Let’s begin, this WordCamp is yours

“Good morning! Welcome to WordPress Tech Congress, WordCamp Valencia 2025!”… And that’s how I began my opening speech at this fifth edition and last WordCamp of the year in Spain, held from November 8 to 9 at the La Petxina sports and cultural complex in Valencia. It was an honor to be the team leader, and I’m truly proud of what we achieved. It was an unforgettable experience in which I had the opportunity to design the event together with a great team of passionate organizers, speakers, and volunteers. In this review, I’ll tell you the details, illustrated with numerous photographs. If you were there with us, you’ll be able to relive the memories, and if you weren’t, you’ll now see how we lived that day. Let’s begin, this WordCamp is yours!

What is a WordCamp?

WordPress is an open-source CMS used by 43% of all websites. It is distributed under the GNU General Public License v2 or later. It has a very meaningful mission: “to democratize publishing on the web”, which becomes even more relevant in a digital world where more and more platforms use opaque algorithms that decide how we consume content and exploit our data in ways that are far from ethical. WordPress supports an open and neutral web, a web that belongs to people and gives us the freedom to create and share.

One of the driving forces behind WordPress is its community. A global ecosystem made up of hundreds of people who collaborate with their dedication to develop it and help it grow. And a WordCamp is the conference organized by the community, whose organizers and speakers are all volunteers. We get together with the purpose of learning, collaborating, networking, and also growing the community. During these days, we greet old acquaintances, interact with new people, collect swag from our fabulous sponsors, and eat. These are very special events, with a different feel from commercial conferences because of their family-like, collaborative nature. Everyone is welcome.

Talks and speakers

And that spirit was exactly what we experienced at WordCamp Valencia 2025, which, during that weekend, became the epicenter of WordPress in Spain. This year, under the title “WordPress Tech Congress”, we talked about current technological topics in the WordPress ecosystem, its tools, and associated disciplines.

In total, we had 20 long talks, three of them in English, the Light Talks format, the Speed Builder Game, and Contributor Day. We had an incredible line-up of speakers, experts who shared their experience and delivered talks of truly outstanding quality. In the reviews posted later on social media, attendees spoke of the WordCamp as a “shot of inspiration” and highlighted that “the WordPress community is more alive than ever”.

The content was organized into several categories, one of the main ones being web development. The speakers dug deep into WordPress from the perspective of senior developers.

One of our major talks was given by Ivelina Dimova, titled “Prototyping Intelligent Features for WordPress”. Ivelina is a senior WordPress developer. She has a long history in the WordPress Community and is one of the three team leaders of WordCamp Europe 2026, which will be held in Krakow from June 4 to 6. With her participation, she returned to speaking at WordCamps after a break.

She began by telling us about her participation in the Buildathon competition, an AI-only hackathon/competition in San Francisco organized by DeepLearning.ai and Andrew Ng. There, she created 6 applications in five hours using artificial intelligence tools and ended up winning in the Solo category. This experience made her reflect on how application development has evolved: “Five years ago I wouldn’t have been able to be so fast and efficient”, she told us. From this starting point, her goal was to show us how we can be just as productive in the WordPress ecosystem. She showed us specific tools, how to use them, and a TDD approach adapted to the WordPress ecosystem. In short, she shared the process of how to prototype intelligent features for WordPress, updating us with methods and tools that reveal a new era in web development.

Within this category, there was also a talk with an important piece of news by Fernando Tellado, founder of AyudaWP, very well known in WordPress for his long track record of collaboration. Fernando submitted six talks to the WordCamp, but we contacted him and asked: “Can you talk about the changes in wp-admin and bring us the latest news to the stages of WCVLC25?” And Fernando accepted!

He explained the reinvention and “The future of WordPress wp-admin”, which has gone years without significant changes. To do this, he interviewed Matías Ventura, lead architect of Gutenberg, to bring us fresh information about it. In thirty-five minutes, he explained the new vision, the three pillars of the redesign, the impact for users, and the current status of the project. A big and necessary change because, as Fernando says, “…that the machinery (referring to WordPress) underneath (page builders and dashboards) adapts to our current ways of using the internet: it’s no longer a web of clicks, but a conversational one”. To conclude, he called for participation in building the project.

“It’s your time to contribute. Now is when your voice matters. These changes will affect millions of users. Share your experience, test the prototypes, and help shape the future of WordPress”.

