When most people think of WordPress history, they picture San Francisco or the U.S. developer community. But Canada has quietly played an outsized role in shaping how WordPress has grown, from pioneering event formats to building platforms that transformed education and publishing.
Humble Bragging on Canada’s WordPress community:
- Canadian universities were among the first to run WordPress Multisite at scale
- Canadian companies have stewarded plugins used on millions of sites, (Delicious Brains)
- Canadian organizers launched the very first BuddyCamp and national WordCamp outside the United States.
This timeline highlights the key moments, events, and people that put Canada on the map in WordPress history – milestones that were not just “local versions” of what others were doing, but genuine firsts that influenced the global community.
Institutional Use of WP Multisite
One of the first large campus‑wide WordPress Multisite deployments globally. UBC Blogs became a model for institutional use of WordPress MU.
WordCamp Vancouver
8th WordCamp in the world was in Vancouver in 2008.
WordCamp:Dev
Specialized WordCamp in Vancouver aimed only at developers. One of the first niche‑focused WordCamps anywhere.
Pressbooks, Montreal
Founded by Hugh McGuire. Transformed WordPress into a book-publishing platform, later adopted across Canadian universities and global OER projects.
BuddyCamp
The first BuddyCamp in the world focused on BuddyPress. It established the BuddyCamp format later used in other cities.
Distributed WordCamps
Calgary, Ottawa, Edmonton, Winnipeg all launched WordCamps, marking Canada as one of the most regionally distributed WP communities outside the U.S.
Delicious Brains
A Canadian company that acquired Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) in 2021, then sold it along with other plugins to WP Engine in 2022 having major global ecosystem impact.
Inaugural WordCamp Canada
The first national WordCamp in Canada (and one of the first outside the U.S.).
Lets make WordCamp Canada 2025 a landmark event – we need you to do that!
🎟️ Tickets are on sale now — and we’d love for you to join us this October in Ottawa.
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