As I was writing an article for the Tavern containing my thoughts on a few of the topics I’d like to see new sites dedicated to WordPress cover, I wondered if WordPress has passed me up. Five to six years ago, I felt like I had a good handle on what WordPress was doing and where it was going. Now, not so much.
Not only do I not know where it’s going, I’m personally not interested in some of the topics that WordPress users today want to know about. eCommerce, the business of WordPress, enterprise, and application development. These things sound cool, but hurt my head just thinking about them.
I have no idea how to be relevant with these topics since I’ve never operated a WordPress business, have no experience with enterprise, never operated an eCommerce store using WordPress, or know anything about product development or pricing. Some of those topics scream BORING to me and the best content is based on real life experience.
I’ve always written about WordPress from a user point of view as I’ve primarily used WordPress for publishing and managing content. Every now and then, checking out new plugins and themes. Over the years, I’ve become less of a tinkerer and have become comfortable with the way the Tavern operates. I don’t experiment as much as I used to.
If I’m not already, at some point, I think people like me who use WordPress just for blogging and managing content are going to be considered old school. Using it as a foundation for applications, frameworks, eCommerce, or powerful solutions to problems is going to be the cool, shiny way to use WordPress. I’m wondering when/if what I have to offer the WordPress community in terms of information, experience, etc will just be irrelevant to the trends, topics, and use cases of WordPress in the near future.
I don’t think it will be any time soon considering the huge user base of novice-intermediate users who are always looking for the next cool theme or efficient plugin to handle tasks. But it is something I’ve been thinking about and will continue to think about in the foreseeable future.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 
Great post Jeff. Your thoughts have a lot of validity. However, one of the advantages of WordPress is its ability to be a solution for not only small blogs but enterprise level application frameworks.
But please, don’t stop writing! The content and discussion that you curate on the Tavern, has and always will be, a benefit to the WordPress community as a whole.
lol, I don’t plan to stop writing anytime soon. I at least documented what my interests are, and the ones I listed sure ain’t it! Thanks for reading my stuff!
Concerns are legit, but i think you might be overthinking it.
I don’t think there are many that are legibility interested or can grasp the different topics that WordPress is involved in today. It’s evolved from a simple publishing platform into something much larger – it powers 20% of the web for pete’s sake.
I believe one shouldn’t feel pressured to cover or discuss things they aren’t interested in. That leads to loving your job and life less, and life is too short.
Allow others to contribute to your blog or contribute elsewhere. WPTavern has been and I believe will be a stable source of WordPress news for the foreseeable future. But even more important than that is the spark behind the people involved with it. Don’t lose that fire.
If someone says I’m over thinking something, I take is as a compliment. As I mentioned in a different comment, I’ve at least documented where my interests do and don’t lie. There is a way to accept contributors and discuss the topics I’m not particularly interested in, it’s called the Tavern forum. Just need to bring it back and set it up to accept community submissions.
Yep, I’d echo what the others have said. There are so many more facets of the WordPress ecosystem than there were back in the day and there are very few people who can be across all of them…
So many facets of WordPress to write about, and this is my admission as to which ones I don’t have enough interest in to write about all the time :) I thought I could do it all, but I can’t, and at this point, won’t.