About me
Hi! My name is Marcel Bootsman. This is my personal site on which I share some of my thoughts and experiences about my work, private life and everything in between. Also you might find some technical content here about Open Source, Web development, WordPress and Hugo (powering this website since October, 2022).
Professional biography
My current role, since April 2019, is Marketing Manager Dutch Market for Kinsta.
The journey of my professional life started in 2000, when I worked for IBM and was involved in developing a web version of a legacy terminal-based equipment ordering system. After about 9 years, and a diverse number of roles within IBM, the challenge of running my own company became so strong that I could not ignore it anymore.
In 2009 I started nostromo.nl. I started building websites with WordPress and became familiar with developing themes and custom plugins. Within a year of running my own company, I joined the WordPress community by volunteering. Organizing WordCamps (WordPress centric events) and helping out with translations in Dutch were, and are still, some tasks I really like to do.
Again after about 10 years (do you see the trend here?) I got to think about the status of my company during a walk from my hometown to Berlin for WordCamp Europe 2019. Soon after that event, I made the decision to stop my work at nostromo.nl, and work for Kinsta.

Latest blogs
Moving the walktowc.eu website to Statamic - Work in progress
March 11, 2023 Read this guide to learn how I migrated the walktowc.eu website from static WordPress generated files to an easy to manage and fast Statamic generated site.Contribute to WordPress - This is how you do it
January 16, 2023 You can contribute to WordPress in many ways. The various contributor groups are explained here so that you can easily choose what you contribute to.A 46km walk - Here's what I learned
January 9, 2023 I regularly walk long distance hikes, as in 40+ kilometers. This time I repeated an attempt to walk to Amsterdam from my hometown, and failed. Again.A 2022 update from me
December 26, 2022 Since february 2021, lots of things happened. Here’s my 2022 update.A winter walk around my town
February 14, 2021 Read about my 30.5km winter walk around my town, Berkel en Rodenrijs. I made a lot of pictures, so come and take a look.Latest notes
10 questions for your next hoster
February 9, 2023 Selecting a good hoster for your project is often experienced as difficult. What are the important questions that you should ask?.Fix VLC Player deinterlacing not working
January 27, 2023 Are you experiencing deinterlacing not working in VLC player, while it is enabled in the settings? Read this note to find a possible solution.Batch convert mkv audio to AC3 with ffmpeg
January 18, 2023 Some devices cannot process certain audioformats in video files. Here’s a quick command to batch convert these files with ffmpeg.How to solve Home Assistant '400 Bad Request' error with Synology Reverse Proxy
December 25, 2022 When you want to run Home Assistant from behind a Reverse Proxy, running on a Synology, you might encounter a ‘400 Bad Request’ error. Here’s how to solve it.How to connect bluetooth headphones automatically in Ubuntu
December 24, 2022 Bluetooth headphones and Ubuntu, they just don’t get along. Here’s how to fix auto-connect for your Bluetooth headphones.Work
What do I do now?
- Owner nostromo.nl (WordPress support, maintenance, consultancy)
- Marketing Manager Dutch Market at Kinsta – Managed Application, Database and WordPress Hosting
Contributions to WordPress
- GTE for nl_NL
- WordPress NL Slack co-administrator
- WordPress forum administrator for The Netherlands
Lead organizer
- WordCamp The Netherlands 2016
- WordCamp The Netherlands 2020
- WordCamp Rotterdam 2018
- WordCamp Rotterdam 2019
Co-organizer
- WordCamp Europe 2013
- WordCamp Europe 2015
- WordCamp The Netherlands 2014
- WordCamp The Netherlands 2015
- WPNL Live!
- WordCamp The Netherlands 2022
Speaker
- WordCamp Utrecht 2018
Raising funds for the community while walking to Berlin (short talk)
Video - WordCamp Antwerp 2018
Meet Gutenberg, the future of WordPress publishing.
Video - WordCamp Osnabrück 2019
Walk to WCEU
Video - WordCamp Europe 2019
Why I walked more than 700km to Berlin, and survived
Video
Connect
Here are some of my online profiles. Please feel free to reach out to me for a talk about WordPress, hosting, or any other topic.