In November, Envato announced that they were looking for a new Wptuts+ editor on their blog. The position requires considerable skill with WordPress and effective communication. Japh Thomson has done a fantastic job heading up the Wptuts+ blog effort for two years, but as I learned then, he was preparing to move on into a new role that included more time dedicated to being the company’s WordPress evangelist.ddd

Japh truly transformed the site from putting out what I’d consider questionable advice to being a top quality source for information. I thought at the time that it’s very important for the WordPress community at large that the new editor is just as good.

Tom McFarlin has been a big part of the site’s high level of quality. He’s written 111 articles to date, including a number of highly valuable series that have become first rate resources on technical WordPress topics; including recent series on using WordPress for web application development and on the WordPress HTTP API.

Tom highlights the deal with Envato on his personal blog as a partnership between his company, Pressware, and Envato. Interestingly, as the new editor, Tom is already making a change in the type of author he’s after. As he notes, he’d like to open it up to more than advanced-level content:

Previously, Wptuts+ has specifically asked for WordPress experts to sign up to contribute content. And we still are!

However, because the utility of WordPress is so wide, because so many of us are building different types of things with WordPress, and because our experience ranges anywhere from beginner or intermediate in some areas to advanced in other areas, we believe that anyone who has been working with WordPress has something to teach, and has something to learn.

Japh is staying with Envato. His time was previously split between running Wptuts+ and being the WordPress evangelist for Envato. Now he’ll be able to spend more time as the WordPress evangelist, as well as, according to his statement on the Wptuts+ blog this morning, “a number of other special projects within the Marketplace Team at Envato.” He described his evangelist role to me this way in November:

I’ll be attending events and contributing to core (and other open source projects), doing internal advisement on WordPress related projects, participating in social media and blog conversations, etc.

I’m thrilled to see Envato investing more into the WordPress community, and I’m equally excited that Japh will be able to be an even stronger advocate in the community in his adjusted role. I told Japh privately in November when I learned they were looking for a new editor that I couldn’t imagine a better candidate for the position than Tom McFarlin. I’m happy to see that Tom indeed is partnering up with Envato and the future of the site and Envato’s relations with the WordPress community are both in excellent hands.