As the founder and CEO of R1, I’ve been working on and evangelising distributed ledger technology for longer than Bitcoin has been around. Prior to the launch of the world’s first public blockchain, R1 was consulting businesses on the adoption of distributed polyglot data storage, which when involving financial services often involved the use of customised ledger solutions.
However, before I founded R1 and took on this technical leap, I was obsessed with all things Automattic and even tried to get a job there. Like a lot of developers from my era, I was first introduced to dynamic code through PHP, and the vessel for that journey was WordPress.
When I was the Creative Director at NI-Limits, a digital design agency with clients including Samsung and F&N, we used WordPress exclusively for hundreds of various types of projects. From websites to gaming widget engines and even online user generated radio shows thanks to the added integration of BuddyPress. We built so many unique themes and plugins that we eventually launched our own branded premium theme and plugin company, as well as sponsoring the first WordCamp Malaysia that took place in Kuala Lumpur in 2010.
Prior to forming NI-Limits I had been working on an opensource project built upon BackPress, which was an old framework that was once used by several Automattic projects. It enabled people to build their own content management systems for specific use cases, where I was developing a geo-social platform. In those days, WordPress did not have post types and so the only way to bend it to your will was to fork it, or use BackPress to build your own CMS.
Once custom post types were introduced to WordPress, this project became redundant.
I’ve since gone on to build several content management systems of my own that utilize data storage methods beyond the reach of WordPress, from MongoPress to BloqPress these experiments have pushed boundaries within the NoSQL and Blockchain ecosystems.
Looking back, a lot has happened in the world of WordPress since I joined the decentralized data resistance gang. It started when Automattic purchased BuddyPress and then later bought WooCommerce. Two of the most popular and by far important independent plugins have now become part of the family. In addition, by breaking-out into other social platforms beyond WordPress, Automattic have also more recently acquired the Tumblr and Beeper businesses – proving their commitment to community based communication. This is why given the choice, my preference would always be to use their products rather than my own!
However, their journey has not been without controversy – both at a public level with the WP Engine situation as well as at a technical level with the forced use of the infamous block editor. Nonetheless, throughout all of this there have been some extremely powerful breakthroughs. From the introduction of their headless API, which now allows for WordPress to be used behind the scenes as a management tool for customized APIs that can be consumed by other external applications – as well as the introduction of React data bindings and new MCP functionality.
“There’s a reason over 40% of the web continues to use WordPress, and R1 is proud to be one of those reasons! If you’d like to learn more about how we can use WordPress to build practically anything for you, please reach out and we can have a chat.”
Mark Smalley
Founder & CEO
Social Experiences
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