Ben Lobaugh Joins WDS as Developer Lead!

WDS is proud to welcome our newest team member, Ben Lobaugh! He is joining us as a Developer Lead.

Ben is a native born Washingtonian currently living in the beautiful Seattle area. He has been involved in the open source community since 1998 and wrote his first line of code over 14 years ago! His web career has involved working with companies small and large, hyper-local and multi-national.

Ben first encountered WordPress due to laziness. All his work used to be on fully custom solutions for clients and as such he wrote his own blogging software, sort of. It worked well enough to make a post but did not have any features. After a couple years of no progress, Ben installed WordPress to handle just the blogging portion of his website. As WordPress progressed it became powerful enough to meet the needs of his more generalized clients and he switched to it full-time and stopped writing custom solutions. After moving to Seattle, Ben found and became involved in the WordPress Meetup group and the rest is history. Being involved in the WordPress community is a rich and fulfilling experience.

In his free time, Ben is the editor of the WordPress.org Plugin Developer Handbook, outdoorsy adventurer, and intrepid sailor. He owns a beautiful 23′ sailboat named zzZippety Doo Dah (Zippey for short) that he takes out for leisurely cruises and island adventures. Ben’s other boat is a 33′ Carver cabin-cruiser that he is currently in the process of turning into a liveaboard. Nothing beats being on the water and letting a boat gently rock you to sleep.

When asked why he was excited to join WDS, Ben had this to say —

Everyone in the WordPress community has heard of Brad Williams, Lisa Sabin-Wilson, and Brian Messenlehner. Not only are they highly regarded WordPressers; they are genuinely good people. After a delicious but painful outing with Brad at the most delicious build your own burger joint in Orange County, I knew WebDevStudios would be a great place to work. As I got to know the team and projects I became more impressed with the company. I found myself referring clients to WebDevStudios and knew it was a match made in heaven.

We are extremely excited to have Ben joining the team. We can’t wait to see what he will bring to an already spectacular team!