In this category we also had: Sulema Rocha with “From zero to WordPress site in seconds: real productivity with WP-CLI”; Juanma Garrido with “Expanding core blocks with frontend interactivity: HTML API and Interactivity API”; Álvaro Gómez with “WordPress MCP + Abilities API: Talk to your Website”; Fernando Puente with “Evaluating a cache system. Intermediate-Advanced” and Andros Fenollosa with “SASS, the preprocessor that survived the CSS apocalypse”.

Another attractive blocks for the audience was SEO & AI or traffic. Nowday, access to online content no longer depends solely on search engines. Many other entry points to the web also generate traffic and visibility. That’s why SEO experts have begun to add and study the process of discovering websites and content through new Artificial Intelligence tools.

We had Natzir Turrado on the WordPress stage for the first time with his talk “From SEO to AX: prepare your website for agentic traffic”. He is a renowned international expert in SEO and data science. His talk was the result of a year’s work, during which he reverse-engineered agents and agentic browsers to understand how they work and what difficulties they have when navigating the web.

He began with illustrative data: +4,700% increase in traffic from GenAI browsers and chat services to retail sites in the USA; a 9.4% drop in human traffic because people are already interacting directly with AI interfaces; and increasing bot traffic. Natzir explained that websites are no longer only consumed by humans, but also by artificial intelligence agents that browse them, interpret them, and act on them. He told us what these agents actually need to complete tasks, what their weak points are, and how to optimize our websites so these agents can “read”, “understand”, and “use” them.

We also had Dani Leitner with “The real future of our websites: What your SEO agency doesn’t want you to know”, a relevant topic for web designers and developers. Dani is an independent SEO consultant specialized in the DACH market (Germany, Austria, Switzerland). She is passionate about WordPress and organizes the WordPress Meetup in Zürich. She was an organizer of WordCamp Europe Basel 2025.

She started her talk by showing two possible scenarios for the future of the web: the first, with a screen and a chatbot so that the user “navigates” by means of conversations, and the second, a scenario in which there are no real users visiting websites anymore. A web suitable only for agents, which is all code and has no frontend as such, no design layer, no images. “Given current trends, everything will happen in a chatbot”, — she explains. —“For example, you can already buy on Etsy from ChatGPT, and Google does it with PayPal”. In her talk, she walked us through the change in search systems, moving from keyword-based search to conversational search. She talked about new emerging concepts and acronyms, such as LLMO, AEO, and GEO, which are linked to how machines, AI, and agents interact with websites. She recommends anticipating the new purpose of a website: not only to serve human-to-human content, but also to be ready for agents, assistants, and automated workflows that “talk” to the website.

A particularly interesting talk was given by David Ayala with “How to get ChatGPT and Google’s AI to recommend you”, once again impressing the audience, who sat on the stairs of Track 2 to listen to him.

The Digital Marketing category stood out for the quality and appeal of its talks. It couldn’t be missing because many companies use WordPress to build the platforms that will later be key sales tools. Let’s see who took part in this category:

Pablo Moratinos, with “From funnel to flywheel: How to grow with WordPress”. In his day-to-day work, he leads the Data & Experimentation team at Product Hackers, is a WordPress.com brand ambassador, and co-host of Un Billete a Chattanooga. He is the author of the book “Negocios online. Data driven marketing”, published by Anaya Multimedia. He has a long history of contributions to WordPress.

In this talk, he told us how to use WordPress to implement a “flywheel”. First, he introduced the concept: an evolution of the linear acquisition-conversion (funnel) model into the flywheel approach, a continuous growth system that uses customer satisfaction to generate new sales and referrals, creating steady momentum through three phases: attract, engage, and delight. Then, from a technical perspective, he showed how WordPress is a “true growth operator” because it can implement all the phases on the same platform. He wrapped up his talk with examples. A very clear summary of WordPress’s power in digital marketing and how to save resources by having everything on a single platform.

We also had Miguel Florido and his talk: “Connect, convince, convert: The power of in-person conferences in sales”. He is the director of Escuela Marketing and Web, where he teaches specialized training in digital marketing and AI, and he is the founder and director of DSM, one of the largest Digital Marketing and AI conferences held annually in Madrid and Valencia.

It was a technical talk about how to organize a conference, which he explained through his personal and professional experience in marketing. He presented a roadmap with 7 essential points: 1. Alignment with the product, 2. Cost analysis, 3. Choice of speakers and venue, 4. Sponsorship, 5. Ticket types, 6. Event promotion phases, 7. Strategies to sell a product or service. He also showed the tools used to execute the marketing, including WordPress, and project management resources such as a Gantt chart, among others.

