Just the other day, I mentioned that I had a decision to make regarding an opportunity for me to purchase a domain centered around WordPress and start up my own project. It’s funny because I didn’t think I would see such an amazing amount of support thrown my way but that is exactly what happened. After reading through the comments on that post, discussing the project with certain people via email and Skype, I have decided to bite the bullet and purchased the domain WPTavern.com as well as WordPressTavern.com from Kyle Eslick of WPHacks.com.
I love the sound of the domain as it’s centered around WordPress and it should be common knowledge that the word Tavern has a social nature to it. If any of you have read my About Page, you’ll know that there are two things that I want in life as it pertains to the web. To foster a community and to be successful. I think with my own project such as WPTavern, I can accomplish both of those goals at one time.
My initial thoughts on what WPTavern will be is a website that covers all things WordPress and related projects. I want WPTavern to be the gathering place for everyone in the WordPress community. I’ll be covering BuddyPress, WPMU, WordPress.com, Akismet, WordPress.org, BBPress, and anything else WordPress related. As for the forum, I’ve been thinking long and hard about which forum software to use and even though Vbulletin or PHPBB might be better for the job, since I’ll be writing about BBPress it would make sense for me to use BBPress. I won’t be opening up the site itself to user registrations, I’ll be keeping that tied to the forum.
As for the design. I want to mimic the Problogger look and feel. I want a front page which looks more like a portal for example, Problogger.net where each block has an excerpt, number of comments and permalink. Each block will be for a different category although I don’t want to place every category on this page as I want to leave room for advertising and recent comments. I also want my navigation at the top and one of the links should be ‘BLOG‘ which will take the visitor to the actual blog where I’ll be publishing full posts. If I could, I would just take everything Problogger has for a design and use that as my base. Just change things around to give it a unique look for WPTavern. If anyone can help me nail down a theme or figure out how to accomplish this look and feel, I’m all ears.
In terms of the type of content I’ll be producing for the site, it’ll be podcasts, special interviews, text based content, screencasts, breaking news if I got it, reviews, and anything else I can conjure up. In order for this to work, I’m going to have to bust my ass and produce every type of content imaginable. That ought to be fun! There is no telling how many posts I’ll be publishing a day. It could be one, it could be ten. The point is, I want to be the go to source for all sorts of news dealing with the world of WordPress.
Now I realize that perhaps there isn’t a need for another WordPress centric site/forum and that the news I publish on the site can be easily obtainable if you were to simply subscribe to the RSS feeds of each site. However, a small part of me thinks that people enjoy having all of that information filtered and presented for them in one place. Again, why bother when there is Planet WordPress or Ozh’s version of Planet WordPress? The only answer I can come up with is that, the text would contain my personality and the content would be created and established by me.
With all that said, I have the domain in my possession and I’ll be adding it to my hosting account in the next few hours. I now need to take things one step at a time and with each sign of progression, I’ll keep you updated.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 
Sounds awesome! I was just about to respond to your other post when you tweeted the url to this. Count me in as a user. I have been hoping that someone would come up with a forum for WordPress–and you are definitely the person to do it, Jeff. Congratulations on the decision, and I hope to hear a tweet from you when everything is ready to go! :D
JD Hartley’s last blog post..My Last Post of 2008
@JD Hartley – Thanks JD for the vote of confidence and support. I’ll definitely be keeping everyone updated as I progress with the site. Hope to meet ya in Chicago.
I’m excited you’ve decided to go ahead with this. Sounds like a great idea.
I wonder about the second domain name though. Doesn’t Automattic request that people not use domain names with “WordPress” in them?
http://wordpress.org/about/domains/
@Will Anderson – Yep. The second domain will be a redirected to the shorter domain. That takes care of that problem :)
In response to you looking at a theme, ProBlogger would be great. I also like the style of Automattic’s website, and since it is relating to all things WordPress, if you can get permission you could even have a WordPress.org “styled” website.
Here are a few links that might be good to take ideas from… maybe not.
http://www.problogdesign.com/ -> Clear and defined header and sidebar. Very easy to navigate through pages and not too cluttered or empty.
http://www.randsinrepose.com/ -> Clear navigation
http://www.pearsonified.com/ -> It is nice to have the header image area and space. Very easy to follow and some of the mouse over events are surprising and neat.
http://www.thebetterblogger.com/ -> Lots of navigation space; simple, easy to follow.
Just a few things… Will stop, as I am not sure if your setting to set links as spam is higher than four or not.
Hope that helps a little…. it might not, but oh well. :)
JD Hartley’s last blog post..My Last Post of 2008
Jeff,
I’m excited to see what comes of WPTavern.com! I’ll be sure to feature your site once it is ready for traffic.
I recommend vBulletin for the forums (which is what I use for WPForums.com), but PHPBB is a great free alternative that I use on one of my other message boards I run. BBPress is great, but I’m thinking long-term and think you can grow better with vBulletin/PHPBB.
In the meantime, let me know if I can be of any assistance. You have my phone number and other contact information! :)
I’m looking forward to seeing your new project. I, for one, will be happy to be part of your new community. I need all the WordPress help I can get ;>))
Congratulations!
IMO I don’t think it is a good idea to go with BBPress. Simple Machines, vBulletin or phpBB are a much better option. BBPress still lacks a lot of features of a good forum.
Ajay’s last blog post..Out with the Old, In with the New
Jeff, Looking forward to following your new site through 2009. Best of luck with it.
techandlife’s last blog post..My 2009 tech targets
I have some requests for the forum since bbPress doesn’t have many features out of the box.
I find it useful to be able to make my mark on each of my posts via a forum signature. There are four reasons for doing this:
* It discourages spamming to an extent, or at least moves the spam to their signatures rather than in the post. It’s pretty annoying when you read a post which has someones self-promotional junk subtley placed inside it. With forum signatures, they can just write regular posts and rely on their signatures for pimping their own services.
* It’s a handy way to personalise each of your posts.
* It’s nice to be able to see what other people are up to outside of the forum
* When users see your signature, they can take a look at what you do, then decide to pay you for whatever services you are doing, this is a hell of a good way to encourage posting by skill developers. This is particularly common on SitePoint.com where most of the heavier posters make quite good money from offering helpful posts.
A private messaging service is a must have addition IMO:
* It gives users a way to offer the higher posters job offers
* It allows users to communicate directly about private matters – normally sending URLs they don’t want public (commong with development sites).
You need a post report button:
* The WordPress.org support forums are annoying as there is no way to report inappropriate posts or spam. As a result, there are not only spam posts which take a long to get removed but also a lot of innappropriate posts which should have been dealt with.
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Jeff – You might also consider using Simple:Press Forum. It’s built to integrate with WordPress, and I think it would be a good fit for your project.
To be honest, I don’t think that bbPress has the feature set that is needed to build/support the type of community you envision. As others have stated, it is missing too many features that users are accustomed to having in a forum.
Oops, forgot to subscribe to the post. Carry on! :)
It is a good domain name. Anxious to see when its live!
Theme Reviewer’s last blog post..Revolution Chrome
@JD Hartley – I’ve actually decided against that and have chosen to go with the Arthemia Premium theme – http://colorlabsproject.com/themes/arthemia-premium/ I’ll modify the theme of course but most of the elements will remain in place. I love the layout, the look and feel of the site and think it will work pretty well for a content filled site.
With regards to forums, I’ve chosen Simple Press and we’ll see how it goes. So this all means that the forum has been decided as has the starting theme. Things are progressing!