Popular WordPress blogs seem to come and go on a far too regular basis.
At the start of the year we said goodbye to the much-loved WPTavern. WPCandy’s posting schedule seems erratic at best. And just a few days ago it was announced that Weblog Tools Collection is being “archived and preserved.”
Although WordPress itself and the community moves from strength to strength, WordPress-centric blogs seem to struggle at the best of times. This is something I have observed over many months and it leaves me somewhat saddened.
Fortunately, as the editor of ManageWP there is something I can do about it.
The Evolution of the ManageWP Blog
When I joined the ManageWP team in November 2011, this blog had only been used as a means of keeping ManageWP users informed of new updates and features. Fast forward nearly 18 months and we are a well-established source of WordPress tips and tricks in the blogosphere. We’ve got an awesome new design, a small team of talented writers and a real zeal for producing great WordPress content.
But in reality we are just getting started. This post marks the beginning of an ambitious move to establish ourselves as one of the premier online destinations for WordPress users. We want to create more than just a blog — we are committed to growing a community of WordPress enthusiasts who all share a common passion for creating websites with the world’s favorite content management system.
However, I recognize that the first step in achieving such a goal is producing great content. With that in mind, I turn to you.
What Do You Want from ManageWP?
In short, I want your feedback on what you want in terms of content.
What do you like about our current posts? What don’t you like about our current posts? What would you like to know more about (beginner tutorials, advanced tips and tricks, etc.)? What would you like to see more of (interviews, case studies, etc.)? Do you want us to expand our content into other forms of media like videos or a podcast? Would you like to know more about how ManageWP was created and is run? What would you like to see more of from our Facebook and Twitter outposts?
I want nothing but complete honesty and candidness from you, and then I intend to give you what you want. As a ManageWP reader you have my sincerest gratitude, and I want to repay your support by helping to build (along with the rest of the blogging team) something that you will truly love.
Please reach out via the comments section below. Let’s get this started!
Charlie
I think this blog so far is already fantastic – keep up the good work. The topics that you’ve already published posts about are relevant and well written, useful stuff for anyone managing one or multiple WO sites.
Tom Ewer
Thanks Charlie, appreciate it!
Joel
Some premium plugin need to be updated manually like the “WordPress Seo Video from yoast”. It would be nice if this could be updated automatically like the other plugins
Tom Ewer
Joel,
If you have any ManageWP feature requests then you’re best off emailing the team directly. This post is about content on the blog.
Cheers,
Tom
Tim Tewalt
Hi,
Always great articles, but I’d love to see the backup feature of MangeWP work with smaller memory demands. Shared hosted sites don’t have the ability to request more memory or resources and yet your service can meet that need for managing via a web developer.
Cheers!
Tom Ewer
Hey Tim,
That’s a good feature request but it’s best put directly to the support team since we’re talking about the blog on this post.
Cheers,
Tom
Iain
Howdy Tom,
Here is what I would like to see:
More detail video as to how I can use ManageWP software more effectively, so I don’t have to actually log into my individual sites.
I’d love to see post about plug ins that add to the functionality
of ManageWP. For example, here is plug in x that works extremely well together with ManageWP due to integration.
Just some ideas. Not sure if they haven’t already been done, or if they are feasible.
Cheers
Tom Ewer
Thanks for the suggestions Iain, I’ll give them some thought!
Jeff
+1
use-case scenarios, tips & tricks, ‘did you know you could..’
daveralph
HI, this is a random question but ont he first page of the blog there are 3 coloured blocks, one of them purple is the larger one which overlays an image and has text on it..
How do you do this?
Is it a plugin, is it CSS, is it both?
Would really appreciate your help as its an effect i really want to do on my blog
Thanks
Dave
Tom Ewer
I’m afraid it’s custom-designed rather than a plugin Dave. It’s fairly easy to achieve with CSS though.
daveralph
Still relatively new to bits of css like that, can i be a pain and ask for a pointer? even just a site which will explain it a little more?
