Andy is the creator of Miles (bymiles.ai), a WordPress specialist agent that helps you design and build beautiful WordPress sites.
Andy has been involved with WordPress for more than 20 years, including 17 of those as a product leader at Automattic. He now builds solo from Vancouver, BC alongside his team of agents.
Q&A with Andy
Who or what helped you find your footing in WordPress, and how do you try to pay that forward today?
My first intro to WordPress was helping a friend with his blog, coding one myself and realizing there must be a better way. Then stumbling into WordPress and loving what it was and represented. This lead me to working with WordPress more and more and eventually building sites for others. Then ultimately on to building BuddyPress for a client of mine. It all snowballed from there.
If you could engineer one connection at WCEH 2026 — a conversation, an intro, a collaboration — what would it be?
I’d love to connect with anyone willing to talk to me about how AI has changed the way they work, especially how they work with websites, plugins, code, and WordPress in general. It’s a fast moving space and sharing perspectives will help me better understand how AI can be a booster, rather than a constantly morphing threat to people building with WordPress.
WordPress powers 43% of the web, but it’s the people who keep it alive. What’s a moment in this community that reminded you why you stay?
Going solo last year. I expected it to be quiet. Instead people from the WordPress community showed up unprompted, helping test my new product bymiles.ai. That feedback is gold, and reminded me of the enthusiasm and energy from the early days, and that it still exists.
What does the WordPress community get right that other tech communities don’t. What could we still do better?
I think we get durability right. People stay for years in this community, so reputation matters and the way you treat others compounds. People disappear, then come back after years and pick up the conversation. I think that is genuinely rare these days. In terms of what we can do better, I think we can get bogged down in the technical minutia as a project instead of striving to build from the perspective of the user and their needs. I would like to see more connection between what is being built and what people need. (edited)
What’s a form of contribution you think is undervalued, and why does it matter?
I would build on my last answer, sharing the end user experience and frustrations using WordPress for different needs. Then surfacing that with the people building it. I realize that is hard, and that getting the point across can sometimes be difficult, but I think WordPress needs more of it to remain strong and relevant.
A lot of people want to contribute but feel they’re not technical enough. What would you say to them?
Firstly, the technical bar is dropping so I would encourage anyone to explore AI and coding agents to see how they change that perspective. Describing a problem clearly is an incredibly valuable skill. The best contributions I’ve received to Miles were not code. They were someone saying “I tried this and got stuck right here”. Finding problems is hard, especially experience problems that need unique perspectives. (edited)