:23](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8ed399be-33ce-4e5b-bc5c-f03449e42757)) - **From Art School To WordPress** - Adam describes his transition from art school to building websites using early tools like FrontPage and GeoCities in the mid‑90s. - He found WordPress in 2004 and says it unlocked both his creative and analytical sides through point-and-click publishing and code editing. Transcript: Adam Warner I'll try and keep it short. Growing up, I was the youngest of three. I had a proclivity for art. I used to draw a cartoon all of the time. That led me to going into an advertising design program after high school into a college with that program. This was 1990, so a little blast from the past. And to set some context, we had one class with one computer. It was a little Mac. And our assignment for the entire semester was to create and colorize and edit a stamp using the computer graphics software. Mac Paint? It may very have been. Everything else in my schooling was all analog. So we were drawing illustrations, we were creating a product, packaging, that kind of thing. After finishing through that program, I thought I was going to go to new york city and work in some kind of a advertising agency in the pit um the show uh well i can't remember the name there Was a show about that very thing at the time after school went straight to work in a furniture factory worked my way up into being a team lead shift supervisor etc and then at the same time Doing pen and ink portraits and artwork for individuals and had a realization after a few years that I didn't want to spend my entire life in the same building for 30 years with two 15-minute Breaks and a 20-minute lunch. Right. Knowing that I had this passion. At the same time, this was we're getting into the mid to late 90s where internet access was a little more accessible. So I started building webpages using front page, GeoCities, all of the classic tools. MySpace. MySpace. And with that learned HTML and CSS eventually. And then started building little sites, little hobby sites for myself and others. Fast forward to 2004, I was working customer service for an audiobook publisher and still doing web stuff on the side, creating little e-commerce stores. I had a drop ship pet supply store, et cetera, et cetera. I would be so excited when I was able to edit something and change it. And I would run down and tell my wife and she'd go like, yeah, you changed it from red to green. That's really cool. And so I started finding open source software solutions. Forward to finding wordpress when i was in advertising design school my professor gave me a book called right brain left brain oh yeah because i was having trouble you're familiar with That one it's a good one i was having trouble getting the concepts in my head out into something tangible when i found word, that was the key for me. My analytical side would understand the software, how it was built, how to, at that time, edit the hacks, that PHP file, I believe it was, to add different functionality or remove, whatever. But I could also point and click and write the title of a web page and start writing some content and hit publish. And that was the visual and creative side. So that's how I found WordPress. ([Time 0:04:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8ba9b9cd-56f5-4987-a9bb-8804d54102c4)) - **Founding FooPlugins** - Adam explains co-founding FooPlugins after collaborating with Brad Vincent on a Gravity Forms extension and product ideas. - He grew that business from 2012 until stepping away around 2016–17 as brand roles demanded more of his time. Transcript: Adam Silver Yes. Adam Warner It's funny you slipped and said Audible because that company was called Brilliance Audio. Okay. And the online sales website was called Audiobook Stand. And then this transitions into my answer. In 2008, that company was acquired by amazon interesting which then connected to their audible uh acquisition or business so yeah um i became an amazon employee for uh a little while Uh but at the time i don't think i knew my pardon i don't think i even knew that. Yeah. Yeah. It was, um, it was short-lived. Um, um, but, um, they did it, they did an incredible thing. They interviewed every single employee in the company and then they changed the dress code because at that point I had to wear slacks and a blazer and a tie to go sit a cubicle and only see My coworkers every day. So they relaxed, you know, jeans, t-shirts, whatever, but they also did a pay leveling exercise because this was in a, in a location that was, didn't have high salaries and, and, and Things. So I, I received stock options and a raise and I was about a year away from the stocks vesting. And at that point, that was my nest egg to try to purchase a home and whatnot. But at the time, my wife had moved from her home in Florida to Michigan, where this was, and it had been several years and she was ready to get back to Florida. Like we had to figure this out. And because I was building websites and because I was using WordPress, my cousin who were best friends was working for a company, an HVAC company in Sarasota, Florida, and they had an Old HTML static website. It was no e-commerce or anything like that, but it had residential or commercial product listings, all of those things. Um, long story short, I accepted that role and got us to Florida having to make the decision to give up my stock, my stocks because they weren't invested yet. Wow but it was one of the best moves i've ever made because then yeah i was in wordpress all day every day even more than i was wow before yeah so you and jeff bezos you guys aren't you guys Adam