2021: Reshaping the Tavern Experience

Resolutions. Goals. Guidelines for the year ahead. Call them what you want. Not everyone takes part, but I am a firm believer in having a vision for the coming months. That vision can be malleable, flowing with the changes of time, yielding to new ideas as they are birthed. However, some large, beaming guideposts help when setting foot into the wild of a new year.

Our team at WP Tavern has gotten a bit of a breather over the holidays. We have an exciting project we are just getting off the ground. We set some things in motion months ago. Now, it is time to push forward.

Without going into all of the details, which are currently in flux, the following are the big goals for the site in 2021.

New Design

The biggest goal of 2021 is to add a fresh coat of paint to the website. Going hand in hand with that goal is to launch this new design 100% on blocks. To effectively write about WordPress’s upcoming changes, we need to be ahead of the game. That means living a bit on the bleeding edge, running a block-based theme, and testing the site editor. It means sharing what we love and airing our frustrations.

Changing designs is not simply about slapping on some fresh colors. Design is about functionality. At the center of such a change is providing more tools for engagement.

We are thinking over multiple ideas about what this might look like, and we have a generous third-party team standing by to help us implement much of this. Some of those ideas are things like showing the top comments and trending forum topics. Feedback from our readers is more than welcome in this regard. Ultimately, this is the part of the Tavern experience that belongs to you.

The keen-eyed among you may have noticed I slipped in something about forum topics in the preceding paragraph. That was no accident. The return of the Tavern forums is a distinct possibility in 2021. There are many considerations we must make before going down this road around how it is moderated. The goal would be to provide an inviting atmosphere where people could freely talk about our beloved content management system. Again, this would be a feature of the site that is primarily about you.

Podcast

While many of you are avid readers of our content, we know some of you have asked us to bring back a podcast in some form. Some of you want to listen to WordPress-related news on your drive to work or while you unwind at the end of a busy day.

We heard you loud and clear.

Our team is actively pursuing adding a podcast. This is a project that we have been working on for a while now. It is something we genuinely want to happen.

Before exploring this project, I had no idea of the amount of work necessary for producing a professional podcast. If you had put me behind the mic a few months ago, I would just be shooting from the hip, hoping to hit a target, any target. I have a newfound respect for anyone who produces a podcast today.

If we get a new podcast off the ground in 2021, it will be a professionally-produced show. The goal is to have planned topics and guests representative of the diversity of the WordPress community. I am excited about the possibility.

Welcome to 2021

A new design and potential podcast are big-ticket items. They are not features we can launch overnight. When we do them, we want to do them right.

There are other items on the checklist we will likely get to throughout the year too. But, this is a point in the year where we should sit back and listen. Are there things you want to see changed about the Tavern experience? Are there topics we missed last year that you want to see us cover more?

As always, our team looks forward to bringing you our regular news, reviews, and opinions throughout the year. Stay tuned in for more.