Kathryn thrives on helping people get the most out of WordPress. After a career designing and building websites for clients, she joined Automattic as a Happiness Engineer in 2012 and is currently a member of the Theme Team, where she help folks with all types of theme-related issues on both WordPress.com and self-hosted sites. She enjoys spreading her passion for WordPress at WordCamps, Girl Geeks, Ladies Learning Code, and other grassroots events. Non-WordPress hours are spent collecting vintage Pyrex mixing bowls, growing organic garlic, and cavorting with her four felines.
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Kathryn will be giving a talk titled “Getting Comfortable With Child Themes“.
What is your favorite improvement to WordPress this past year?
The enhanced theme showcase in Appearance > Themes!
Why did you decide to speak at WordCamp Montreal?
Montreal is my hometown and I can’t resist giving back to the supportive WordPress community we’re so lucky to have here.
What is your talk going to be about?
If you’ve heard about child themes but never made one, or haven’t yet wrapped your head around them, this talk is for you. I’ll demystify child themes in plain language and show you how to set one up in just a few minutes.
What is the one thing you want people to walk away with from your talk?
Child themes are easy and useful once you understand how to make one.
Who in the WordPress community inspires you? Who do you follow?
All the people who volunteer their time on unglamorous tasks that don’t get you credits in a WordPress release, like answering forum & IRC support questions, writing handbooks, editing the Codex, advocating accessibility, and translating everything.
What new feature would you like to see in the future?
I would love to see some improvements to the theme repo on WordPress.org that would bring it more in line with the plugin repo, like the ability to display tabs for an FAQ and screenshots. Being able to give users more information up front about how to set up a theme properly – apart from the readme file – would be extremely helpful.