Silver Aren't besties anymore you and jeff no i i opted out of um blue origin long ago right so what's your connection now still any i mean i know you're at go daddy but do you still own and run foo Adam Warner Plugin no no so um during that time with this hvac company um i had used wordpress multi-site which listeners should know if they don't know it's um it's uh it used to be a separate code Base to standard wordpress now it's built in you just have to turn on the functionality and what it allows you is to create hundreds thousands of wordpress sites under a single install So i use that for separating this residential commercial it was also multi-language language we had english and then we had french and then we had quebec French. Wow. Um, so it was, uh, it was a bear. It was, it was looking back, it was very hacked together. Um, but it served the purpose. Right. Uh, and that was 2000, like I said, 2008 through 2012, around 2011. Um, I had really been paying attention to this ecosystem that was cropping up in WordPress, this product ecosystem. And I got into information products. So I wrote a book called the WordPress multi-site manual or similar. I think it's still on Amazon. Don't buy it. It's extremely outdated, it's still there, I think. And other things. And within that ecosystem, I was following along with people who were creating plugins and selling them outside of the.org repo, outside of, you know, full-on plugin businesses. And I had some ideas for plugins, but I'm not a developer in that sense right um at the same time i was working with a client and um building a gravity forms extension for them i needed help On the gravity forms forum there was a guy named brad who was helping me that turns out to be brad vincent um who then we co-founded um foo plugins together because i shared my ideas he shared Some stuff he had already built and then one that hadn't, but that matched what closely what my idea was. And we were like, okay, let's do this together. So that went on from 2012 until about 2016, 17, when I had to take myself out of that business because I had then started working for a brand in the in the WordPress ecosystem. ([Time 0:12:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/7467a7b6-417f-4b24-b92a-03699312be40)) - **From Layoff To GoDaddy** - Adam recounts being laid off, moving roles, and then joining SiteLock which shifted him from stay-at-home dad to a heavy touring conference role. - He later joined GoDaddy after meeting them at WordCamp New York and accepted the challenge of representing a much larger company. Transcript: Adam Silver And what was that first brand? That was a company called SiteLock. Okay. Adam Warner And just moving back one moment, that HVAC company and that experimentation with Brad on selling some products, the first thing we sold was, was pretty successful. In terms of, you know, a first product release. And it was about 30 days before my first son was born in 2012, where that company laid me off. I had the option to go to Sweden or Kansas, but both places were in the middle of nowhere in those locations and having a first child on the way. So I went all in with the food plugins business. And then as the years went on, I started to see people adopt the term WordPress evangelist and work for brands. And I thought, hmm, I'm pretty well positioned for that. Seems like a fun job. So I applied to a few places. And of course, there wasn't very many. Never heard anything. And so I just kept slugging along with my side projects with the plugin business. And one of my side projects, again, was a kind of a WordPress informational tutorial site. A contact came through there asking for a phone call, a recruiter, telling me about this company named SiteLock, who was looking for a person with WordPress experience and depth of Knowledge for community work. And that was one of the companies I had applied to months earlier. And so we got on a phone call. Adam Silver I accepted the role and I started about 15 days later. Do you recall our conversation about SightLock? Probably don't. So you were on the East Coast. You were in Florida. I was on the West Coast still in California. I was trying to do similar. I mean, I was doing the podcast and, you know, this and that. And it's been, by the way, if you forget, this is episode 600, by the way, that you are on. 600. Congratulations. Thank you. And I had talked to a few companies as well, too, because I was doing my side hustle, but, you know, financially, the agency wasn't where it is at the moment. And, you know, it hadn't quite nearly come to a peak. But I was reaching out to kind of do some evangelism work. And I talked to two hosts, um, site ground and in motion still around. And the only parole company that had an evangelist at that moment was go daddy with Mendel. It was, it was go daddy with Mendel. Adam Warner And also I think previous to Mendel Suzette Frank with dream host. Those were my, yeah, those were my two examples. Um, and at the time too, um, first of all, it seems like we've led somewhat parallel. Yes. Uh, journeys with WordPress and are interested and capable of, um, doing similar things, right. For brands. Um, I recall seeing Mendel and GoDaddy at a couple of WordCamps I was able to go to, and boy, did he take the brunt of the brand at that point. But what he did is he took that feedback back to the company. It inspired change in their products it gave them uh visibility into right actual customer feedback and etc etc so um so that's how that happened yeah but i was gonna say at one point when Adam Silver I was still looking siteground and emotion couldn't justify and they're from their at