During the last couple of months, we’ve been really active here at WP Mayor, maintaining a near daily post rate about all things WordPress. The visitor stats have been growing steadily and I’m very happy with the audience this site has.
Still, I’m not entirely satisfied with the way things stand, and today I’m turning to you for feedback.
See, in my eyes the site is facing a bit of an identity crisis right now, at least from my perspective.
WP Daily is steadily becoming the go to site for WordPress news. It’s a great site, with a beautiful design and a strong team behind it, not to mention an army of guest posters who ensure that there is great content to dish out on a daily basis.
When I think about WordPress plugins, I think about PippinsPlugins, another amazing piece of work by Pippin Williamson, probably my favourite WordPress developer at the moment. The tutorials he creates are absolutely top notch, and membership to his website is highly recommended, you will definitely learn a lot.
WPBeginner has been firmly established as the leading WordPress site for beginners looking to take their first steps with WordPress.
The list goes on, I can think of a couple more sites that have nailed a WordPress niche successfully. It’s great to have all these resources within the WordPress community, but it’s also got me thinking about the future and purpose of WP Mayor.
As it stands, I think WP Mayor is very much a generalist WordPress resource site, pretty much nothing is off topic here if it has to do with WordPress.
I’m not sure if this is good for the site or not.
Do we have a loyal audience or do people come through from Google for a particular plugin review or news item, and never visit again?
Are we fulfilling a need in the community, or should we specialise in a particular area?
What are your thoughts?
I would really appreciate to hear your feelings and ideas. Please be open, I’d like to know how you look at WP Mayor. Do you think we should focus on a particular niche? What can we do to make this site better?
Over to you!
36 Responses
I love to learn about wordpress.
there are lots of thing that improve our skills in wordpress.
I love this site, I really do. You consistently post quality material.
The main piece of advice I would give is this: decide what YOU personally love most and want to focus on, then make that the site’s focus. I chose to focus on plugins with my site because they are my favorite part of WordPress. It’s difficult to keep a site going unless you really love what you’re doing.
Thanks for the mention too!
Good advice Pippin, having a laser-like focus is admittedly not one of my best traits, which can be a hindrance sometimes. I really am interested in many things, but of course it is difficult to do everything in-depth on my own. A possible solution towards which I have been carefully gravitating towards in the last few months, is to involve more people in the running of the site, while of course still keeping a strong presence myself.
Hi Jean, I think you have a pretty good balance here, because I read most of what you post. 🙂
To give you some context, for some time now, I watch most (if not all) sites that have “WP” in their name (or somewhere in a subtitle). Not counting the personal blogs of the more prominent WP-people.
I usually ignore posts titled: ‘New plugins this week’, ‘Best themes of month YYY’. But I briefly skim over posts like ‘Best plugins to do ZZZ’, ‘Best themes for vertical VVV’, or ‘Best themes /w feature FFF’.
I don’t trust posts that contain words “just post these lines to your functions.php…” But I read/bookmark all the in-depth articles/tuts by authoritative authors, when they cover some specific area, like Settings/Caching/Permalinks etc. — articles a la Smashing Mag style.
But what I am most interested in, is WP business models/strategies/innovations/decisions and people/personalities/lifestyles behind them. But that’s just me. 😉
Keep on a good work!
Saru, that is very insightful, thank you. In-depth articles a la Smashing Mag certainly seem to be very requested, and will keep that in mind.
With regards to the other interest, it reminds me that a while ago we used to do regular interviews. Might be the time to start doing them again.
@Saru,
Hoping Jean doesn’t mind me asking a tangential question but I’m really curious to learn why those words would cause you to distrust a post? When I answer questions on WordPress Answers I typically write those exact words, assuming they apply, to make it easier for the person to know the exact steps they need to take to use the example. I have assumed that doing so would be considered A Good Thing(tm).
Or is what you meant that you distrust posts the ONLY contain those words and no explanation of what the code actually does?
Mike, a post with that phrase might be a perfectly good one. It’s just that such write-ups are usually meant for beginners, and, quite often, do not reflect the best engineering practices.
@Saru – Ah, good point. Thanks for clarifying.
