As you might know, I am French, and since my talk in January at WordCamp Paris, i spent more time trying to know who makes the French community, and I wanted to understand why it’s so active. First of all most French WordPress thoughts leaders speak English, that’s the reason why they follow WordPress news thoroughly. Secondly they are passionate and involved. And finally they are talented. Honestly, they really are.
They are all specialized, some in the security, some in trainings, some in SEO, or some are even specialists in specific plugins like BuddyPress, or in WooCommerce (guess who I’m talking about!). But who are they? Who makes the WordPress French community so awesome? I will list in that post French people that I personally follow and for who I have a deep respect. I will probably forget some of them, and I do apologize for that, but I will do my best to be exhaustive.
Let’s meet WordPress French Gurus!
 |
Julio POTIER |
| Website | boiteaweb.fr – blog.secupress.fr |
| @BoiteAWeb |
Julio Potier is a WordPress security expert that writes weekly posts, mainly about how to secure a WP install. He is also the author of a really good ebook about the secrets of the wp-config.php file, a must read, trust me! I had the chance to meet Julio at WordCamp Paris, where he made an excellent talk, and at Leiden for the WordCamp Europe. If you need a security expert, he’s your man! Finally, Julio as a bunch of great free plugins, check them out on his wordpress.org profile page.
 |
Daniel ROCH |
| Website | seomix.fr |
| @rochdaniel |
Daniel Roch is the French SEO specialist. He knows pretty much everything about how to optimize a WordPress install for Google. Daniel is the author of one of the best French book about WordPress SEO that you can find here. Like Julio, I met him at the same WordCamps, and all I have to say is that this guy is briliant!
 |
Fabrice DUCARME |
| Website | wpformation.com |
| @wpformation |
Fabrice Ducarme provides advanced WordPress trainings in Paris and in the south of France. He made a great WooCommerce related talk at WordCamp Paris, and a guy that promotes WooCommerce can’t be a bad guy right? What really amazes me with Fabrice is the number of posts he writes and how these posts have a real impact on the French community. Any single post he writes receives tons of comments!
 |
Aurelien DENIS |
| Website | wpchannel.com |
| @wpchannel |
Aurelien Denis is someone that provide a huge quantity of WordPress resources on his website. He also provides podcasts. Speaker at WordCamp Paris 2011, i met him quickly at WC Paris 2013, but unfortunately I didn’t get the time to spend more time with him. What I love with Aurelien is that he is so passionate, that’s just crazy, this guy lives and breathes WordPress. Check his website, I’m sure you won’t be disappointed!
 |
Mathieu VIET (aka iMath) |
| Website | imathi.eu |
| @imath |
Mathieu Viet, also known as iMath is a BuddyPress aficionado and an awesome plugin developer. He made so many great stuff on BuddyPress that I really wonder if he takes the time to sleep… Simply crazy! Apart from being a thought leader, Mathieu is also very sporty and real nice guy that I met a few times and the first time was at WordCamp Paris, where he did a great talk about… BuddyPress of course! That’s great to have such a motivated guy in the French community that promotes BuddyPress!
 |
Willy BAHUAUD |
| Website | wabeo.fr |
| @willybahuaud |
I have to admit that the more I read Willy’s blog, the more I am impressed. His latest post about the Heart-Beat API is simply one of the best post I’ve ever read about this very specific API. Willy is a graphic designer and a developer, and it’s so unusual to be good in design and in developing code that I had to mention it. Thanks Daniel Roch to have introduced WordPress to Willy!
 |
François-Xavier BENARD |
| Website | fxbenard.com |
| @fxbenard |
François-Xavier Benard, known as fxbenard on the web is a great guy that I met at WordCamp Europe, late at night! And wow… this guy is amazing! He’s what we can call a real nice person, he’s funny, entire, and talented. He’s passionate by translations and everything around making WordPress, themes and plugins multilingual. I know that he’s working on a fantastic project, so if you have any suggestion about how to make translation system better, ping FX!
 |
Jonathan BUTTIGIEG |
| Website | jbuttigieg.net – geekpress.fr |
| @GeekPressFR |
I met Jonathan at WordCamp Paris, but before i met him in person, i read his books, because yes Jonathan is the author of two great books (a memento and a book). Basically his memento is a great way to have a summary of the Codex most useful functions on paper. Pretty nice when you don’t have internet connection.
 |
Amaury BALMER |
| Website | herewithme.fr |
| @herewithme |
Amaury Balmer is the boss of BeApi, a WordPress agency based in Paris. He also makes part of WordPress-fr.net, the team behind WordCamp Paris. What i like with Amaury is that his blog posts are the reflect of who he is: technical and straight to the point. Simply awesome. But as he’s very busy he doesn’t publish and that’s a shame. On the other side he’s very active on Twitter and is always ready to provide good advices.
 |
Grégoire NOYELLE |
| Website | gregoirenoyelle.com |
| @gregoirenoyelle |
Grégoire Noyelle is a webdesigner and a Genesis fan that provides great posts mainly about this framework but not also. I like the fact that he’s not only a coder but also a Photoshop advanced user that posts pretty good articles about how to use the Adobe’s software to create WordPress themes. Grégoire was also at WordCamp Europe where I met him (also late at night…). Finally he is also a WP trainer.
 |
Francis CHOUQUET |
| Website | fran6art.com |
| @Fran6 |
Francis Chouquet is well known for two reasons: he’s talented and he wrote the most complete resource in French on how to create a WordPress (this post had more than 850 000 views and over 500 comments!). He also made a great talk at WordCamp Paris 2011. Unfortunately I never met him in person, but i’d love to.
Sincerely? No girls?
Well, I have to admit that the French community suffers of not having many girls involved… I’d like to mention @jennybeaumont and @aloisia who start to be involved and that’s great. I hope that Jenny will get a chance to speak at WordCamp Paris 2014!
And the others…
While I was writing this post I realized that there are so many talented and active people in the WordPress community, and unfortunately I don’t have the time to list them all, so i’d like to not forget: @benjaminlupu, @benkenobi07, @TweetPressFr, @jb_ma, @cree1site, @CreativeJuiz, @geoffrey_crofte, @ozh, @Raherian, @theloopfr, @thierrypigot, @pixenjoy, @gd6d, and @xibe!
Thanks all, you’re awesome! ;-)
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.