the early time in those early days 2010 11 12 to pay me what I kind of needed at least full time to travel Thursday through Sunday. They just didn't have that. They didn't see that. They didn't see 10 years out, which is, you know, five years ago, give or take. So, but then you reached out because you guys were looking for a West Coast person from Sightlock and we talked and I remember we had dinner with your, we had a really nice dinner in a phoenix At somewhere in phoenix that i was invited to it was a sightlock dinner and you me some other people i think um what's his name scott was there scott delusio and his wife were there um i remember That dinner well i have photos of it but and i talked we talked about it but then something came up budgets didn't happen and then you end up leaving Not too long after that. Adam Warner Yes. And I don't want to drag this on for your listeners, but I completely forgot about two things. One was as I was putting out those resumes and things, I did get an interview with Envato at the time. If people recall Envato and Code Canyon and Theme Forest, they were looking for a brand rep. And I went through a series of three interviews, the third interview ending with me giving a presentation to leadership. And I completely nosedived oh no yeah um um william bay who is a wordpress community member on the west coast he also at the same time was interviewing for the same job we actually talked During like the interview process and stuff anyway i completely nosedived that i knew right away i was never going to have contact with with them. I was wearing a blazer. I was in my garage in Florida in the summer. I was uncomfortable, sweaty, just nervous like you wouldn't believe. So after that, I thought, well, I guess that's my only opportunity. And then, of course, the sight lock opportunity came along. Interesting. Adam Silver Yeah. I think actually, um, another friend went to Envato at one point, uh, James Jarreau. Yes. He went at what he was there at one point. He was there a long time. Funny thing. I was looking back at some old emails and stuff, reaching out to companies to sponsor or give it to do some giveaways for like when I hit, I think when I hit like five years, whatever it was On the podcast. And he was my con he was the contact I had to see if he, if he wanted to donate something to a raffle kind of thing, you know, to prizes for episode whatever, like 200 or whatever it was. I'm like, Oh, and then he and I became friends. We've, I didn't know him then. I didn't realize who it was until he and I went through the trial for WP Tavern last year. It was, you know, it's, yeah, we've been around a long time, you and I, so, you know. Yeah. Adam Warner Um, one more side note, if I may, you mentioned SiteGround. Um, that was another company that I had reached out to and pitched myself, uh, because they had been attending WordCamps in the U.S., but they were all coming from Bulgaria every single Time. And my pitch was, why don't you hire me and I'll cover the U.S. Adam Silver We should have started a company, you know, Adam Co. And just could have had two Adams on each coast, you know. Hey, there's still an opportunity. There is. We will talk about this after the show. Your brand reps. Yes, exactly. So I'm curious. But then you go from sightlock you leave where did you end up from there sightlock ([Time 0:17:51](https://share.snipd.com/snip/726c416f-471e-4258-a9df-5ce1b8079ed7)) - **Get Involved To Find Your Fit** - Get involved in the WordPress community by contributing online and attending events to learn and build relationships. - Use contributions to discover where your skills fit across themes, plugins, dev, design, or product roles. Transcript: Adam Silver I want to be respectful of time here for both yours and the listeners. Um, but so I'm curious at this point, you're seven years there at GoDaddy. You've been in the space just as long as me, just about 20 years or so. And plus in tech in general, if someone were to ask you right now about getting into WordPress in either as a developer or designer or in your case management, what advice would you give? Hmm. Hmm. Adam Warner Well, that's a, it's a, there are so many answers to that question and it and it and it depends in many ways on what your skill set is what your interest is what your passion is so leaving All of that aside the first thing that i always recommend especially um i've had interns on my team i've had people that are kind of marketing people that are, we're brand new to the WordPress Software, the ecosystem, everything else. My advice always is get involved, contribute, immerse yourself in that community in any way you can, whether it's online, ad events, both is the preferred. Make those one-on connections and relationships with people, listen, learn, share where you're at. Because I think that's the only way to understand how complex and or how simple the WordPress software and the WordPress community ecosystem can be, right? Depending on your focus. ([Time 0:29:20](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fd78b782-2116-4063-b56c-93c779b0a822)) - **The WordPress Inner Circle** - Adam highlights a large divide between WordPress power users and the majority who treat it simply as a tool. - He calls the engaged contributors the 'inner circle' who drive the project's evolution and influence products. Transcript: Adam Warner I mean, the project. Right. But there are ways to do it. You show up. Adam Silver There's many, many different ways to contribute. Yeah, there's WordCamps, there's Meetups. