Lance Willett

Member Since: March 10th, 2009
Location: Tucson, AZ
Website: sensible.blog
Job Title: Product Wrangler
Employer: Automattic
Find me on:

Bio

Team lead, product manager, and business executive living and working from Tucson, Arizona. See lance.blog for my latest photos and things.

I blog about leadership, WordPress, productivity, mindfulness, web technology, and more at The Sensible Leader, and lead product quality and engagement teams at Automattic. I love WordPress themes, and contributed to Twenty Twelve, Twenty Thirteen, Twenty Fourteen, and Twenty Fifteen in core.

Interests

Leadership, systems thinking, craftsmanship, web design/development, product quality, tennis, reading, coffee, tea, and fresh corn tortillas.

WordPress Origin Story

My journey to WordPress started with a personal need and a passion for web standards; I wanted blogging software for my personal site that was easy to install and use — and would produce clean, semantic markup. The other options at the time just didn’t feel right. I don’t remember where I first heard about WordPress, it could have been a mention on Eric Meyer’s site or Zeldman.com.

My first WordPress site — an update to my (previously hard-coded HTML) personal site at fautrever.com — went live in summer of 2004, running on version 1.2. It was amazing to be able to publish quickly and easily and not hand-code each page! Besides ease of use I also loved how it championed using correct typography. Other than a brief flirtation with Textpattern I’ve used WP for my personal sites ever since.

In 2005 I went full-time with my web design/development business and through the years WP was a big part of my work — and part of my fun “hobby” time as well. You could say it’s in my DNA as a web professional.

In projects that weren’t specifically built with WordPress I usually found a way to tie it in somehow. For example, when I was on the engineering team at DigitalFusion we used the P2 theme for an internal team communication tool. In other client projects I’d drop in a WP-powered blog to sites running on other software.

I’d been watching things at Automattic from the outside for several years, attending one WordCamp and following several Automatticians on Twitter. I was really happy with my freelance career, but had always kept a list of 3-4 companies that I’d drop everything to work for.

So I set up a notification on ChangeDetection.com for the Automattic jobs page, which at that time only had a few listings, none of which fit me perfectly. Then in May 2009 I got an email from ChangeDetection showing that the Theme Czar position had been added. I said to myself, “This is it! That’s me!” I immediately sent in my application, and was hired full-time in 2010.

Contribution History

Core Contributor
Core Contributor
Core Team
Core Team
Meta Contributor
Meta Contributor
Plugin Developer
Plugin Developer
Translation Contributor
Translation Contributor
WordCamp Speaker
WordCamp Speaker

Activity
Plugins
Favorites

Created a new ticket, #4924, in Meta Trac:
Theme Directory: show total theme count in header like Plugins does

5 months ago
Confirmed as a speaker for WordCamp Phoenix, AZ, United States 2018

2 years ago
Created a new ticket, #42968, in Core Trac:
Media: Grid View: new upload, file is in the wrong position in the grid ...

2 years ago
Created a topic, Intuitive and friendly visual editing experience, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
I love the size and look of the controls, they look mo…

3 years ago
Committed [1669768] to Plugins Trac:
Monster Widget: update compatibility to 4.8

3 years ago
Committed [1669767] to Plugins Trac:
WP Author Widget: update compatibility to 4.8

3 years ago
Created a new ticket, #40762, in Core Trac:
Login: add canonical admin shorthand URL for login.php

3 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Introducing the Aztec Mobile Editors, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
Loving the new Aztec editor on my Android device! I found a possible discrepancy (regression…

3 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for iOS 6.9, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
Tested all three items on an iPad 4 Mini, with app version 6.9.0.20170130. No big…

3 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 6.5, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
I found a bug today in the Reader Stream Refresh, reported it in GitHub: https://github.com/wordpress-mobile/WordPress-Android/issues/5025

3 years ago
Created a new ticket, #39531, in Core Trac:
Twenty Fourteen / Fifteen: category count transient allows incorrect ...

