45 WordPress People you need to follow

Twitter has grown so fast recently, that it’s transformed itself into a very fine line between signal & noise. So finding value from Twitter isn’t always the easiest thing; especially if you’re not following the right people. The irony in that is, that sometimes the most popular / widely followed Twitter users don’t provide much value at all and the only reason for their popularity is the “rich gets richer” principle.

We have thus compiled a list of 45 Twitter users which we recommend you follow if you’re interested in WordPress. The list includes members of the WordPress team, bloggers who publish great WP content or the guys and girls that design and develop some of the best WordPress themes & plugins out there.

So if you’re not following these people just yet, get clicking and follow them right away…

The WordPress Team

WordPress (@wordpress)

Okay, so the first one is kinda obvious, but it’s really a no-brainer, ain’t it? This is the official WordPress Twitter account, where you can follow the latest news & happenings with the core project.

Matt Mullenweg (@photomatt)

Matt is the founder of that platform we all seem to love – WordPress – and is thus the original WordPress Rockstar. Under Matt’s guidance WordPress has grown from humble beginnings to (probably) the most popular CMS on the web today.

Matt doesn’t tweet that often, but it would be a shame if you’re interested in WordPress and you’re not following the founder thereof.

Toni Schneider (@tonidotorg)

Toni is the CEO of Automattic, the company responsible for the commercial interests of WordPress and their related projects. Along with Matt, they’ve formed an incredible team which has managed WP’s awesome growth with semi-perfection. Another he shares with Matt, is the lack of tweets… But we’re sure it’ll come…

Mark Jaquith (@markjaquith)

Lead developer of WordPress and a freelance WordPress consultant. Mark has also released quite a wide variety of great WP plugins and is probably one of the more prominent WP lead developers (in terms of blogging & community interaction).

Peter Westwood (@westi)

Another of WP’s lead developers. Peter is relatively active on Twitter and his WordPress blog is regularly updated with great WP-related news.

Andy Peatling (@apeatling)

Lead Developer of the BuddyPress project, which is a social-network (ala Facebook) platform build on the multi-user version of WordPress. Expect big things from both Andy & BuddyPress in future.

Donncha O’Caoimh (@donncha)

Contributing developer on the core WordPress project and also responsible for the hugely popular WP Super Cache plugin. He’s also Irish, sometimes funny and supremely knowledgeable when it comes to WordPress / coding. So why wouldn’t you follow him?

Theme Developers & Designers

R Bhavesh (@rbhavesh)

Bhavesh is the founder, designer & developer of PremiumThemes.net, where he has released quite a few free & paid WordPress themes already.

Lester Chan (@gamerz)

Lester has written some of the most widely used WP plugins available and I’d bet that you have at least one of his plugins installed on your blog. And this guys certainly knows his way around WP, judging by those plugins…

Pavel Ciorici (@ciorici)

Pavel originally started WPZoom as a value-adding community blog, but has recently started releasing some WP themes on there. Definitely worth checking out!

Joost de Valk (@yoast)

Similar to Lester, Joost has got to be one of the “plugin greats” within the WP community. In addition to his WP plugin development skills, he also helps Brian Gardner out over at StudioPress and is amazing at doing SEO.

Ptah Dunbar (@ptahdunbar)

In Ptah’s own words, he’s a WordPress hacker. He’s currently working on his own theme framework called WPFramework.

Elegant Themes (@elegantthemes)

Elegant Themes make some of the absolute best WP themes available at the moment and if you’re keen to get your hands on some of these beauties, then we suggest you follow these guys.

Brian Gardner (@bgardner)

Brian is the founder of StudioPress and probably also the “founder” of the premium themes model within the WP community. His original Revolution theme sparked a lot of innovation within the WP community and you can still see its influence in some themes today.

Mayank Gupta (@mayank)

Mayank runs a blog design service which mainly designs blog themes for WordPress based blogs. He is fortunate enough to have some of the prominent bloggers of all times as his clients (Daniel Scocco, Yaro Starak, Gobala, Liz Strauss etc.).

Darren Hoyt (@darrenhoyt)

Darren is the designer / developer responsible for the hugely popular Mimbo & Mimbo Pro themes. He has also recently launched WPTopics – an aggregator of all the best WP-related content on the web.

Ryan Imel (@ryanimel)

Ryan runs the popular blog, ThemePlayground, where he covers WP news, along with the odd tutorial / how-to. He’s also released a few themes which we’d recommend you have a look at some time…

Jean Baptiste Jung (@catswhocode)

We absolute love what Jean has done with WPRecipes. The blog is just incredible in terms of the value of their in-depth and content-rich tutorials. If you want to learn some new WordPress stuff, follow the cats who code.

Alex King (@alexkingorg)

Alex is probably the first WP developer I ever followed and his plugins has made him a very prominent member in the developers community. He (and his team) is currently working on a theme framework called Carrington, which is getting rave reviews all round.

Cory Miller (@corymiller303)

Cory is the brains behind iThemes, where he & his team releases free & paid WordPress themes.

