Thanks to the efforts of dedicated contributors from around the world, the WordPress Photo Directory has now surpassed 20,000 photos, marking an exciting milestone in its growth. All the submitted photos are CC0-licensed. It was only recently that the Photo Directory received a revamp.
WordPress Photo Directory Inception
The Photo Directory was announced during the State of the Word 2021 by Matt Mullenweg and the first call for team reps and volunteers was published by Angela Jin. The initial team reps for the WordPress Photo Directory were Marcus Burnette, Katie Richards, and Topher DeRosia.
The current team reps for 2025 are Nilo Velez, Bigul Malayi, and Michele Butcher-Jones. The 10k milestone was achieved in October 2023. As per the WP Photo Directory Stats, a project created by Marcus Burnette, there are over 2200 contributors and 34 moderators.
There are thirteen categories of photos:
- Animals
- Architecture
- Arts & Culture
- Athletics
- Fashion
- Food & Drink
- Interiors
- Nature
- Objects
- Patterns
- People
- Technology
- Transportation
Photos in Milestones: A Journey to 20000
As per the stats on the WP Photo Directory Stats website, the first photo to be published in the WordPress Photo Directory was the one submitted by Scott Reilly.
The 100th milestone was marked by the photo submitted by Marcus Kazmierczak.
The 500th milestone was marked by this photo from KafleG
The 1000th one was contributed by Topher.
The 5000th one was from fevion88.
The 10000th one by Bestinjac.
This photo by Raju Alam marked the 15000 milestone.
Nilo Velez’s photo marks the 20,000th photo in the directory.
The stats for the Photo Directory’s top contributors haven’t been updated in a long time. The last update was provided by Michelle Frechette in February 2023. The top contributors back then were Bigul Malayi (894), Topher DeRosia (842), and Josh Pollock (451).