The WordPress ecosystem is changing fast. Many plugins, themes, tools, and blog posts are created every day. And some of them are out of the market or simply forgotten. As a WordPress business owner, I usually need to read WordPress news sources to be updated with the latest changes in the WordPress ecosystem.
Here are the most useful news sources that I collected over the years. I also share them with the developers and marketers in my company to help them know what's happening in WordPress, too.
Some of these websites are original sites, which means the content on these websites is original. But some of the websites listed here are aggregated sites. So, you'll see some content is duplicated.
I accept this because it's hard to follow only original sites. Many of them are not updated regularly, and there are too many of them. Using aggregated sites makes the list shorter and still has everything we need to follow.
Websites
This is the source of the WordPress events and news widget in the WordPress dashboard. If you want to see an official announcement about WordPress, then this is what you need.
The must-follow site. This site is like the official news site for WordPress, where you can find almost all important news in WordPress.
Although Post Status is a paid membership community, it also offers a News section where it collects a lot of news in the WordPress ecosystem. Its Blog also has some great posts.
This is probably the best site to keep updated with Gutenberg. It covers all news features in Gutenberg as well as tutorials and opinions about it.
Newsletters
The WP Weekly by Davinder Singh Kainth
Davinder is very active on Facebook and I find this newsletter covers many things about WordPress on Facebook groups, which is really helpful.
Many websites or blogs don't write things that happen on Facebook and that's a failure because people on Facebook are very active. Sometimes, I find news on Facebook before I read official sites.
What Happened Last Week by Maciek Palmowski
I find this newsletter has a personal vibe, and I like it. The content is not 100% focusing WordPress, but also on other technologies for the web. Maciek is a [WordPress] developer and his view on WordPress and other technologies is interesting.
Within WordPress by Remkus de Vries
Remkus is an experienced WordPress developer and he's specialized in optimizing WordPress. So he knows about things like performance and caching. This newsletter has that vibe. You can also find other insightful thoughts from Remkus as well.
This WordPress newsletter exists for a long time and is one of the best newsletters about WordPress. It focuses on WordPress in general and collects links from various most popular sources and sends you an email per week.
Communities
This Facebook group is created by David McCan, who shares a lot of useful insights in this group. I find this group has a lot of useful content from David and other members. It's probably the best group at the moment to follow.
This Facebook group focuses on agencies and the content there is very helpful. The discussions are not always about WordPress, but also how to handle contracts, client supports, care plans, etc.
Youtube
Paul Charlton frequently creates videos on various topics of WordPress, including plugin/theme reviews and tutorials.
Kevin's style is sharp, but thoughtful. His videos focus on helping people follow best practices in web design and development. Most of them are based on a solid foundation of understanding CSS, which is very helpful. He also focuses on Bricks, which is a growing page builder recently.
Adam is an influencer on Youtube and his videos focusing on building websites. While he switched his role into his product businesses, he still make videos on Youtube.
Other sites
Below are some sites that I still follow. But the content is not updated regularly. Most of them are developers' sites, so maybe it's not helpful for marketers.
- Freemius: Freemius is a tool for WordPress authors, who sell plugins and themes. Their blog has great content on WordPress business.
- Tom McFarlin: Tom is a great developer and his blog covers interesting topics about WordPress development.
- Rich Tabor: Rich is passionated about the blog editor and he shares a lot of great content about it. If you develop things on Gutenberg, it's a must-have follow blog.
- Brian Coords: Brian also addicts to the block editor. He shares both blog posts and videos on the development side of the block editor, which is a very helpful source for developers.
How to follow the news
It's hard to read 10 sites every day. It simply takes a lot of time. To be more productive, we need a tool to help us collect all the news in one place, so we can read them at once (or ignore them).
I used to use Google Reader to read all sites at once. But it's discontinued. Currently, I'm using Feedly as a replacement.
Feedly allows me to read all news at once
Main features of Feedly:
- It's free
- It's simple to add a website to the list. You can search for the website name or enter the website URL.
- It has dark mode
- It has mobile apps
Using Feedly is suitable for following sites. For Facebook/Twitter communities and newsletters, we still need to follow them manually.
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