Makarand Mane receives the Yoast Care fund for his contribution to the WordPress community

Meet Makarand Mane, a valued member of the WordPress community! Anand Upadhyay nominated her for the Yoast Care Fund for his commitment and valuable contributions. Let’s learn more about this WordPress enthusiast.

Nominator Anand Upadhyay: “Makarand is an active community member and contributor. His work in building his local community is commendable. He has organized local WordCamp and WordPress Campus Connect in his city, Kolhapur, India.
The way he is working on building his local community and introducing professionals and students to WordPress and contributions deserves some recognition.“

Let’s get to know Makarand Mane

Those are some lovely words by Anand. Let’s get to know Makarand a bit better and ask him some questions about his work and passion for WordPress:

Hi, Makarand! How did you first discover WordPress, and why did you start contributing?

I first discovered WordPress through a friend’s company. I used to visit there and saw them working with both Joomla and WordPress. Around that time, I got my first website project for a real estate builder. I asked my friend which platform I should use. He suggested Joomla, so I built my first website in Joomla, but it took nearly three months.

Soon after, I got another project for a school website through a friend. It was an unpaid project, so I decided to experiment with WordPress. That experience completely changed my perspective. I found WordPress much simpler, more accessible, and faster to work with, both from the front end and the back end. Compared to Joomla, where you had to manually find extensions, upload files, create modules, and go through many steps, WordPress felt smooth and intuitive. Installing plugins was just a few clicks, and building pages was much easier.

I built that school website in WordPress, and after that, I never looked back. Since 2011, WordPress has been my primary platform. While working on projects, I learned a lot by reading documentation on WordPress.org and experimenting. For example, I started building custom post types and meta fields for content-heavy websites, which helped me grow technically.

I discovered the WordPress community in 2014 when I attended my first WordCamp in Mumbai with a friend. That event opened my eyes to how people were working smarter using workflows, tools, and collaboration, while I had been doing things the hard way. It also introduced me to the spirit of contribution.

Over time, my contribution journey expanded into other areas of WordPress. I participated in the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program (Q4 2024 Cohort), where I gained hands-on experience with core contributions during the WordPress 6.7 cycle. That experience helped me better understand how open-source collaboration works and gave me the confidence to contribute beyond translations.

What motivated me to contribute was seeing people actively giving back to WordPress, earning contributor badges, and making an impact. I was inspired by the energy of WordCamps, meeting people, speaking on stage, and being part of something bigger than just client work. That’s what encouraged me to start contributing and stay involved through speaking, volunteering, organizing, and mentoring.

What’s one WordPress-related goal you have for this year?

One of my biggest WordPress-related goals this year is to focus on WordPress education and community growth, especially for students.

When we started WordPress community initiatives in Kolhapur, one thing I realized was that there are many technical colleges in and around the city, but students are often unaware of the opportunities WordPress can create, whether in development, design, content, marketing, freelancing, or open-source contribution.

As someone with years of WordPress experience, I want to help bridge that gap. Last year, we focused on four colleges through Campus Connect initiatives, and this year, we aim to expand to more colleges and reach more students. I want to help educate students about WordPress, open source, and the opportunities available in the ecosystem so they can build careers in the future. I strongly believe WordPress can create meaningful opportunities for students in smaller cities without requiring them to move away immediately. At the same time, this can also help local companies discover skilled WordPress talent and strengthen the local ecosystem.

Another important focus area is mentorship. We recently helped start new WP Student Clubs in nearby colleges, and one of my goals is to actively mentor those student communities in their early stages. I also want to mentor students through the WP Credits program and help them get introduced to contribution and open source early in their journey. Additionally, I want to strengthen community contribution. Since my own contribution journey started in 2016 through the Polyglots team, we ran a WordPress Online Contribution Series for four weeks last year. This year, we want to establish it as a more official, ongoing initiative to help more people begin contributing to WordPress with community support.

What advice would you give to someone just starting with WordPress?

My biggest advice would be: start with the basics and explore WordPress deeply instead of rushing into shortcuts.

When you install WordPress, don’t immediately jump into ready-made themes and only change content. That alone doesn’t make someone a WordPress developer. Open the WordPress backend, click every option, make changes, and observe where those changes reflect on the frontend. Explore the entire dashboard so you understand what each feature actually does.

Once you are comfortable with the WordPress UI, start understanding how WordPress works behind the scenes (themes, plugins, templates, hooks, and overall architecture). There is a lot of great learning content available through WordPress Learn, so I would strongly recommend completing courses step by step.