Jean,
I have to chime in and say that you have a terrific site. I just found it looking for a review on thesis vs genesis. I am definitely not an advanced developer but not a newbie either (I have 15 wp sites under my belt). What I like about your site is that it is well written and has great content. I get the sense that your site is really for the person that wants to be informed and not entertained. Don’t take this the wrong way. There are some sites out there that are trying to be too cutesy and entertaining with covering WP issues. Yours is a serious site that deals with serious subjects. I have bookmarked your site and will definitely come back again. I applaud you for your honesty and openness on the subject matter and am certain that you are heading in the right direction to find your “sweetspot” for the direction that you want to take this blog. Keep up the excellent job that you and your team are doing.
Thank you, all this feedback is really helpful and will help us improve further.
I want to chime in here and first thank you for your kind voice of confidence for WP Daily… and second, i want to mention my agreement with @mikeschinkel – go deep. be unique. and the rest of the community will follow! we’re subscribed, for sure!
Thanks for your stopping by and sharing your opinion John!
I think you do a fine job, I come here often, the other aforementioned sites never, I follow the people on twit that are actually doing something, and of course Post status by Brian. I agree with Mike go the Smashing way one real post.
Thanks for the feedback Craig. I think Post Status is a very original concept, and I like Brian’s work with that a lot.
Hey Jean, I can totally relate to what you are talking about. First, as many have said, I subscribe via RSS and do visit your site regularly for the variety of info you share, often stuff I share with my own communities. Great content!
And at the same time understand as I also do a lot of WP tutorials on my blog, but also the same site is where I have my training services. I like to think I focus on the beginner, the non-coder, and the non-geek. I try to stay away from any code at all, it’s how I roll and I’m sure though I haven’t cornered the market on that 🙂
But mostly I wanted to comment on comments. It is tough to get people to engage on your site and always really depends on your blog, what you post, etc. At the same time I know a lot of bigger bloggers that have seen a decline in comments overall (not all of them but some). It’s funny as I see more people wanting to comment on the social platforms. For example, you share a post on Facebook, someone reads it and actually comes back to Facebook to leave a comment. Seen the same thing on Twitter.
Lastly it’s what we blog about. People find it hard to leave comments when you are giving them great resources, tutorials, etc. They hesitate leaving a comment like, “Great video, this really helped me, thanks” as that can be construed as a lame comment, or even spam. And sometimes even asking a question at the end, which can help, doesn’t always help in the instance of our kinds of posts. People read or watch, grab the great content you shared and run with it.
You are doing a great job here, and obviously a lot of readers feel the same. I am sure whatever direction you choose to go, you will continue to find your groove 🙂
Thanks for the comment and good words Bob. What you said about comments is very true. From posts such as this one, it seems evident that there is a real readership out there who cares about the site.
Looking back I also see that in the case of many of our posts, the comments one could leave are more for appreciation or in some cases to ask for clarification, or maybe suggest a plugin.
With so many warnings not to leave ‘lame’ or spammy comments, it might be that some beginners hesitate to leave a comment at all.
So if I want more visitor engagement I would probably have to create other kinds of posts. As some others mentioned, longer and more in-depth articles are more likely to engage the visitor. Opinion posts have also worked well in the past. Food for thought, thanks Bob.
I think you are at the stage where you should bring in additional writers to help post news, tutorials, reviews etc. The site would grow much quicker 🙂
Kevin
Thanks for the tip Kevin. Indeed during the last few months the site has become much more a team effort than a solo one.
Over at catalysttheme.com they’ve got a little box that slides up and asks for your most pressing website problem. It’s unobtrusive, doesn’t take email, and disappears if you don’t use it. I guess there is a technical name for this but I’m not from round here. Anyway since it’s anonymous I bet they get some really honest comments.It’s a good way to see what is really on peoples minds.
Thanks for the suggestion Chris.
Hi Jean,
I think all websites have a scope and so does WP Mayor. Maybe it is not for beginners, or not for WordPress developers, but the fact that people visit your website through Google, or any other search engine it means that it is still a valid source of information.
People end up on your website and not on others because it is where they find the information they need.