The most interesting thing is that, based on the resources he presented, it seems like an easy and simple process, even though it requires a lot of dedication, commitment, and understanding of the context and goals. He also pointed out the advantages of the in-person format over the digital format: spontaneous interaction, high-quality networking, and shared experiences that have a strong emotional impact. Miguel finished by emphasizing that organizing an event means designing experiences that connect emotionally, convince with the proposal, and ultimately generate business results.

Ricardo Tayar also participated in this edition of WordCamp Valencia 2025 with “5 things you must understand (and do) so that your website truly converts”. He is a renowned professional, CEO of Flat 101, a top web design agency in Spain that uses the BXOp (Business eXperience Optimization) work approach and has already been in the market for 12 years.

He began his talk with the following thesis: “if you don’t understand how we make decisions, you can’t design anything that converts”. From here he recommends understanding what the user/customer really wants and aligning it with the business objective; designing the user experience in a way that facilitates the desired action (flow, clarity, motivation); optimizing the technical and functional elements that facilitate conversion (speed, trust, relevance); measuring and analyzing the right data to understand what is working and what isn’t, and acting accordingly; and implementing changes iteratively and validated against reality, not just “because others are doing it”. He ended his talk by assuring us that at this moment, when there is so much digitalization, humanism is more important than ever: -…“touching the emotional chord, which is an art and not easy at all, is going to be the real differentiator in the coming years”.

Within this category, we also had Elena Tur with “Your store doesn’t end at the checkout: how to retain and sell more with automated email marketing from WordPress”, and Marie-Charlotte Pezé: “Earthquake-resistant content strategies” (in English), focused on content and the cultural and paradigm shift brought by Artificial Intelligence.

We also dedicated a space to Automation, as a category, where we had David Cuesta with “This is how you can use N8N on your website to automate”, an open-source tool that has revolutionized the way we work.

Another proposal with a high attendance was in Web Design. Max Camuñas, for the first time at a WordCamp, talked to us about “Designs that hook in the age of AI: tools, trends, design and strategy”. There was a lot of anticipation around this talk, and some attendees had to stand in order to attend it.

In E-commerce, we had the experienced Lidia Marbán with “Cognitive biases in ecommerce boosted with AI”.

We couldn’t fail to talk about Project Management with the experienced Daniel Primo, the mind behind the podcast Web Reactiva, with “Once you do a POC there’s no Stop: Practical AI to turn ideas into projects”.

And finally, the Showcase category, which was first used at WordCamp US 2024. The goal was to show real and successful examples of WordPress in use. For the occasion, we had Óscar Aguilera, CEO of Grupo StartGo, a digital marketing and web design agency, and Miguel Ángel Montañes, its CTO, with the talk “Beyond the CMS: advanced engineering with WordPress”.

Their presentation was divided into two parts. In the first, Óscar answers the following questions: Is WordPress a CMS or a framework? Do large companies use WordPress? Is WordPress secure? Are there projects over 50,000 euros? He gives us the key to defending a WordPress project and answering your future clients. To demonstrate the commercial reach of this CMS, he shares two real proposals, one for 20,000 euros and another for 97,000 euros. In the second part, Miguel, the CTO, walks us through a practical case: the development of a transactional portal for the administrative management of teachers at an educational center. He explains in detail the process and the different methodologies used to create a WordPress-based product that meets the client’s needs. They closed with a powerful message: “WordPress has no limits; the limits are set by us.” What’s essential is not only the software, but also the technical discipline, engineering vision, and strategy behind it.

Light Talks

A very special experimental format. Light Talks are short presentations of around 10 minutes, followed by 15 minutes for audience participation. The five participants are experts in their fields, specialized in creating quality content and skilled at sparking dialogue with their audiences. They are powerful micro-influencers you can follow on their respective channels. Let’s get to know their names:

• Yannick: presented “The WordPressero Traffic Light” and moderated the block.
• Diego Nieto de la Fuente: with “Order Returns in WooCommerce: How to solve the mess?”
• David Carrasco: with “WordPress without Borders: International SEO in the age of AI”.
• Jonathan Velez: with “How to set up your workflow system to build websites in WordPress without wasting time (or money)”.
• Lucia Rico: with “SEO for AI: what’s coming (and what your WordPress still isn’t doing)”.

Thank you so much, Yannick, Diego, David, Jonathan, and Lucía, for taking part and making it possible to implement this format. You are great communicators, and you work day in, day out, directly with your audiences. The attendees really enjoyed interacting with stars like you.

