Yoast Care fund: An interview with Fahim Murshed

Today we’re interviewing Fahim Murshed, who received a nomination for our Yoast Care fund from Arslan Ahmed. Arslan nominated him for everything he contributes to the community. In addition to his involvement in WordCamps and contributions the Core, Support and Themes teams, Fahim is a plugin developer with a passion for the community. Let’s find out more about Fahim and his contributions to WordPress. But first, we’ll let Arslan tell you why he nominated Fahim!

Nominator Arslan Ahmed: “Fahim is a true WordPress evangelist in spirit and personality. He’s a lead organizer of the WordPress Barishal meetup, which is a community of 50+ WordPress lovers. He dedicates a lot of time to WordPress and is an active community member in Bangladesh who has been involved in WordCamps and meetups since 2017. He is a code writer, plugin developer, forum moderator and providing WordPress support to beginners.”

Let’s get to know Fahim Murshed!

Thank you for those lovely words, Arslan. Now, let’s get to know this WordPress fanatic better by asking him some questions:

Hi, Fahim. So tell us, what do you do?

As a web developer loving WordPress from 2008 as an active WordPress community person, I work on WordPress online and offline, mainly in Bangladesh. I also work as a WordPress support specialist at Brainstorm Force. This Indian-based WordPress company makes popular WordPress products like the Astra theme, page builder addons, and many more.

I’m a full-time WordPress developer. I love to code, develope themes and plugins and provide WordPress support to beginners. I make websites using WordPress. I partly contribute to the WordPress.org community, especially in the theme review team and Support Team (Bengali Forums).

How did you come into contact with WordPress?

After graduation, I had a lot of free time to learn new technologies. I made my website on free hosting. I am a self-taught programmer. Also, I made the site with Microsoft ForntPage (HTML/CSS). One day, I searched on Google “how to create a blog site?” and found WordPress CMS—installed WordPress 2.5 (code name Brecker) on my first domain Gournadi.com. The fun part is I was a Joomla guy back then. I had made hundreds of websites with Joomla CMS; then, ultimately, I moved to WordPress.

Why do you love WordPress?

Because I think it is a complete CMS, suitable both for experienced users and beginners, it allows you to create every kind of website, from blogs to e-commerce, anything that you want. Worldwide, the WordPress CMS runs 40% of websites. It’s free and open-source, and easy to learn! It’s also the result of the contributions of people from different countries and competencies. If I face any issues, I simply search for a solution on Google. That way I can get instant support from the WordPress forums, or any local groups that are WordPress related (Facebook/IRC).

Can you tell us about your first contribution?

When I started using WordPress, I lived in Dhaka and attended a few Dhaka WordPress Meetups. When I moved back to Barishal, I found out that there were no local meetups. I hosted the first WordPress Meetup in Barishal on March 10th, 2019. So, I feel proud of my experience as a meetup organizer. I was very excited about that. Before hosting our first meetups, my first contribution journey started as translation contributor on WordPress 4.9.

Who is your WordPress mentor?

The whole WordPress community is my hero/mentor! Everyone inspires me, recommends me, and I’m always welcomed. There are many “geeks” in the WordPress community who inspire me, and I want to mention a few of them: I want to mention Rifat Wahid Alif from Germany. My friend, my brother, sweet and innocent mentor who always motivates and encourages me.

My guru, who always teaches me like a brother: Hasin Hayder. He is an educator of LWHH, who has helped and guided the entire WordPress community of Bangladesh and helped us as a friend and mentor from the beginning. Also Lincoln Islam, CEO of RexTheme, guides me sometimes like a brother. And lastly, Monika Rao, from India, and Sergey Biryukov from Russia. Their contribution to WordPress, and their kindness and vibrant life give me even more motivation to work on WordPress.

Apart from these, many other people influence me with their work and contribution to the WordPress Community.

What moment are you most proud of?

There are a few moments that made me feel proud. I was so excited when I saw my name as a WordPress Core Contributor on the WordPress about page. And when I organized my first WordPress Meetup. Translating WordPress into my native language (bn_BD) was terrific fun as well.

Also, a moment that is very special for me is when I attended WordCamp Kolkata, India 2019. Where I met a vast number of likeminded geeks. It was my first international WordCamp journey. Furthermore, I’m proud of my contributions to WordPress Core, Documentation, Hosting, Marketing, Meetup Organizer, Meta Contributor, Support Contributor, Support Team, Themes Team, Training, Translation, Translation Editor, WordPress.tv, and I contribute to WP-CLI as well. I’m also proud to be a part of WordPress Bengali forums.

What would you love to do in the future?

I love what I’m currently doing; I’m contributing to WordPress core, Block Editor, Meta and providing solutions on the WordPress forums. So I’ll keep doing it in the future.

Where can people find you?

I’m generally available on WordPress Slack (https://make.wordpress.org/chat/), as @FahimMurshed. Besides that, I’ve got the Twitter or you can check out (and contact me on) fahimm.com. I attend WordCamps (WordCamp Kolkata and WordCamp Dhaka, and WordCamp Europe online) and I am more than happy to chat with folks.

Thank you so much for this great honor. I am beyond delighted to receive this award and promise to continue giving back to the WordPress community!

Thank you, Fahim. It was a pleasure speaking to you and finding out more about everything you do for the WordPress community! If you’re reading this and know someone like Fahim Murshed who deserves a nomination for our Care fund, go to our Yoast Care page to nominate them.