When I was on vacation, I took notice of a particular tweet by Ian Stewart regarding a blog post that contained an interview with six of the mainstream WordPress theme developers. Each person had to answer the same question. The entire post is filled with great information but of course, the one that stuck out in my mind is the question of what was their favorite WordPress based site?. I had to blush a bit when I read the answers.
Darren Hoyt – I like WP Tavern and the Tavern forums because Jeff genuinely seems to love what he does and the crowd there are productive and helpful.
There was also the question of what their favorite place was to get info about WordPress.
Adii Pienaar – There’s no one website / blog, so I tend to follow all the main peeps. WPTavern as however emerged as one of my favourites.
Ptah Dunbar – WP Tavern and twitter tidbits.
Ian Stewart – The WordPress Tavern. I think it should be in the official dashboard news. It has a real voice and never stoops to bland pointless posting of lists or parroting of rehashed official news. And get this: the posts aren’t built around driving affiliate sales. It’s a must read if you want a handle on the WordPress community. The WordPress Tavern Forum is great too. There’s real live WordPress nerds in there. Approachable ones even. There’s nothing like it. And when Matt Mullenweg needed to get the skinny on Commercial GPL Themes, where do you think he went first?
I’ll be honest, I was on the deck of the cabin using my notebook to read this post. When I read through the questions and the followup answers, I looked out over the mountains and had one of those self reflecting moments. In only six months, I’ve managed to create something that so far, has been kick ass. It’s not kicking as much ass as I’d like just yet but I figure in due time with some additional elbow grease, it will happen.
While I let my passion shine here in the Tavern as one person, many of the shining aspects of this community within a community are the people. For example, everyone who was interviewed are members of the Tavern forum. These people are successes in their own right. When you have these types of people congregate in one place that is free from bickering, personal assaults, and just want to see and create progress, great things happen. I take a lot of pride in running this tavern and having these folks consider this a watering hole so to speak is in a word, awesome.
What is it about WPTavern that creates this atmosphere? What’s the best part of the Tavern that keeps you coming back for more?
1) I think it is the things you bring to it Jeff: enthusiam, quality over quantity, you rarely post for the sake of it which is great and really important.
2) You have a knack for asking interesting questions. You don’t tell, you ask, and then we get to see the answers.