Episode 148 – Bet Hannon

Introducing Bet Hannon

Bet discovered WordPress in 2008 and has been involved in the WordPress community since 2013 at meetups, WordCamps, and on the support team. Bet runs an agency, Bet Hannon Business Websites, where she specializes in WordPress and accessibility.

Show Notes

Twitter | @bethannon

Website | BHMBizSites.com

Preferred Pronouns | She/Her

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 148.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we’re joined by Bet Hannon. Bet discovered WordPress in 2008 and has been involved in the WordPress community since 2013 at meetups, WordCamps, and on the support team. Bet runs an agency, Bet Hannon Business Websites, where she specializes in WordPress and accessibility. Bet, welcome.

Bet: Hey, great to be with you guys today.

Tara: So nice to meet you Bet. I’ve been a fan and a follower, and it’s really great to see you face to face on a Zoom.

Bet: Thanks.

Tara: Can you tell us and our listeners more about yourself and Bet Hannon Business Websites?

Bet: Yeah. I discovered WordPress in 2008. I had a 15 year plus career in nonprofit management, and near the end of that time, I’d been doing drag and drop websites and email newsletters. My organization downsized my position at the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008 and I kind of fell into… People would pay you to do those things independent of being a part of their staff.

I went to a weekend conference, and I met a guy that I knew was an iOS app developer. We were talking and I was telling him what I was doing and he said, “Oh, you should be doing those websites in WordPress.” And I said, “I don’t even know what that is.” So we both way back home and we had a phone call where we both at the same time logged into the back end. It before Zoom and all those things, right? So we logged into the back end of his WordPress website, and my mind was blown. It was just love at first sight. I got involved doing WordPress websites.

And then went to my first WordCamp in 2013. Went to WordCamp LA, and just started meeting people in the WordPress community. It was just an amazing thing to me and always still is every time I go to a WordCamp, just to meet people from all over the world. Even when you go to small little WordCamps, people come from really far away sometimes, and or just doing super cool things with WordPress. I just really love talking to people, as Liam knows. Liam and I met in 2015 when we were both on the check-in desk for WordCamp US in Philly.

Tara: Ah, okay. That’s I think when I met Liam for the first time as well was 2015 WordCamp US. Or maybe it was Philly before. Anyway, my first WordCamp was also in 2013, and I started using it a little bit later than you were, in 2010. So I’m curious about that experience of having worked in WordPress on your own for five years or so before discovering that WordPress community or WordCamps, and if that changed the way that you work, the way that you use WordPress, what you do that I guess the quality of your work, perhaps. How did that impact your work discovering WordPress community after viewing it by yourself or without the community?

Bet: Well, I had kind of been involved a little bit in the community in the sense of I found the support forums. And I’m not even sure really where I kind of ran onto those. But I discovered that I could put things together in terms of getting answers to questions or issues that ...