The best advice I ever received as a website designer was simple: choose a content management system with a strong community behind it.
When I began working with WordPress, I was fortunate to live near an active WordPress community in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tech Liminal hosted WordPress support meetups in Oakland twice a week. The meetings moved online during the COVID-19 pandemic and continue virtually today.
Tech Liminal was founded by Anca Mosoiu, an MIT-trained software engineer who created a community where people could learn, solve problems, and connect with others working in technology.
As a WordPress newcomer, Tech Liminal gave me a place to bring my questions, learn new skills, and meet people with different areas of expertise.
It was also where I frequently discovered that “there’s a plugin for that”—thanks in large part to Pieter Hartsook.
More importantly, the community introduced me to Anca Mosiou, who became an invaluable collaborator on websites requiring more advanced technical development.
The meetups did more than help me solve the problems directly in front of me. I also learned by listening to other people describe the challenges they were facing. Exploring their questions exposed me to WordPress features, troubleshooting techniques, and potential solutions I might not have encountered through my own projects.
My work with WordPress has evolved considerably since then. I moved from customizing StudioPress themes to designing complete websites with Beaver Builder. Today, I increasingly build with blocks and WordPress Full Site Editing.
For someone who enjoys learning, it has been a rewarding journey.
Attending WordCamps added another dimension to the experience. Okay, they may not have been quite as exciting as a Star Trek convention, but I did meet a few instructors whose courses I had watched on Lynda.com. I got to be a fangirl for a minute.
The moment when I recognized how much I had grown happened during Contributor Day. Instead of being the person asking all the questions, I realized I could answer some of them.
That is the value of a strong technology community. It helps you solve immediate problems, but it also gives you opportunities to learn, collaborate, contribute, and grow.
My advice to anyone choosing a content management system or website-building platform is to look beyond its list of features. Find out whether it has an active and generous community behind it.
The tools will continue to change. A good community helps you change with them.
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