The value in the WordPress community

I’m approaching the one year mark of self hosting this WordPress blog and over the past month or so I’ve paid a great deal more attention to the platform itself; how to maximize and extend the content I’m producing here, and how to best organize user experience.  I’ve also explored things that can be done to ensure security.

The point that’s so amazing is that each and every choice I’ve made I learned from the WordPress community itself.   See, I actually started paying attention to the feed of blog posts and recommended plugins that appear in the dashboard. In no time at all the wide range of options that are at my disposal opened up to me.  I’ve been tinkering and toying around almost on a daily basis ever since.  For instance, just last night I began backing things onto the cloud by using the S3 backup plugin which utilizes Amazon Web Service.  Really simple, really cheap.

It’s a bit like outfitting a ship to sail around the world (not that I’ve ever done that, but I’ve discussed the preparations with folks that have). It’s about getting it right. It’s about being prepared for any situation.  It’s about having the right tools at the ready so you can navigate in any condition.

I attended my first WordCamp last winter in Las Vegas.  It was fascinating and I met really interesting people, but I  really didn’t know how to take advantage of the brain trust that was assembled. Now that I’m engaged with the blogging platform itself, I’m really looking forward to WordCamp New York this November.

(p.s. This post was partly inspired by the current chatter over trusting WordPress since some high profile sites have been hacked. It’s sad in a way how some will be discouraged from using WP due to the relentless activity of hackers.  They’ll never know what they are missing…)