Member Spotlight: Rhys Wynne

I am a freelance WordPress Plugin developer, author and speaker. I’m originally from North Wales, but now reside in Newton-le-Willows, which is a small village between Liverpool and Manchester in North West England.

I have been working with WordPress since 2006, and in 2013 I wrote bbPress Complete (ISBN-13: 978-1782167242). I’ve written plugins that have appeared on the WordPress repository, spoken at WordCamps throughout the UK and Ireland, and co-organised WordCamp Manchester 2015 and 2016. I also contributed to the 3.9 and 4.4 releases of WordPress. In 2018 I left my job as a WordPress developer in an agency to go freelance, and Dwi’n Rhys (kind-of Welsh for “I am Rhys”) has been going ever since. My client list includes everything from large multinational companies, to small agencies and side projects. I previously worked for a multinational SEO agency, meaning I straddle the technical SEO field as well as being a WordPress developer.

Away from WordPress I enjoy video games (I collect retro games), playing and watching cricket for my local village team, travel and most other sports.

What do you enjoy most about working in WordPress?

The extensibility and the open source nature of WordPress is what I appreciate most about it. Most days, even when I have a problem I cannot figure out I can take a dive into the code to figure out how something works. When I first started it was very much a blogging platform (I believe that in the first version I was introduced to back in the day you couldn’t even have a page as a “home page!”), so there was a lot of extending needed. With the actions and filters, you can take WordPress and make you do what you want with it. It’s fabulous in that way.

The community as well is something that I’ve grown to treasure, with members of the wider WordPress community becoming close friends. It’s a fantastic community that has helped me grow both personally and professionally, and I enjoy the meetups and chats with people in said communities. Anything from a bug fix to how business is going, even just mental health check-ins. The WordPress community has provided me with it. It helped a lot during the pandemic and now we’re coming out the other side with meetups happening again, it’s been great reconnecting with those folks again in person.

What do you love most about your Post Status membership?

My Post Status membership has been great in helping me keep my finger on the pulse with what’s happening in the wider WordPress world. Being a freelancer, time is extremely limited as to what’s going on and I can feel overwhelmed with what’s happening within WordPress. Even with popular blogs out there it can be tough focussing on what’s important and relevant to me. Post Status’ newsletter is one of those curated news sources that gives focus as to what’s important out there, so it’s well worth checking out.

Also, as a freelancer, there’s a lot of working by myself. The community meetups I really enjoy and it’s great to connect with people, particularly a completely different group of folks from all over the world that I wouldn’t have the chance of meeting otherwise. It’s great to get their perspective, as well to offer mine, to what’s happening in WordPress.

What business/web/WordPress advice do you have for others in our industry?

My freelance advice would be to build a support network. You never know where your next referral will come from, or next opportunity, so make sure people know what you do so they can pass on work to you. Treat a referral with respect and you never know how far it’ll go. I’m still getting referrals from people I met 15 or 20 years ago at the start of my career. You have no idea how things come full circle.

Similarly, find a way to disconnect. Get a hobby or an interest, particularly one that will take you away from a screen. Having one of those really helped my mental health, as freelancing can be a lonely experience. Having the opportunity for an hour or two a week to speak to different people, who have no interest in what you do for a living, and doing something that doesn’t use the part of your brain that you use coding can be incredibly useful. You’re not useful burned out, so looking after yourself really looks after your business.