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Joost de Valk

Partner at Emilia Capital

@joostdevalk Wijchen, The Netherlands joined Jul 2007

joost.blog github.com/jdevalk Slack: @joostdevalk
    Teams Core Meta
    Languages nl_NL

    Bio

    I’m an internet entrepreneur, probably best known for founding Yoast.

    Together with my wife Marieke I’m an investor in several companies through Emilia Capital, some of which deal with WordPress like Castos, WordProof and Extendify.

    WordPress Origin Story

    I started working with WordPress in 2006, while building css3.info and my personal site which was, back then, still joostdevalk.nl. As I was also working as an SEO consultant and wanted to improve the SEO of my sites, to scratch my own itch I started building SEO plugins. In doing this I found things in core needed fixing so I also started contributing to WordPress core in 2007. I later combined my several SEO plugins into “the” WordPress SEO plugin, later renamed to Yoast SEO.

    Badges

    CODE
    4 badges
    Core Contributor '15 Meta Contributor '16 Plugin Developer Theme Developer
    CONTENT
    2 badges
    Marketing Contributor '19 Photo Contributor '24
    COMMUNITY
    2 badges
    WordCamp Organizer '18 WordCamp Speaker '19
    POLYGLOTS
    2 badges
    Translation Contributor '16 Translation Editor '17

    Current Job

    Partner
    Present
    Emilia Capital

    Recent impact

    Score weights high-impact work (commits, releases, approved translations, props) at 3x routine activity.

    Last 30 days
    2contributions
    high1
    medium1
    score4
    Last 90 days
    2contributions
    high1
    medium1
    score4
    Last 12 months
    4contributions
    high3
    medium1
    score10

    Team focus

    Share of contributions across teams during the last 365 days

    WordPress releases

    Contributed to 27 releases
    • 6.8
    • 6.4
    • 6.3
    • 6.1
    • 5.9
    • 5.8
    • 5.7
    • 5.6
    • 5.5
    • 5.4
    • 5.3
    • 5.2
    • 5.1
    • 5.0
    • 4.9
    • 4.8
    • 4.6
    • 4.4
    • 4.3
    • 4.2
    • 4.1
    • 4.0
    • 3.9
    • 3.8
    • 3.7
    • 3.4
    • 3.2

    Time commitment

    4 hours per week of sponsored contribution time

    Contributions

    Type
    June 2026
    Jun 16 Tue · 20:20
    Core high
    Mentioned in [62511] on WordPress SVN:
    Comments: Remove `touchstart` event listeners from comment reply/cancel links.
    May 2026
    May 24 Sun · 19:24
    GitHub med
    Closed pull request #330 on WordPress/wordpress.org:
    WordPress.tv: make the main heading on video pages an h1
    February 2026
    Feb 02 Mon · 21:16
    Meta high
    Confirmed as a speaker for WordCamp Netherlands 2025
    September 2025
    Sep 22 Mon · 09:55
    Meta high
    Confirmed as a speaker for WordCamp Netherlands 2025
    June 2025
    Jun 13 Fri · 09:19
    Meta high
    Confirmed as a speaker for WordCamp Netherlands 2024
    February 2025
    Feb 28 Fri · 16:56
    Core high
    Mentioned in [59890] on WordPress SVN:
    Site Health: Add a robots.txt check to the server data.
    January 2025
    Jan 05 Sun · 22:12
    Core high
    Mentioned in [59576] on WordPress SVN:
    Comments: Noindex pages containing unapproved comments.
    Jan 02 Thu · 20:31
    Core med
    Created ticket #62770 on Core Trac:
    Move comment cookie handling to user/JavaScript space
    Jan 01 Wed · 13:09
    Core med
    Created ticket #62760 on Core Trac:
    Noindex URLs when they render unapproved comments
    December 2024
    Dec 20 Fri · 08:18
    Community med
    Created issue #1450 in the WordPress/wordcamp.org repository:
    Remove wordpress.org login requirement for buying WordCamp tickets

    Developer

    14 plugins

    Contributor

    7 plugins

    Themes

    1 theme

    • Q

      40+ active installs

    Photos

    1 contribution

    View all 1 photos in the Photo Directory

    Plugins

    3 favorites

    Themes

    1 favorite

    Translations

    1 locale
    nl_NL Nederlands (Dutch) Plugins Translation Editor Translation Contributor

    Translation editor for 9 projects.

    Clicky by Yoast XML Sitemap for PDFs for Yoast SEO Print, PDF, Email by PrintFriendly Tour Operator Tour Operator Reviews Tour Operator Special Offers Tour Operator Team Yoast SEO – Advanced SEO with real-time guidance and built-in AI Comment Experience by Progress Planner

    Contributed translations to 8 projects.

    Clicky by Yoast Custom field finder XML Sitemap for PDFs for Yoast SEO Tour Operator Yoast SEO – Advanced SEO with real-time guidance and built-in AI Comment Experience by Progress Planner Lovecraft LSX

    View all on translate.wordpress.org