In my own journey, WordPress became my learning platform. I did not know PHP deeply when I started, but while working with WordPress themes and plugins, I naturally learned HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. WordPress gave me a practical way to improve my technical skills. If your basics are strong, learning advanced things becomes much easier.

My second piece of advice is: don’t learn alone. Join the community.

Look for WordPress meetups happening in your city, attend them, make connections, and learn from real people. Online tutorials and AI tools can be great helpers, but they shouldn’t replace community learning. Meetups and WordCamps help you learn from people solving real-world problems. Those conversations often give insights that structured learning cannot.

Strong fundamentals also make advanced things easier. In my own journey, after understanding WordPress basics deeply. I started exploring tools like WP-CLI and eventually built my own automation script to solve repetitive WordPress setup problems in my workflow. That happened because I first focused on learning the fundamentals properly.

Also, WordPress has many education initiatives today. If you are a student, you can join or start a WP Student Club in your college, or participate in programs like WP Credits where you can learn with mentors and gain hands-on exposure to open source.In short: learn the basics well, build things practically, and become part of the community early.

Who is your WordPress hero?

Many people in the WordPress community have inspired me over the years, but if I had to choose one WordPress hero, it would be Ajit Bohra.

I knew him from around 2017, but he became a real role model for me during the WordPress Contributor Mentorship Program (Q4 2024 Cohort). I wanted to learn how to contribute to WordPress Core, and Ajit was the mentor for my group. He always gave time whenever needed and guided us patiently.

One thing I really appreciate about him is that he helped dispel many of the myths I had about contribution. Many people think WordPress Core contributions are only about writing code, but he explained that contributions happen in many different ways. He introduced us to areas like testing, playground, bug scrubs, triage, reviewing tickets, and other contribution opportunities where people can make a real impact. He helped me understand what contribution truly means.

Beyond the mentorship program, whenever we meet at WordCamps, he offers a lot of practical guidance. Even for small things, he takes time to mentor. I still remember one piece of advice he gave me when I introduced myself as both a developer and agency owner. He explained how positioning matters. If you say you are a developer, people see you one way; if you say you run an agency, people see you differently. It was a small but powerful insight into professional growth and communication.

For me, a hero is someone who not only teaches but genuinely helps others grow, and that’s why Ajit Bohra is my WordPress hero.

What’s your favorite WordPress memory or something you’re most proud of?

I have many favorite memories in WordPress. But the one I am most proud of is rebuilding the WordPress community in Kolhapur after COVID.

When I first joined the WordPress community around 2014, I realized that WordCamps and community involvement could create a strong sense of identity and belonging. I wanted to contribute through speaking, volunteering, and organizing. In fact, my journey as a WordCamp speaker started at WordCamp Pune 2017 on my birthday in 2017, which is still one of my most special WordPress memories.

But the proudest chapter came after COVID, when the WordPress community in Kolhapur had almost disappeared. I restarted the journey almost alone, with encouragement from community members who believed we should at least try and see where things would go. We restarted meetups with just a couple of people. Slowly reached out to local members, and people from outside Kolhapur also stepped in to support us.

What happened next was beyond expectations. The community slowly reignited, and eventually, we organized the first edition of WordCamp Kolhapur in 2025. Many people believed it would be difficult to organize a WordCamp on that scale in a Tier-3 city. Especially after the community had almost disappeared post-COVID. Honestly, even I had doubts at times, but it happened successfully with around 269 attendees. Seeing the community come back to life and new people actively joining meetups again is probably one of the proudest moments of my WordPress journey.

What made this even more meaningful was seeing the ripple effect afterward. Following the positive response to WordCamp Kolhapur 2025, more community members started taking the initiative on their own. One member stepped forward and led a Campus Connect program in Kolhapur. While others helped organize the WordPress Online Contribution Series. For me, that was a real sign that the community had started growing beyond just one person’s effort.

Another moment that made this journey special was receiving a Diversity Scholarship to attend WordCamp Asia 2025. For me, it felt like the WordPress community recognized the effort I had been putting into growing and supporting the ecosystem. Later, being selected as a co-lead for Contributor Day at WordCamp Asia 2026 became another memorable milestone. And on a lighter note, one fun obsession actually came true. I once said I wanted to travel to WordCamps by car, and over time, that became a reality. Together with friends, I traveled about 7000 km across multiple WordCamps, creating memories I’ll never forget.

Thank you for this interview, Makarand, and for all your contributions to the WordPress community! Do you know someone like Makarand Mane who also deserves to be in the spotlight? Go to our Yoast Care page and nominate them right away.