3 years ago
Created a new ticket, #2358, in Meta Trac:
Make P2s: allow authors with existing moderated comments to upload files

3 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 6.5, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
Love, love, love the recent sites at the top. That is so cool, especially for…

3 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 6.4, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
Sharing a visual record from testing today on a Nexus 6P, Android version 7.1.1 and…

3 years ago
Committed [1548396] to Plugins Trac:
Monster Widget: update compatibility to 4.7

3 years ago
Committed [1548395] to Plugins Trac:
WP Author Widget: update compatibility to 4.7

3 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 6.3, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
Ran through both swipe for notifications and new login styles on a Nexus 6P. Swiping…

3 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 6.1, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
This is fixed in alpha-27.

4 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 6.1, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
I found a bug in Notifications, with the comment reply text. Once you type a…

4 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 6.1, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
I saw this same issue today, left a comment plus screenshots on the GitHub issue.

4 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for iOS 6.6, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
GIFs work well in posts list. I noticed a minor bug in Comments, though —…

4 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for Android 6.0, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
Tested things with Nexus 5 (Android 6.0.1) and WP app version alpha-23. Didn't find anything…

4 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for iOS 6.5, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
Screenshot for first note: https://cloudup.com/chiApOx8f6g

4 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Call for Testing: WordPress for iOS 6.5, on the site Make WordPress Mobile:
1. Reader Navigation, for add/remove/view tags I can't seem to remove a tag when no…

4 years ago
Committed [1384594] to Plugins Trac:
WP Author Widget: bump compat for 4.5.

4 years ago
Committed [1384588] to Plugins Trac:
Monster Widget: bump compat for 4.5.

4 years ago
Created a new ticket, #35204, in Core Trac:
Refresh HiDPI support

4 years ago
Created a new ticket, #35079, in Core Trac:
Allow reversed attribute for ordered list HTML element

4 years ago
Committed [1297873] to Plugins Trac:
WP Author Widget: bump compat for 4.4.

5 years ago
Committed [1297872] to Plugins Trac:
Monster Widget: bump compat for 4.4.

5 years ago
Created a new ticket, #33799, in Core Trac:
Comments: can't Quick Edit or Reply inline from comments list tables with ...

5 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post New committers for 4.4!, on the site Make WordPress Core:
Yay Tammie! Full speed ahead.

5 years ago
Committed [1217366] to Plugins Trac:
Monster Widget: bump compat for 4.3.

5 years ago
Committed [1217364] to Plugins Trac:
WP Author Widget: bump compat for 4.3.

5 years ago
Committed [33093] to Core Trac:
Twenty Fifteen: don't hyphenate input elements. Fixes #32880.

5 years ago
Created a new ticket, #32880, in Core Trac:
Twenty Fifteen: don't hyphenate input elements

5 years ago
Closed ticket #32446, in Core Trac:
Bundled Themes: `-moz-hyphens: auto` no longer needed

5 years ago
Closed ticket #24142, in Themes Trac:
THEME: Stacker Lite – 1.0.1

5 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Release leads for WordPress 4.3 and 4.4, on the site Make WordPress Core:
Congrats!

5 years ago
Closed ticket #23555, in Themes Trac:
THEME: Stacker Lite – 1.0

5 years ago
Wrote a comment on the post Release candidate and today’s dev meeting agenda, on the site Make WordPress Core:
For release plan, I'll be on duty to prepare new versions of default themes for…

5 years ago
Registered to attend WordCamp San Francisco 2014

6 years ago
Created a new ticket, #555, in Meta Trac:
WordPress.org: broken layout in small screens when language banner present

6 years ago
Closed ticket #19068, in Themes Trac:
THEME: P2 - 1.5.4

6 years ago
Confirmed as a speaker for WordCamp Las Peñitas 2014

6 years ago
Reopened ticket #12786, in Themes Trac:
THEME: Superhero - 1.1

7 years ago
Closed ticket #12637, in Themes Trac:
THEME: raindrops - 1.117

7 years ago
Closed ticket #12736, in Themes Trac:
THEME: picoclean - 0.4.8.1

7 years ago
Closed ticket #12735, in Themes Trac:
THEME: picoclean - 0.4.8

7 years ago
Closed ticket #12685, in Themes Trac:
THEME: activetab - 0.3.0

7 years ago

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