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. I remember I found out at WordPress in 2009 when I started. Didn't go to my first camp until I think two or three years. I didn't know they existed. It was weird because, you know, and there's always that theory. I don't know if it's a theory or not. It might be true where most people who use WordPress, WordPress is so what? 43, 44% market share. Most people use it. Don't know anything about the community. There's no way they could in a way they, there's no WordCamp that could have all those people attend. So it's, it's a, it's a small percentage of the 43 who are like you and i and who are so passionate you know and go through the ups and downs the ebbs and flows of said community because you Adam Warner Know it's not perfect by any stretch you know um overall i think it's pretty good i'm still i'm still a fan you know yeah i mean it's when you think about open source in general right and Communities in general they're always organic and ever growing and ever changing and i use this term not to sound divisive but one of the words i use is the inner circle of wordpress right So and by inner circle that's what i mean the people who pay attention to the project who contribute to it who participate in the community whether they're learning or et cetera. But you're right. There is a huge portion of WordPress users that know nothing. It's a tool. It's a business tool. That's it. Exactly. ([Time 0:31:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/fcdfd0fe-84ca-42aa-9e50-71d6f6960309)) - **Three Practical Tools To Use** - Use Slack for daily collaboration, ScreenFlow for tutorial video creation, and AI tools like ChatGPT to draft and tighten communication. - Review AI outputs and add your own voice before publishing to keep content authentic. Transcript: Adam Warner There are many. Yeah, of course. And there are many that aren't favorites, but then I have to use. So these aren't necessarily tools I use every day. Some of them are, some of them aren't. I'm a huge slack fan um i use slack every day all day for multiple uh work streams whether it's my my day job or contributing uh to wordpress or in any number of slack instances that this Community or other groups gather in. So Slack would be an easy answer. ScreenFlow. Oh. For Mac, it's a screencasting software I bought into years ago when I was creating tutorials for WordPress. Huge fan of that software visually. Again, that right brain, left brain visually. It's easy for me compared to other more advanced video editing. And then I think, and apologies if this sounds like an easy answer, but ChatGPT and other AIs, right? So I can, I can tell you that professionally, um, the people I work for and with every day have been leaning into AI in many, many ways for the last couple of years. And that industry moves so fast and there's so much happening it's really hard to keep track of but chat gpt has really helped me um with my communication skills it helps with brainstorming I don't necessarily create content with it right um but i have this long-standing um i guess issue that i am and you can tell now because i'm talking a lot. ([Time 0:35:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6e7db40f-5842-4614-81eb-d880f1adf2ca)) - **Using AI To Script Videos** - Adam shares a recent example of using internal AI to draft a 45–60 second video script with camera directions and visual cues. - He credits AI for suggesting delivery, pauses, and visual beats he might not have considered on his own. Transcript: Adam Warner The recent example that i've i was just really happy with was we have a video to create for a project sure uh at work and uh i my prompt was this person's going to do the video knowing what You know about, and this is, by the way, this is our internal AI, which pulls from dozens of different AIs. So we're not putting, you know, company information out there to be consumed. Using what you know about this brand, using all of these things, write a script for a 45 to 60 second video for this particular audience who are attending this thing for this particular Reason. Really relevant um but it also took the next step of creating the the camera delivery script which was which separated the four different paragraphs of the script with suggestions For visuals how to speak how to speak to the camera when to use your hands when to take interesting breaks all of that stuff and without ai i likely wouldn't have even thought about that. Yeah. Adam Silver I'm ever in enough scripts to kind of know that I want a two-column format or I want voiceover, sound effects, visual effects. You know, I know enough of that. Excuse me. But it just helps. It just expedites the process. And then some of it isn't perfect, so you just have to read it. ([Time 0:38:49](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c1f7589a-33e9-450e-b356-4e6fd2d7529a)) - **Skipping WordCamp US For The First Time** - Adam notes he'll miss WordCamp US for the first time since 2016 and reflects on how unusual it feels. - He sends well wishes to attendees and organizers despite missing the event. Transcript: Adam Silver Question you're not going to work camp us are you no unfortunately not This drops the week of WordPress, WordCamp US 2025. I'll be there, but you won't be there. Yes. Adam Warner It's the first WordCamp US I haven't attended since 2016. This will be the, I missed last year. Adam Silver So the first one I missed ever. Yeah. Yeah. Adam Warner It's strange to miss something like this after you've been to so many, but I'm wishing you and everyone in attendance, all the speakers, organizers, everyone, the best event that you Can have. ([Time 0:41:42](https://share.snipd.com/snip/baefba39-184f-45ac-a57a-87f7b177ea09))