Building a WordPress Community
Over the past few months, I have continually been brainstorming about building some sort of WordPress community site.
It’s taken many shapes and forms in my mind, and my vision for it has been both clear and murky. I’d like to re-introduce the concept, and see how much (if any) interest there would be.
Now I understand that undertaking an idea/project like this could potentially be a huge thing, so don’t get me wrong - I don’t intend on doing this on my own. I would be looking for writers, etc that would blog and help run the site. I’m very passionate about community building, and love WordPress, so it made sense to me to see if there was a fun way to a) learn how to use WPMU b) create something big and powerful in terms of a WordPress resource and c) do something outside of Revolution.
Here are some things that I’ve considered including in it:
- Basing the main site off of WPMU, and allowing people to sign up for their own blogs
- Offering a general community forum, hopefully with bbPress as the platform
- Having a possible WP blog directory of sorts, where people can find opt-in blogs by category
- A section that will help people find WordPress themes/plugins
- General blog section that discusses many aspects of blogging and how to effectively use WordPress for their website or business
As things progress with BuddyPress, I plan on using the capability of social networking alongside this idea of creating a WordPress community. Not sure yet how that would look, but I was really encouraged by a phone call I had with Matt Mullenweg on Tuesday - where he talked briefly about the plans that Automattic has with WordPress and the future of social media.
Anyway, the goal in this post is to ask for some feedback - would it be useful, could you see it succeeding and would you be interested in somehow being involved. I really want this to be a community run by a community, not a community run by me.
Comments
19 Responses to “Building a WordPress Community”
I think that this idea sounds really interesting and promising and could help the community a lot.
To be successful perhaps the site could be about helping the Wordpress community make the most out of their blog (wordpress). What I mean by this, is that Wordpress is such a powerful tool, however people (including me no doubt!) are not using it to its full capacity. A site that would open up wordpress to all its other functions could only be a winner.
With Wordpress the possibilities are (almost) endless and therefore this surely needs to be included in the site.
I am not sure about the inclusion of a section where people can sign up for a blog using WPMU. There are many other providers of that, which are much bigger, including Wordress.com for example. Maybe the site could do other things.
I really like the idea of a theme finder. There are so many themes out there and something that could narrow peoples searching for the theme that they want would be good. How about a theme directory that also provides help on customization of themes. I mean at the end of the day there is always something that you need just a little different with a theme to meet your needs.
Blog directory also sounds interesting, presumably where people would submit their blogs to a category and then people could search for blogs by category.
Another thing that may be good is an ‘example code ‘ section. I mean for more simple things like using tags in different ways. Searching for this on Wordpress.org in the codex section isn’t always clear and they often don’t show a working example.
Brian
I’d be interested in helping out, it sounds like a great idea
I agree with Mark in that offering open registration may not work, although mU could still be used, so that the people who contribute to the site each get a blog, I don’t know.
It does sound like a great idea, though
Many years ago, there was a WordPress plug-in called “Blogs of the Day.” The plug-in pinged a service that had an active directory of WordPress blogs. Posts and comments raised a blog’s esteem, for want of a better word, and you could get an idea of what some of the top WordPress blogs were. It also tracked categories. And you could use it to find WordPress blogs that were talking about certain topics.
The plug-in fell out of support, and I doubt it would even work today. That functionality is now part of WordPress.com, and a year ago when I started using the WordPress.com Stats plug-in the first thing I noticed, after setting up a WordPress.com account to use the plug-in, was the “Blogs of the Day” and the category surfing.
Truthfully, I was a bit envious.
WordPress.com is a closed system, but it feels more open because, depending on how one uses it, it can foster a sense of community. A user can find out what other WP.com users are talking about and join the conversation.
WordPress.org is an open system in the latitude and control we have over our own blogs, yet it feels more closed and more isolated, because there’s little in the way of community building. Blogrolls are fine, but they don’t foster conversations. Rather, they’re places that people can go. It doesn’t seem like the tools and infrastructure exist to foster the creation of community.
If I want to know what people on WordPress.com blogs are saying about, as an example, the Beatles, there’s an easy way for me to find that out. I have several links like that bookmarked. There’s nothing comparable for WordPress.org blogs.
What I’d like to see would be some sort of plug-in functionality for WordPress.org blogs that would allow the WordPress.com tag or category structure accept pings from WordPress.org blogs, so that the link about would know, for example, when I wrote about the Beatles. I can find others and join their conversations about the Fab Four easily, but they can’t find mine as easily. It would have to be an opt-in system, obviously, hence the suggestion of a plug-in.
It’s not functionality you’d want to build into the core, because there are people who simply would never want to be part of that for reasons ranging from privacy to an analysis that it’s simply not worth the effort. A plug-in makes it non-automatic.
That won’t build a WordPress community, but it would put a community infrastructure in place for people who wanted to make use of it. Users would become more aware of what others in the WordPress blogosphere were talking about, and thus they could join the conversations and build new connections.
