Rene Hermenau (@renehermi) – WordPress user profile

Bio

WordPress developer based in Northern Germany. Founder of WP STAGING —
the staging, backup, and migration plugin running on more than 100,000
WP sites.

Building WordPress infrastructure since 2013. Started WP STAGING because
I kept hitting the same problem on client work: there was no reliable
way to clone a WordPress site for testing or migration without breaking
serialized data, file paths, or media references. The free plugin is
still maintained alongside the Pro version that handles full backups,
multisite, and large database migration at scale.

Hands-on with the codebase, writing the docs at wp-staging.com/docs,
and reading every issue on GitHub (github.com/wp-staging). Always
interested in WordPress edge cases that broke a staging or backup tool
you’ve used — those are usually the bugs worth fixing.

“When you touch code, leave it 10% better than before. And write a test.”

Badges

CODE

2 badges

Core Contributor '20 Plugin Developer

PRACTICE

1 badge

Support Contributor '26

POLYGLOTS

2 badges

Translation Contributor '16 Translation Editor '16

Current Job

Founder

Present

WP STAGING

Recent impact

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

Last 30 days

5contributions

high3

medium2

score11

Last 90 days

19contributions

high6

medium13

score31

Last 12 months

50contributions

high21

medium29

score92

Team focus

Across 3 teams, with no team-attributable contributions in the last 365 days

WordPress releases

Contributed to 4 releases

Time commitment

1 hour per week of sponsored contribution time

WP STAGING

Contributions

Type

June 2026

Jun 29 Mon · 20:18

Plugins high

Committed [3590576] to Plugins SVN:
Update to version 4.9.1 from GitHub

Jun 24 Wed · 12:07

Polyglots high

Translated 1 string on translate.wordpress.org.

Jun 24 Wed · 08:39

Forums med

Created a topic, Release Notes for WP Staging 4.9.0, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
*WP Staging Pro 6.9.0 / Free 4.9.0 is out!* 20% staged…

Jun 24 Wed · 05:41

Plugins high

Committed [3584037] to Plugins SVN:
Update to version 4.9.0 from GitHub

Jun 16 Tue · 14:14

Forums med

Posted a reply to Security concern regarding publicly accessible backup downloads, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
Hi Dominik, Thank you for your detailed feedback. We agree with the general security principle:…

Jun 04 Thu · 19:02

Forums med

Posted a reply to Hoppe it works …, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
@eleworks Feel free to contact us directly if you run into an issue:https://wp-staging.com/contact-us-presale-and-premium-support/ You are…

May 2026

May 27 Wed · 08:36

Forums med

Created a topic, Release Notes for WP Staging 4.8.1, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
WP STAGING 4.8.1 is now available. This release foc…

May 22 Fri · 16:40

Plugins high

Committed [3544216] to Plugins SVN:
Update to version 4.8.1 from GitHub

May 15 Fri · 20:59

Forums med

Posted a reply to Bait and switch, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
@kdcpelt Thank you so much. That's much appreciated. Have a fantastic weekend :-)

May 14 Thu · 21:28

Forums med

Created a topic, Release Notes for WP Staging 4.8.0, on the site WordPress.org Forums:
This release improves Remote Sync, backup reliability,…