WordPress is a fantastic community of active folks who create excellent and active communities of online forums where you can jump online to ask and answer questions about WordPress and the projects that everyone is working on. The most active communities have a great mix of active folks from WordPress agencies and product companies, solopreneurs, and a constant influx of new WordPress users.
There are a handful of these communities that we’ve noticed add a large amount of value to each of the users. They’re well-moderated, on-topic, and very active. Below, I’m going to write a list of the online communities that I see a great deal of activity happening that you might want to get involved with.
Qualities of a Healthy Online Community
When you’re evaluating an online community to join, you want to look at a few key indicators that will help you decide if it’s going to be worth an investment in your time. The communities below all score well on the following qualities.
- Well-moderated – Keeping a community on-topic and focused is essential. The most precious commodities you have are your time and attention. An online community has to respect that and ensure that the conversation is (mostly) on-topic and providing value, otherwise members won’t be able to extract value from the noise.
- Relevant Questions – Have you ever logged into a forum and seen the same old questions over and over again? That usually signals a community in decline. A community that consistently features good questions that are widely-relevant to more people than just the asker will grow quickly because of the conversations it sparks and the answers that help everyone.
- Lots of Active Answerers – Communities are only as good as the number of folks who add in their expertise to answer questions. The best ones will strongly suggest that you not ask more questions than you answer because that ensures there are enough answers for each comment you get.
- Focus – A community that is clear about the types of discussions that are off-limits vs. fair game helps to keep the discussions on point, and the value high.
- Humor – For all the talk of staying on-topic and the like, I notice that the most successful communities also have a good sense of humor. Don’t discount the value of a good joke to keep people entertained as well as informed.
Online WordPress Groups
Advanced WordPress – A site organized by a group of developers in Southern California, but with active participation from across the globe. The above link is for Facebook, but they also have an Advanced WP Google+ Community, a Meetup Group, and a main site, AdvancedWP.org as well.
Members: Over 1500
“The idea behind this group is simple, a place for WP developers on Facebook to meet and share ideas and knowledge with a focus on the most advanced features and functionality without necessarily having to go into any basics.”
Conversations in this group are on the technical side of WordPress development. You can get into conversation about the best caching methods of a self-hosted site (if you’re not already on WP Engine), and the like. For newbies, it’s a great place to learn and see just how far you can take WordPress as a technical platform.
OC Meetup Group – This group is technically for the folks that attend the OC Meetup, but it has a growing cadre of members who have attended a WordCamp in SoCal, and who are connected with the really active WordPress community in the region. It’s a really active place, and a very welcoming one as well.
Members: 647
“Our words are delicious… like oranges?
All About WordPress – This group has a regular schedule of the types of content that helps focus what people are posting about on any given day. It’s a very international community of WordPress folks and marketers who share what they know.
Members: 561
“All About WordPress: Please share related questions, blog posts, tips, and ideas.”
r/WordPress – This list wouldn’t be complete without a nod to the main WordPress site on Reddit. If you’re a big Redditor, and love WordPress, you probably already know. It’s a well-moderated, and very active community and delves into everything from WordPress news to technical questions, to side conversations.
Readers: 12,319
“The place for news, articles and discussion regarding WordPress.”
That’s the cross-section of places that we’ve seen a great deal of activity in, but I’m sure there are more out there that I missed. If there is a community you’re active in, but that we missed, be sure to list it in the comments so that your fellow reader can get connected as well!
These groups have been the single most important thing in the development of my career. When I joined Advanced WordPress a year ago, I pretty much just did SEO and content writing, but now I’m designing my own websites and learning all the amazing things you can do with WordPress.
I have the utmost gratitude for the community and all of it’s participants who share with each other and help strengthen our collective body of knowledge about WordPress.
I’m surprised that there’s not more communities listed, to be honest.
I think ‘a nod’ to wordpress.org/forums is in order also. Over the year I have been involved with several CMS developments from nuke to xoops etc … Out of all the online forums connected to these CMS projects, WordPress stands out miles ahead in terms of practical usefulness, civility and relevance to the project. You would not believe the arguments and vitriol I’ve witnessed on some of these other forums, but not so with WordPress. Many thanks to the moderators and members for maintaining a worthy home for the project and place that can be relied upon for great support.