Roundup Of WordPress Resources and Groups

Updated 9/8/2022

I subscribe to a number of newsletters, listen to podcasts, follow news sites, watch YouTube videos and participate in Facebook groups. There are a large number of these WordPress resources and communities available online. Each of them provides valuable ways to keep up with what is happening with WordPress, share knowledge and help each other. In this post I’m listing some of the online resources and groups I use, and some I’ve created, in case there is something that might be of interest and you might find helpful.

Video Version

WordPress News

WPTavern

The WordPress Tavern website has been a good source to learn about WordPress news for a number of years. The two main contributors are Sarah Gooding and Justin Tadlock. They are both employees of Audrey Capital, an investment firm founded by Matt Mullenweg, the cofounder of WordPress. They write about events, new plugins and themes, changes coming to WordPress core, and other topics relevant to the WordPress community. Justin Tadlock is a long time developer who has authored many themes and plugins and he brings an interesting developer perspective.

This Week in WordPress

This is a unique and engaging weekly review of WordPress news streamed each Monday morning. Hosted by Nathan Wrigley, it is a live video discussion of WordPress, products, people, and events. Each week Nathan has three guest panelists who share their take on what’s happening. You can listen to the live stream or replay on the WPBuilds YouTube channel or on Facebook, though the WPBuilds Facebook group.

Tutorials – Kinsta Blog

Kinsta is a premium managed WordPress hosting provider. While some of the articles explain or promote their services, most of them are of value to the general WordPress community. The tutorials span the range from beginner to an intermediate level. They cover topics like security, moving a site, setting up Cloudflare, performance optimization, and other topics relevant for site builders. One thing I like about the Kinsta tutorials is that they are very thorough and they usually provide several solutions.

WP Engine List of Best Practices

WP Engine provides WordPress hosting and sponsors a number of projects. Advanced Custom Fields is the most widely used custom fields program with more than 2 million active installs, and “Local” for running localhost WordPress sites, useful for testing and development. WP Engine has a nice article with practical best practices suggestions for WordPress and covers topics like Google Analytics, Plugin Updates, and website SEO.

Discussion of Tools & Trends

Martech Wise Forum – For Fans of Lifetime Tech Deals and SaaS Apps

Martech is a large Facebook group founded by Donald Chan with around 7,900 members. With this many people you are bound to find someone who has tried or knows about a product and the discussions are often very insightful. There can occasionally be some drama as members are sometime strongly opinionated, but the moderators do a good job of balancing free discussion while maintaining civility.

Occasionally businesses get permission to offer deals in the group. A nice thing about that is that the group does not take any portion of the sales for itself.

Nelmedia

The Nelmedia YouTube channel is the work of Nelson Therrien, a longtime WordPress professional and trainer who is versed in both programming and design. He doesn’t make lots of videos, but the thing I like about his videos is that they take an in-depth approach and they address the questions that people are asking. For example, he did a side-by-side comparison of SEOPress Pro with RankMath Pro and did a video showing the differences between WPVivid free and pro.

Nelson hangs out in the PressDevs Facebook group where he discusses the pros and cons of themes, page builders and other WordPress tools.

Page Builder Specific

There are tons of resources on the Internet focusing on different page builders, but I’m going to mention three.

WordPress Gutenberg Community

The WordPress Gutenberg Community on Facebook is a great place to discuss and get help with all things related to Gutenberg. The group is run by Munir Kamal, who is the author of the EditorPlus addon for Gutenberg, which I recently reviewed. Munir is a very knowledgeable and friendly Gutenberg expert. He stays on top of all of the Gutenberg news and shares it in the group. He also runs the Gutenberg Hub website, where there are a large number of pre-designed blocks and templates as well as a number of other Gutenberg resources.

WPDevDesign

The WPDevDesign website is a membership site with a focus on the Oxygen Builder. There are both free and member-only tutorials and there are a large number available. The site was created by Sridhar Katakam of Genesis fame, who has now turned his teaching and technical skills to providing Oxygen training.

Sridhar also has a Facebook group by the same name, WPDevDesign. Although that group has an Oxygen focus, there are also shares and discussions of general web development and design topics.

Beaver Junction

As the name implies, this site is Beaver Builder focused. Beaver Junction hosts an unusual and unique project that is the brainchild of David Waumsley. The idea is, rather than create another addon pack of Beaver Builder modules, David combines a small plugin, Beaver Builder templates, and some HTML, CSS and JavaScript to create simple module equivalents. The advantage of this approach is that these “addons” are both lightweight and free, and provide similar layout and design options usually found in paid solutions.

Elementor360

If you haven’t seen much Elementor content on the WebTNG website or YouTube channel, it is because Elementor360 is my website that hosts a number to Elementor tutorials, walk-throughs, and reviews. Elementor360 includes a resource listing, a news section, and a monthly newsletter. There is a corresponding Elementor360 YouTube channel for those who prefer to watch, rather than read.

Dynamic WordPress

Dynamic WordPress is a new group I created for people interested in themes, page builders, and working with dynamic data, including Custom Post Types, custom fields, and related topics and tools. If you are interested in these topics and are on Facebook then join us.

Bonus: Not WordPress Specific But Useful Anyway

The Pro Toolbox is a collection put together by Davinder Singh Kainth and lists more than 150 online resources that are useful for site builders. Tools include image and icon collections, the ability to generate curved dividers or SVG blobs, device frames for screenshots and many more.

Wrapping Up

There are many resources available for WordPress site builders. I’ve listed 11 of my favorites. I encourage you to check them out. If there are some high quality sites or groups that you know of that I did not include, please drop a comment below and share them.