About Me

I am Mert Yazicioglu, a student from Ankara, Turkey who is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Science degree on Computer Technology and Information Systems at Bilkent University.

I have been interested in programming since I was 8 and have been developing web applications for the last 9 years using languages and technologies like CSS, HTML, JS, jQuery, PHP and Python. Apart from my solid experience in developing web applications, I am also quite experienced in developing command-line and desktop applications using C, Java and Python.

To name some of my experiences:

  • Contributed the translation of many projects such as Facebook, Joomla!, LimeWire, Orkut, SchoolTool, SkateBoard, SMF, Twitter and Ubuntu. (2005 – Present)
  • Designed a website that brought our group the Third Place in Europe@School Web Design Contest which was organized by European Union. (2006)
  • Contributed to the documentation of Joomla! version 1.5 during Google’s Highly Open Participation Contest. (2007)
  • Developed a web application which is essentially a directory service for companies. (2007)
  • Developed an online dictionary application which supported easily adding new languages to the system as long as you have a database of words and their meanings in that language. (2007)
  • Developed an MVC framework which I originally intended to release under the GNU GPLv2 but then decided not to as it contained some not-so-good practices. A much better version of it that is written from the ground up will hopefully be released soon though. (2008)
  • Developed a few hooks for Invision Power Board and released them for free. (2009)
  • Developed a market research application on top of my own framework which was used by a newly established British company. (2010)
  • Worked as the Director of Online Operations at GazeteBilkent, the online newspaper of our university, which I am one of the founders of. (September 2010 – October 2012)
  • Worked as the Administrative Coordinator at GazeteBilkent, the online newspaper of our university, which I am one of the founders of. (August 2012 – October 2012)
  • Developed a migration assistant called WordPress Move for WordPress during Google Summer of Code 2011 and it has recently passed 25,000 downloads. (2011)
  • Contributing the core development of WordPress since version 3.3. (2011 – Present)
  • Developed RSS Builder which makes creating RSS feeds using PHP a piece of cake. (2011)
  • Developed Simple Commit Notifier that emails the given users whenever a commit is made to the given GitHub repository. (2011)
  • Developed WP Deploy, a shell script that keeps your both stable and nightly WordPress installations up-to-date. (2011)
  • Currently working on an online event arrangement system which may end up as a start-up project. (2012)
  • Apart from these, there are many applications and scripts I have lost the track of, which I released under the GNU GPLv2.

This list can go on and on as it is seriously hard to remember every single piece of work I have done in the past. There are also some really cool projects that I unfortunately cannot talk about ever/yet.

Here is my resumé, in case you are interested.

You can always contact me via:

Email: mert@mertyazicioglu.com
Facebook: mertyz
Twitter: _mert
Google Talk: merty92
Skype: mertyazicioglu

  • Andrew Gray

    Hi Mert,

    Thankyou for your plugin, it is easily the best migration tool for WordPress. You should be very proud of it, awesome stuff.

    I am just creating a training video teaching people (in a course I have) how to use your plugin. I came to your site to find your “donate” button because I wanted to encourage my students to give you some money … and found nothing :-(

    Perhaps it was a condition of the Google course you were doing and you can’t be financial but dude, if you put a donate button on your site (or better still build it into the plugin itself like others do) I’ll be encouraging people to donate.

    Once again, great work, for a total freebie the finish and execution are great, 100%. Thankyou.

    Andrew

    • mert

      Hi Andrew,

      Thank you very much for your nice words and interest in both using and encouraging the use of WordPress Move!

      Even though it would be nice, the legal aspect of donations are a little bit tricky so I personally prefer staying on the safe side. Besides, I think the best donation is dropping by and saying “Thank you!”. It is always a pleasure to see others using my code and appreciating it. :)

      Thank you so much for your support and kindness, much appreciated! :)

  • http://www.fmctalent.com Matthew

    I agree with everything Andrew said. What a fantastic plugin. If there are legal problems you should ask your happy users to pledge to do something for the good of other people with the time you just saved them! I’m going to move some coal for my elderly neighbour and call my dad. Thanks for the plugin.