Hi! I’m Taco and I’m community manager here at Yoast. Of course, I’m much more than just a job title. Let’s do the short version first. After being in Customer Support for the better part of 7 years at Yoast, I transitioned into my current position as Community manager early 2020. This allows me to spend even more time with the community that became my 3rd family; the WordPress community. Third? Well yeah. I have a wife and two amazing daughters, and consider my friends and colleagues at Yoast to be my second family. I love meeting and connecting people. Being at social events gives me more energy than one can imagine. I do have strong opinions and I’m prototype Dutch, so I can be quite direct and rather blunt, even when I try really hard not to be. If we haven’t met yet, I’d love to meet you. And in the meantime, please do reach out on Twitter or the WordPress Slack.
You can find Taco on: TwitterLinkedinFacebookInstagramGithubWordPress
Ok. So how did I get here?
Back in 2013, I ran into this company that was looking for a junior developer. “Hire for talent, train for skill”, they said. Being a Computer Sciences student, I knew I didn’t have any skill yet, so I applied. And, much to my own surprise, was hired. And that’s how my adventure at Yoast started.
And an adventure it was, when just weeks later, Joost (the founder of Yoast) sent me to my very first WordCamp: WordCamp Europe in Leiden. On the first day, it was overwhelming, but over the course of three days, I made a ton of new friends. My love for the WordPress community was instant. These Open Source people were so extremely welcoming! Fortunately, I got to attend more WordPress events. And the more WordCamps and meetups I attended, the more I enjoyed it. Naturally, the next step was joining an organizing team…
Meanwhile at Yoast, I switched from being a developer (remember that talent part.. yeah.. not it.) to providing customer support. As the adoption of our plugins grew quickly, I soon needed help and not long after I found myself managing our growing international support team.
And then, early 2020 and in the midst of a global pandemic, I was asked to take a next step. I left my position as Manager Customer Support and became community manager. And that’s opened a whole new world…
There’s so much more I want to tell you. Because thanks to Yoast, I’ve learned more about myself, the world, Open source in general and WordPress in particular than I ever imagined I would. But let’s save all of these stories for a better place and time.
I hope to meet you soon, so we can exchange stories while in good company at one of the amazing volunteer-organized open source events. And in the meantime, please do feel invited to reach out on Twitter or the WordPress Slack.
“I came for the software and stayed for the community.” In this episode of our series Why we love WordPress, I’ll show you what’s behind the software we love. Software isn’t writing itself (yet), and behind WordPress is a great number of volunteer teams working on the software and everything around it. These people are […]
Read: "The welcoming community of WordPress"
Today, MaxServ and Yoast proudly present Yoast SEO Premium for TYPO3! With this premium version you can take your TYPO3 website to the next level. Create redirects effortlessly, make your content rank for multiple focus keywords and find out which pages should get more links.In addition to that, we’re also releasing Yoast SEO for TYPO3 […]
Read: "Yoast SEO Premium for TYPO3 available now!"
It’s with great pleasure that we announce the release of Yoast SEO for TYPO3 2.0. This brand new version includes functional and technical changes, making the extension easier to use and more complete! It’s now available on the TYPO3 Extension Repository, on Packagist and Github. The new version has been a team effort, and many people […]
Read: "New release: Yoast SEO for TYPO3 2.0"
Today, we’re announcing the start of our final testing round before the official release of Yoast SEO for Magento 2. This release candidate contains all the functionalities that will be available in the 1.0 release. The next few weeks will be all about testing. That’s why we want to invite you to help us test Yoast […]
Read: "Release candidate Yoast SEO for Magento 2 now available"
Mid February, we announced our cooperation with the Dutch web agency MaxServ. Together we’ve been working on two new versions of Yoast SEO: Yoast SEO for TYPO3 and Yoast SEO for Magento 2. After an intense period of developing and testing we tagged our first stable version of Yoast SEO for TYPO3 last week. Such […]
Read: "Yoast goes TYPO3"
Let’s face it. You don’t like testing new software. You want software to be done and production ready. You don’t have time to try out new software. Especially when you’re in the middle of a busy period. I know. Now spare a few minutes of your precious time and read these three reasons why you […]
Read: "Three reasons for you to test Yoast SEO 3.1-RC"Compared to many other IT-related conferences, WordCamps have always been slightly less technical. Not as focused on writing code as many others are. Over the years I’ve learned this may have something to do with the way our community is built. The WordPress community is not as homogeneous as others. It consists of developers, designers, […]
Read: "The social WordCamp US"
Let’s be honest. We’ve all been tempted at times. A gathering of hundreds or thousands of people with the same interest, the same goals, the same vision. That sounds really promising, doesn’t it? Well no. It doesn’t. Let me show you why you should never attend a WordCamp. WordCamps are full of people As most […]
Read: "You should never attend a WordCamp"
It all started long, long ago in a town far, far away (from most of you) when Joost came up with a major improvement for our Yoast SEO plugin. “Imagine”, he said, “imagine that you’d no longer have to wait for your post to be finished and saved to analyze the content. Imagine that changes […]
Read: "Road to Yoast SEO 3.0"
Taco likes to talk about Yoast SEO, community involvement and company culture.
Yoast SEO
During the Exabytes webinar, Taco gave a presentation about Yoast SEO. He takes you through some SEO basics and talks about what the Yoast SEO plugin can do.
SEO
[Dutch] Together with Marcel Bootsman from Kinsta, Taco talks about what SEO is and why it's so important to do SEO. He also shares a number of 'quick wins' and lastly speaks about how you can optimize your site continuously.
Yoast SEO
In this interview, Taco tells about his job at Yoast and how Yoast built such a strong community.
A few months after Taco joined Yoast, WordCamp Europe was held. Immediately he was impressed by the friendly, welcoming feeling and he was able to meet a lot of new people. Now he talks about volunteering at WordCamp Europe himself!
Panel discussion
Take a look at the WordCamp US 2016 Contributor Panel with Taco, Michael Arestad, Gary Pendergast, Joe Dolson and Tina Kesova
In this talk, Taco speaks about both attending and organizing a local meetup. Why is it that the tech community is eager to join a meet up? And what if there's no meet up to attend? How would you organize one yourself? Taco's provides some tips & tricks!