Hope that you can help
Thanks
Tom Ewer
I didn’t design it myself but I’ll forward your question to our designer — maybe he’ll be able to help out 🙂
Eric Amundson
Hey Dave,
Quick suggestion: if you’re new to CSS, check out Firebug for Firefox, or look into the Google Chrome dev tools. I’m a bit more comfy with Firebug myself because I’ve used it for years.
With Firebug, you can pull up a web page and inspect anything on it to see what markup and CSS is creating/influencing it.
http://getfirebug.com/
https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer-tools/
Hope that helps. 🙂
Tom Ewer
That’s a great suggestion Eric – something I do all the time!
danijelgajan
Hi Dave,
Basically we have a container div element that holds everything in place, then we have the div with color background set to 70% transparency which creates the interesting overlay effect and underneath this we have the featured image, the title and the comments bubble.
Of course, you can follow Eric’s advice and pull up Firebug in Firefox or right-click and choose ‘Inspect element’ in Chrome and you’ll see the specifics of how it’s done.
Hope this helps 🙂
Eric Amundson
Hey Tom,
Thanks for being committed to producing helpful WordPress-related content!
I suppose if I had one request, it would be to have some more technical posts geared more toward developers.
I know that limits the market a bit, but you guys have such a great service and plugin and it would be neat to see a series geared toward showing how some of your code is built, why your devs did things a certain way, mistakes you’ve made, how you make use of features in latest versions of WP, etc.
I mean, Mr. Prelovac sort of wrote the book on WordPress plugin development, so it would be cool to have more plugin-dev related articles.
Also, not sure if you’ve done any posts on the tools that your team(s) use, but I always find it fascinating to see what other developers use for their daily production, or how support teams field so many questions in a timely manner, what tools and services marketing folks use, even server-related stuff is geeky fun.
Some topics that might better fit the general public:
* security-specific tips
* how to vet a theme
* how to pick a plugin (there are 20K+ in the repo and they may not all be good choices)
* content strategies
* to advertise, or not to advertise
Well, that’s enough out of me. Thanks again and keep up the terrific blog – it’s already one of my favorite destinations for great WordPress content and I’m glad to see you’re committed to making it even better.
Cheers!
Tom Ewer
Hey Eric,
Thank you for the wonderful feedback — I think you’ve made a number of great suggestions! Stay tuned 🙂
Cheers,
Tom
Jeff
+1 especially “on how you make use of features in latest versions of WP, etc.” and advice on happy/unhappy plugin integrations, conflicts, compatibility. You could turn some of tech support issues into posts.
Matthew Stibbe
I like it a lot when you share cool new plugins and also emerging trends or best practices in WordPress siteology. Stuff that helps me make my site better. Theme previews are less useful although pretty because I don’t change theme so often.
Tom Ewer
That makes sense Matthew, I understand. Thanks for the feedback!
Darnell Jackson
More video would be good.
Also more unreleased reviews like that 2013 theme review you guys did was good where can I download that theme by the way is it out yet?
Tom Ewer
What kind of video were you thinking of Darnell?
Twenty Thirteen won’t be out for a long while yet — Twenty Twelve isn’t that old!
J Lowry
I started a blog on blogspot and found it easy to use. My daughters both blog on wordpress and suggested it would be a better option for me so I set up a wordpress blog. In the end I went back to blogspot. Wasn’t impressed with the site and I have a much broader readership on blogspot
Jeff
Does anyone ever post completely irrelevant comments on your blog? Man I hate when that happens…
Tom Ewer
😉
Thanks for all the suggestions Jeff, they’ve gone onto my list!
mallorn
Not sure if this counts as a blog request or a functionality request, or something I’ve not found yet, but when you guys recommend a really cool plugin – such as that image size thing – it would be nice to apply it to all our sites in one go.
Tom Ewer
I’m not entirely sure what you mean but it sounds like a ManageWP feature request — if you email the guys direct I’m sure they’ll be able to help you out.
mallorn
Will do… By the way what was that image sanity plugin you featured last week?
Tom Ewer
Not sure what you mean…I probably didn’t write it. All posts are available to look through 🙂