Speed Builder Game

And to close the day, we had Jamie Marsland, director of the WordPress YouTube channel, with this fun format. It was the first time it came to Spain, and we welcomed it with great excitement. The session was held in English and Spanish. We got to see his two contenders, Taisa, a web designer, and Fran Fernandez, a web developer, recreate the following website live and in 30 minutes: KOBU.co.

Jamie started out recreating popular websites on his YouTube channel as a personal experiment: “I had been recreating famous websites in 30 minutes”. From there, he had the idea of turning it into a competition: “What if two people compete to build the same website in 30 minutes?” That’s how the Speed Build format was born. The challenge has now gone to the stages of events such as WordCamp Europe, WordCamp Asia, and other WordPress conferences, turning it into a piece of live entertainment, with a visible countdown and direct audience participation.

It was an exciting session, with applause and nerves. In the end, both of them managed to recreate the website with the help of several technologies, including AI.

Thank you so much, Jamie, for bringing your format to WordCamp Valencia 2025. Your presence at our event made it more international and refreshed it with a totally new format on our stages.

Contributor Day

Contributor Day is a day on which we collaborate with WordPress teams, the ones that usually work remotely. During this day, they get together and work in person. In this edition, it was held on Sunday at La Pechina itself. The driving force behind this meetup was Luis Miguel Climent, who focused it on making it easier for new contributors to get involved.

A detailed explanation was given about the following teams:

• Plugins, represented by Francisco Torres.
• Marketing, represented by Carla Pumutxa.
• Development, represented by Juanma Garrido.
• Photo Directory, represented by Roberto Vázquez.
• Campus Connect, represented by Álvaro Gómez.
• Community, represented by Luis Miguel Climent.

Afterwards, they gathered at their work tables, and participants’ questions were answered. At the end, a recap of the session was done, and follow-up will be carried out with the interested people to help them complete their onboarding on WordPress.org.

Kids’ area

This year, there was a major innovation at WordCamp Valencia 2025: the kids’ area, which welcomed families. Five speakers were able to attend because they had a place to leave their children, and several attendees joined because they were also able to balance childcare with attending the conference.

It’s the first kids’ area at WordCamp Valencia. This service is becoming essential for all WordCamps. At this point, more than half of the ones held in Spain and WordCamp Europe have a space for children.

Welcome, families, welcome kids, they are our future!

If the family gets together, we eat. Traditional Valencian cuisine

At every WordCamp in Spain, they offer some local culinary delights. In this case, our theme was traditional Valencian cuisine. We offered pastries, baked goods, and sandwiches from a local bakery, traditional rosquilletas, a delicious paella prepared by master paella chefs, traditional horchata, and fartons. To finish, pizza.

A reward for all the work involved in managing the food side, was the comments from the attendees. For some, like Sofía Ruiz, linked to the Logroño Meetup and WordCamp, it was the first time tasting horchata and fartons. Some speakers referenced the food on stage, like Natzir Turrado, who was drinking horchata during his talk and referred to it as a remarkable beverage. Also, Ricardo Tayar commented that the food was great, with the typical Valencian ice cream cone to finish. We love knowing that after this WordCamp, they now know the taste of Valencia.

A WordCamp with tradition

WordCamp Valencia now has its own tradition and a unique stamp that has been built over time through the work of the teams that brought previous editions to life. A tradition that we proudly showcased. Once again, we chose La Pechina, that emblematic jewel of Valencian architecture, which has become the venue par excellence for our last three meetups. We also continued with the name “Bunyol”, a delicious Valencian treat, to identify the sponsor levels. Likewise, we kept the foundation of the corporate identity, preserving the color orange and reinterpreting the logo and posters. It has been an honor and a challenge to maintain these details that give it a unique distinction: that of WordCamp Valencia, that of each and every one of those who have contributed over the years.

Team

WordCamps all over the world are possible thanks to the volunteers behind them. We prepared this event with a lot of care and excitement, with the goal of bringing the community together, learning, attracting new WordPressers, and continuing to build open-source WordPress. For ten months, we dedicated many hours of our free time to completing the project. We learned, corrected, solved problems, innovated, and finally saw our WordCamp come to life.

Let’s meet the people behind the scenes: Lena Iñurrieta, Gustavo Galati, Luis Miguel CLiment, Clara Fayos, Cesar Labadia, Luis Francisco, Toya Seguí, Ricardo Vilar and Eric Seguí.