Dan Milward (@danmilward)

Ever heard of WP-Commerce? Well, Dan is the developer behind this amazing plugin, which can turn your WP blog into a fully-fledged eCommerce site in a few minutes.

Simon North (@simnor)

Simon is a talented designer & WordPress developer. He has also recently joined the WooThemes support team and we can attest to the fact that he knows his WordPress; just ask our users…

Chris Pearson (@pearsonified)

If you haven’t heard of Chris and Thesis, then you’re not following the WP community. Chris is the sole developer on Thesis, a premium theme framework, which has been making waves within the theming community. If you’re into theme frameworks, Thesis is probably right up there amongst the best-of-the-best.

David Perel (@obox)

David is one of the co-founders at Obox Design, where they recently released some commercial WP themes. He’s an incredibly talented designer and you’d also have heard of David via the very popular From The Couch vidcast.

Marc Perel (@MarcPerel)

Marc is the brother of David and co-founder of Obox Design. He may be relatively new to the world of WordPress, but he’s an amazing developer and will soon start making a name for himself within the WP community.

Nathan Rice (@nathanrice)

Nathan – who helps release some themes over at iThemes – has got to be one of the most genuine guys in the WP theming community. Never afraid to help someone out, he’s also been plotting with the recent development of his theme framework – Prodigy.

Lisa Sabin-Wilson (@LisaSabinWilson)

We’d guess that the author of “WordPress for Dummies” knows their way around WP, right? Well, Lisa is not only a pretty lady, but she sure as hell knows her WP and is a talented designer at that.

Jason Schuller (@jschuller)

Out of all of WooThemes’ “competitors”, we regularly sit back and enjoy the awesomeness of Jason’s work. Jason releases his themes over at Press75 and the fact that he doesn’t support IE6 (at all!) makes him so much cooler.

Ian Stewart (@iandstewart)

ThemeShaper is probably one of the beacons within the WP community and Ian has done a lot in terms of creating awesome WP content. In addition to ThemeShaper, Ian has also developed (probably) the most popular themes framework to date – Thematic.

Collis Ta’eed (@collis)

Okay, maybe Collis isn’t a WordPress developer / designer entirely… But he is responsible for giving us ThemeForest, where they regularly release top-notch WP themes.

Justin Tadlock (@justintadlock)

Similar to Ian Stewart, Justin is another of those great people that has contributed so much of their time & effort back into the WP community. He is also responsible for the theme framework, Hybrid.

ThemeForest (@ThemeForest)

We mentioned this when we introduced Collis, but here’s ThemeForest’s official Twitter account, if you wanted to stay up-to-date with their latest theme releases.

Chris Wallace (@chriswallace)

Chris is a really great designer, who has released a handful of very cool WordPress themes. Our favourite is probably Gallery, which he built on top of the Thematic framework.

WPEngineer (@wpengineer)

Run by three WordPress lovers, this is a great Twitter stream and blog to follow for some amazing WordPress tips & tricks.

General WordPress

Jeff Chandler (@jeffr0)

Jeff is the voice behind the WPWeekly podcast and also WPTavern, which is a popular WordPress community website.

Mark Ghosh (@laughinglizard)

Mark started the very popular WP blog – WeblogToolsCollection – where he still produces awesome WP-related content on a regular basis. Another one of those beacons in the WP community.

Lorelle van Fossen (@lorelleonwp)

Lorelle has been participating in the WordPress project since the very beginning (or so it seems) and she is most definitely one of the legends of the community.

WPCandy (@wpcandy)

These guys produce awesome content if they just get around to it…

WPHacks (@HackWordPress)

Run by Kyle Eslick, WPHacks covers a wide variety of WP-related topics.

WPTavern (@wptavern)

Twitter account for the very active and popular WP community run by Jeff Chandler.

The WooThemes Team

WooThemes (@woothemes)

This is the official Twitter account for WooThemes, which is generally used for marketing, connecting with some of the Woo users and responding to the odd support question. Follow this account for all the latest WooThemes-related news.

Adii (@adii)

Adii is a co-founder over at WooThemes and is generally responsible for the management & strategy of the business at WooThemes. He regards himself more as an entrepreneur, but you’ll also find him designing / developing the odd WordPress theme.

Magnus Jepson (@mjepson)

Magnus is co-founder at WooThemes and also the king of the development & support of all the themes. He’s been “lovingly” given the nickname Magatron as a result of his robot-like work ethic and strict support principles.

Mark Forrester (@mark_forrester)

Mark is the third co-founder in WooThemes and is in charge of all the design processes for new themes, as well as theme documentation and screencasts. And do yourself a favour once and find Mark’s video for The Journal’s theme release, as it includes some nice, cheesy (porno) background music.

Cobus Bester (@FRESH01)

Cobus (or FRESH01 as most know him) only joined the WooTeam in March of this year, but has added immense value – as a young, extremely talented designer – since then. This is definitely a designer to watch for the future!

Foxinni (@foxinni)

Foxinni – just like Cobus – only joined the WooTeam in March, but has since then been responsible for a coding revolution amongst the Woo ranks. The new WooFramework is totally been Fox’s brainchild and is entirely fueled by his massive appetite to become the best web developer in the world.