How do you keep up with WordPress community news? The Community Show, episode 1

WP Builds podcast 389 artwork, on WordPress community news: The Community Show, with Courtney Robertson and Nathan Wrigley

How do you keep up with WordPress community news without drowning? For the first episode of The Community Show, my new recurring show with Nathan Wrigley on WP Builds, I walked through my morning news routine: coffee first, then RSS.

🎙️ Episode details

Audio from WP Builds. Read the episode transcript on WP Builds.

Also, more conversations like this one live in my podcast and speaking archive.

🗓️ What I was doing that week

That week, I was lead organizer of contributor day at WordCamp US that week, coordinating about 30 tables, each with a lead and an assistant. GoDaddy sponsored part of my time to contribute. I facilitated Meta team meetings and worked with Hari Shanker on project health dashboards: metrics showing whether contributor numbers in core, Training and Community were growing, shrinking or stable.

In fact, those dashboards connect to a real problem. In the previous release, the props list missed some people whose work on a major feature spanned five or six years. It was accidental, and better data helps prevent it.

☕ My morning routine for WordPress community news

After all, reading the news is part of my job: knowing what’s happening and inviting people to contribute, with time or money. Once my kids are off to school, I sit down with coffee and start scanning.

For example, I use Feedly, after Google shut down Google Reader, because I don’t want to open a hundred sites or let a social media algorithm choose my news. I keep sources in organized folders, prefer RSS over email newsletters, and share relevant items promptly with the people who need them. Also, you can export your sources as an OPML file and bring them anywhere.

I mentioned the methods behind it, too: the PARA method, Building a Second Brain and How to Take Smart Notes. Having kids changed my memory, so I built systems that remember for me.

🧪 What can you take for keeping up with WordPress community news?

  • Topics: my week at WordCamp US, project health dashboards, and my morning routine for WordPress community news
  • Anyone overwhelmed by WordPress news: pick an RSS reader and start with ten sources, in folders.
  • Team leads: forward the one item each teammate needs, rather than everything.
  • Contributors: check whether your work appears in a release’s props list, and say so if it doesn’t.

🗓️ Archival note

WP Builds released this episode on September 12, 2024. Then I added this post on November 9, 2026, from the publisher’s show notes, timestamps and transcript. However, I reviewed the transcript, not the audio.

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