I would classify WP Mayor as a generic WordPress website mostly focusing on reviews while also giving a lot of tips about blogging and how to improve your productivity (specifically focused for WordPress users). I think it is ideal for bloggers who already have an idea about blogging, already know what they want but they cannot have that successful breakthrough with their blog.
As long as traffic is on the increase I think that there is always space for WP Mayor! Keep up the good work.
Thanks for your feedback and views Robert.
Jean, I don’t subscribe to too many blogs because I don’t have that much time to read… But yours is on my list that I read on a regular basis. One of the reasons I love your blog is your site is simple, elegant, and your posts always contain quality information.
Whatever you do, please keep the simplistic and fast loading aspect of your site 🙂
Thanks! Looking forward to see what you come up with.
Thanks for your feedback Brian. There’s one thing I forgot to mention, and that is how we can get more user involvement here on WP Mayor. We do get comments but considering the amount of content we put out, it’s still quite a one-sided affair. It’s probably this lack of user activity on the blog which prompted me to right this post in the first place. It’s nice to see you guys commenting here, but most of you are 1st time commenters. So the question is how can we improve interaction? Is there something holding you back from commenting on other blog posts? I’d love to make this site more of an interactional experience.
Thanks Chris, will have a look at that plugin too. Certainly Types/Views look like they’re going to be the front runners in no-code WordPress website building.
Hi Jean,
I’ve only been looking into wordpress since the New Year and came to wpmayor initially for the Thesis / Genesys comparison. I’m coming at wp from the angle of making more complex websites but not using code. hmm. Therefore things like Loopbuddy & Types/Views are interesting to me.
I value posts with *detailed* feature comparisons of competing plugins or themes.
As for future trends I think wordpress adoption for business/corporate applications is an interesting one. For example the new MasterPress plugin presents a really nice solid UI for its CMS application.
Chris
Jean, WP Mayor is for me a good website to visit and to be up to date about all the wordpress content related (plugins, tips, themes,…) And how Paul said I think that your blog has it the perfect balance. Thnks four your invaluable help
Thanks Javier, I’m glad you find WP Mayor helpful.
I have to say I think you have the perfect balance. WPBeginner is for beginners, WPDaily is for keen wordpressers and this blog hits the middle ground where people can find out about interesting new plugins and wordpress developments on a regular basis without needing to have advanced coding knowledge. So great job and keep going!
Thanks Paul, appreciate your thoughts!
Hi @Jean,
I’ve been subscribing to most of the better known WordPress blogs for a while and I’ve got to agree with what I think is your implication, there’s tons of duplication and too much noise compared to available signal. I would love to see differentiated focus addressing an area nobody else really is touching, but based on passion.
So to answer your question about what you should do with WP Mayor, I’d reply with a question: What are/can you be really passionate about related to WordPress? I’m MUCH rather see 1 great in-depth post a week about something that nobody else is doing well and that you rock at doing then 3-5 posts a day that are superficial and/or are copies of other news I can find elsewhere. But it’s got to come from something you are or can be passionate about.
IMO anyway. 🙂
Thanks for your honest opinion Mike, much appreciated. Lets see what others have to say as well , I’ll post my thoughts on all the comments later.
I know there is www.byobwebsite.com which is really good and purely a Thesis house. I don’t know if there is a theme-agnostic site which shows how to use wp for your business using best of breed plugins and themes. and no code.
Hi Marcus – I would definitely be into that as well. no-code is my mantra.
I think you are really smart to ask your readers. I stumbled across you when I did a Genesis Search (I am still trying to figure out how to capture someone’s email address on my home page with a free “white paper” offering)
I like your site but I think it lacks identity and seems a bit like a hobby site to drive consulting traffic and some ad revenue your way.
It’s funny – you nailed it in your post – the other sites you mention have identified a niche and are catering to a targeted audience. Maybe you can do the same. From my perspective – I can’t code and I put together a really nice website with NO technical knowledge. WP beginner is fine – but what about WP for Non Techies? That’s a market.
Thanks for your feedback Marcus, I agree with you with regards to the site’s design/first impression. It’s something I’ll be working on.