And alongside us, there was a very special figure: the mentor of WordCamp Valencia 2025. We were lucky to have Pablo Moratinos, who accompanied us, guided us, and solved key issues throughout the whole process. He has a long track record in the WordPress Community in Spain and is a benchmark for his experience and commitment. He has an impressive collaboration résumé: he has been team leader at four WordCamps, two at WordCamp Irún and two at WordCamp España Online, and co-organized four, the first being WordCamp Chiclana 2017. To date, he has mentored nine WordCamps, accompanying and supporting organizing teams with professionalism and a clear vision. He came as a mentor and a speaker. 

A key piece of this machinery are the volunteers, who travel from different parts of Spain to collaborate and make the WordCamp possible. Many thanks to Anabel López, Andriy Terentyev, Ariadna Santana, Carla Pumutxa, Cristina López, Daria Verdugo, Fran Trapero, Héctor Tellado, José Hilario, Lorsy Turizo, Lua Salazar, Marcin Wosinek, María Fabián, Maribel Haroon, Marlon Veásquez, Mónica Teixeira, Nilo Vélez, Rafa Villaplana, Roberto Vásquez and Ximo Tomás.

Sponsors

Sponsors are an important pillar of the event; they contribute with financial resources and their presence. WordCamps are not commercial events per se. The companies that join do so with the desire to contribute to the community and to connect more closely with their potential customers. In this sense, they bring special promotions and keep a close relationship with the attendees.

Thanks to the Bunyol de Oro and global sponsors: WordPress.com, Kinsta, Hosting.com, Bluehost, Woo, and JetPack.

Thanks to the Bunyol de Plata sponsors: WeGlot, Lucusthost, and Clouding.

Thanks to the Bunyol de Bronce sponsors: Raiola Networks and Dinahosting.

Thanks to the Bunyol de Carabassa sponsors: Grupo StartGo, Doowebs, Xufa.es, Zubbun, Tandem Marketing Digital, Datomedia, Acceseo, and GreenGeeks.

Thanks to the in-kind sponsors: Mohou, Café Silvestre, Café Ventura, Stickermule, Velarte, DooWebs, Desafío Digital, Grupo Billingham, SomDigitals, and Mon Orchata.

Thanks to the micro-sponsor: Wayrank.

Thank you for supporting WordCamp Valencia 2025 and making it possible.

Public reception

We had a great reception from the audience, with more than 300 highly engaged attendees throughout the day, creating a vibrant atmosphere full of energy and a strong desire to learn, share, and reconnect. In addition to new faces, the Valencia and Spain community gathered. It was amazing to see everyone together again.

After the event, attendees left many reviews on social media, especially on LinkedIn. Here are some of them.

FINAL

And so we reach the end of WordPress Tech Congress, WordCamp Valencia 2025. We talked about the latest in technology and WordPress. I’ve told you many details, and I still have some left, but I think you now have a good idea of what that November 8 and 9 was like. We had talks of the highest technical and strategic level, with international speakers. We also innovated with new formats such as the Light Talks, Jamie Marsland’s Speed Builder Game, the director of WordPress’s YouTube, for the first time in the Spanish community, and a Contributor Day focused on expanding collaboration with new participants. In addition, we organized a kids’ area for the first time.

I would like to give a special thanks and send a hug to Pablo Moratinos, the mentor, for his support and help, especially at key moments in the project’s management, to Miguel Florido for his marketing advice, to Enric García from DooWebs and his team, who built the website, to Kike Rodríguez for his help animating the WordCamp poster and his promotional video of the attendee wapuu, to Susana Ibañez for her help as an experienced team leader, to Jamie Marsland, Natzir, Marie-Charlotte, Ivelina Dimova, David Carrasco, Jonathan Velez, Yannick, Rafa Villaplana, Gustavo Galati, César Labadia, Luis Miguel Climent, Clara Fayos, Eric Seguí, Toya Seguí, Luis Francisco, Ricardo Vilar… To everyone, speakers, organizers, volunteers, and sponsors, thank you very much for your work. The WordPress Community has come together once again, and it has been thanks to this collective effort.

I send you a handshake and a hug. I’d like to take these lines to say loud and clear: Thank you so much for taking part in this adventure and making it possible!

This WordCamp was yours, and I hope the magic of WordPress continues.

See you at the next WordPress adventure!

More about WordPress Tech Congress, WordCamp Valencia 2025

Watch the talks

Photos by the photography team

Author: Lena Iñurrieta. Team leader WordPress Tech Congress, la WordCamp Valencia 2025

Photos: Nilo Velez, Roberto Vázquez, Carla Camutxa, Lena Iñurrieta