Interview with Brady Nord, Bluehost’s Sr. Director of Product

5 WordPress Questions with Brady Nord, Bluehost’s Sr. Director of Product

As a champion of all things open source, Bluehost takes its commitment to WordCamp seriously. We sat down with Brady Nord, the company’s senior director of product, to talk about his involvement with WordPress, Bluehost’s relationship with the platform, and the important role of WordCamps.

How did you personally get started with WordPress? I decided to get involved with WordPress because it provided me a way to control my content and scale at the same time. Back when I first started, I knew very little about how websites worked. The fact that I could control so much of my web presence right out of the box was impressive. In hindsight, I attribute the majority of my technical background from learning WordPress in the early years.

What is a big hurdle facing WordPress today? One of the biggest challenges is there are still so many people who don’t know how websites work. That holds many customers back, and WordPress ends up being their guinea pig. Because of this, people leave the platform for reasons beyond WordPress’s control. The platform is trying to accommodate beginners and establishing itself as an enterprise solution.

How would you describe the relationship between Bluehost and WordPress? Bluehost is a great platform for WordPress users to grow with because we have spent the last decade building tools that help WordPress websites succeed. Very few companies have the volume of WordPress customers that we do and even fewer understand what it takes to support them. I was impressed as a customer long before working here — and now I’m even more impressed — by how much the employees care about the WordPress community. A lot has been said about the unique nature of WordCamps.

What, in your opinion, makes this community noteworthy? In the seven years I have been involved in WordCamps, I have not seen another community or conference where people are so devoted to the vision and cause. People travel all around the world on their own dime to attend these WordCamps, and they do it frequently. It’s not a conference that is attended once a year. I’m amazed by the commitment of so many to attend.

What upcoming WordPress changes are you most looking forward to? I am really excited to see where the investment in Javascript and front end developers leads the project. I think bringing more Javascript talent into the community will provide some fresh perspective on the experience and, hopefully, help new users interact with the framework better. Obviously, that goes hand in hand with the rest API, which I’m equally excited about. To learn more about Bluehost, visit the web host’s blog.