I would never move to a WordPress.com blog, because I love to tinker too much. When I want to get down into the guts of code, I get dirty. That’s what I love about the self-hosted WordPress. But I think the lines between where one ends and the other begins can be blurred a little to the benefit of both.
What, exactly, is it that you intend to offer that is not already being offered elsewhere?
I totally understand the impulse, the teasing sense of possibility, but I think you need one very clear objective and, while consulting the “wisdom of crowds” is a good thing, that fundamental, shining vision has to come from you.
Don’t get me wrong - I have no doubt that you can achieve great things, look at how far you’ve come in the theming world in such a short time. But you need to be absolutely clear, in your own mind, in your own gut, about what you are pursing. The potential is undoubtedly there, this is an extraordinary time, the world is open to suggestion, this is Jerusalem, but it has to be the right idea, spoken uniquely.
Have you thought about networking without the network. collaborating without the community.
There has to be some way to connect wordpress website without using wpmu.
I have been thinking about this. Blogs that ping, update, share information. There are many problems though such as forging, spam, and spoofing.
Anyhow, if you have any ideas and move forward with your community, I’d like to help you.
I could not echo Allyn’s comments more. I envy Wordpress.com’s “community” features and also liked the old “BOTD” plugin. It would be great for something like that to be available to non .com wordpress users.
That’s that bad logo I mentioned! You can tell because the W is squished down a bit.
You can get the official vector at the bottom of this page:
http://wordpress.org/about/buttons/
Sorry Matt, I knew for some reason that this was the bad one, but the problem is that it’s such a nice rendition of it! If I move forward with the idea, I’ll promise to take one off the official link page that you dropped.
Thanks to all who have left such in depth comments - you have no idea how much I appreciate the time you all have taken to respond.
Mark, I’m not sold on the WPMU thing myself, as you are right, that many places our there offer stuff like this, but I see sites like Chickspeak and think they are just a cool way to utilize WP and build a community.
George, yes, that is what my thought was for WPMU, that is was more of a “blog” on the main site, rather than people just having their own random blogs that almost act independent from the main site.
Allyn, thanks for your comments - I see a lot of validity in them, and really need to follow Donnacha’s advice which is to really see what I am after before I go and try to do it.
Matt D, yes I have thought of that - it’s something that BuddyPress is geared toward, but that’s based on WPMU. Which means if I went that route, I’d have to use WPMU as the main core at the very least.
Brian,
I don’t know if you are still thinking about doing the idea you sent an email out about a while ago. I don’t want to say too much because I don’t know if you are keeping your post a little vague on purpose so someone doesn’t poach your idea. But, I will say this, you have things to offer that no one else does to persuade people to sign up for a blog on your site. If you build it, it will be huge. You just have to find a way to incorporate all that you have accomplished already into the WPMU. If you do that, you could easily have a packed house already. Just think about that. If you just set it up with generic stuff that you could anywhere else, then yea, maybe it would be hard to get users. But if you set it up and offer things that no one else can offer, which you can, then you will have a packed house. Your Brian Freaking Gardner! Everyone wants to use a Gardner theme… Everyone.
Hey Brian,
I think I would be interested in helping you out. I have some reservations about creating another blog and whether or not I/anyone else will have the time for one more blog.
I guess I would be specifically interested in a clear vision of what you see. I may be way off but I had got the initial impression (from other posts) you wanted to do something like 9rules? Or a site where I can submit my posts to?
I think you are doing great work and would be happy to be part of a community that was honest and had integrity.
Hi Brian:
The idea of a Wordpress community a fantastic idea and almost long overdue. Wordpress is the greatest platform I have ever seen with minimum barrier to entry. I am in the process of building a neighborhood site using WP MU. I would love to see more solid WP MU infrastructures and would be very glad to take part in developing a dynamic, multifaceted platform on top of Wordpress.
Wow, I was thinking of something like this a couple of months ago and even threw up a basic site with WordPress and bbPress, but I haven’t had the time to work on it and promote it. It’s at EasyBlogHelp.com (yes, I know that it’s unbelievably ugly right now!) I don’t know if that domain name is attractive to your purposes, but I would chip it in to the project if I could be involved. I already make my living with WordPress - see http://blogsolace.com and http://sherrydedman.com/wordpress.htm - I’d love to be involved with something like this!
Again it’s a BIG THUMBS UP from me and if I can help out in anyway, then good!
Thanks
Mark
Wow, that’s a great idea. You have an interesting and promising idea. It will help many. Goodluck!
Why not consider to add video function like Youtube and Dating function? This will be more attractive I think.
Wish you be successful soon!
This is a great idea and I will be most glad to help in any way possible.
I believe this idea is really awesome! When do you plan to materialize it?
I think this is a great idea, and would find some great use for this.
I recently registered OneConsciousness.Org and would love something like what you are describing.
Continued Success!
Travis Wright