Nicholas Garofalo (@eidolonnight) – WordPress user profile

Bio

In college, I wrote poetry in two languages: English and BASH. I quickly learned to submit my work to the right professors.

Communication between humans and machines has intrigued me ever since, and it led me to open source. Today I contribute to WordPress full time as a sponsored contributor through Automattic and Five for the Future, focused on marketing and communications: WordPress.org/news, the official social channels, the WordPress Showcase, and the marketing behind flagship WordCamps and State of the Word.

I believe WordPress is marketed by the people who build with it, write about it, teach it, and gather around it. My job is to make that work visible, remove friction from contributing, and put the tools for telling WordPress’s story in everyone’s hands. Most of what I build ends up in the public WordPress/marketing repo so anyone can use it.

If you are organizing a WordCamp, have a site that belongs in the Showcase, or have news worth amplifying, come find me on Make Slack. I am always up for a conversation about growth, automation, or what WordPress should look like next.

Interests

cooking, vinyl records, photography, tarot, plants, dogs

WordPress Origin Story

I found WordPress in late 2004, as editor of the school newspaper, and used it to bring our tiny publication online. I fell in love with open source, grabbed a degree in computer science and English, and went on to build a web services agency. We built several hundred WordPress sites, and when I finally burned out on agency life I moved on to startups before eventually landing at Automattic. As a sponsored contributor, I am so happy to be able to dedicate even more time to the WordPress project.

Badges

CODE

2 badges

Core Contributor '21 Meta Contributor '22

CONTENT

8 badges

Documentation Contributor '24 Marketing Contributor '22 Marketing Team '22 Media Corps Contributor '24 Media Corps Team '24 Photo Contributor '22 WordPress.tv Contributor '25 WordPress.tv Team '25

COMMUNITY

1 badge

WordCamp Organizer '21

Current Job

Director of Marketing

Jul 2021 – Present

Automattic · Full-time

Sponsored by Automattic to contribute full time to WordPress marketing and communications: WordPress.org/news, the official WordPress social channels (2.4M followers across 11 platforms), marketing for flagship WordCamps and State of the Word, the WordPress Showcase, and the automated, AI-assisted workflows that amplify them.

Job History

Growth Marketing Lead, WordPress.com

Feb 2019 – Jul 2021

Automattic · Full-time

Built WordPress.com's landing page experimentation program as Automattic's first CRO hire, then led the Growth Channels Americas team across paid media, SEO, partnerships, and experimentation, shipping the redesigned WordPress.com homepage and cutting spend that did not bring new WordPress sites online.

WordPress Expert

Oct 2018 – Feb 2019

Cornell University · Contract

Worked with the S.C. Johnson College of Business to merge and migrate several Cornell websites into a single WordPress multisite, covering architecture, content migration, and handoff to the university team.

Marketing Engineer

Mar 2016 – Aug 2018

MeetEdgar · Full-time

Embedded engineer on the marketing team at a social media scheduling startup. Implemented the customer tracking plan, kept the marketing tech stack and backups running, and built the tooling behind campaigns and reporting.

Technical Partner (CTO)

Nov 2012 – Mar 2016

WebOzy, Inc. · Full-time

Technical partner at a web services agency serving 300+ clients: owned the full vertical of web services, hosting, and support, and built several hundred WordPress sites along the way.

Freelance Developer

Jun 2009 – Nov 2012

Helusionary · Freelance

Ran a freelance web consulting and development practice through the recession: WordPress and Drupal builds, custom modules, API integrations, data migrations, and Ubuntu VPS hosting for local businesses, working remotely with a network of developers and designers.

Senior Web Developer

Dec 2008 – May 2009

Emergent Behavior LLC · Full-time

Built the eCommerce and subscription environment for Mrs. Riley PageBuilder, a Drupal-based tool for parents and educators making materials for children with special needs, including recurring payments through Ubercart and Authorize.net, and authored the Advanced Blog module for Drupal.

Lab Technician

Sep 2005 – Nov 2008

Various · Part-time

Supported campus computer labs and research equipment through college, the first of many jobs spent keeping systems running for the people who depend on them.