We’ve been going nearly non-stop since we started just a few short months ago and it’s been hard to keep pace even internally with all of the work that goes on to building a successful blog, a passionate community around it, and the technical components of pulling it off.
For those that know, it is really like trying to replace a wing of an airplane mid-flight; it just doesn’t work that well (and yet you know it’s still possible). As a result, things like a responsive design and advanced features are bigger tasks than they might seem as we try to make this business work.
Even comments, from time to time, have been problematic and a number of you have noticed it – and we appreciate the honest feedback as we try to capture the issues that you notice and log them for work. We can’t possibly turn-around solutions as quickly as you and I would both like but we’re working to that end.
One of our community members, Naomi Bush, has been openly vocal historically about some of the issues that she’s seen and has done a great job of presenting them and encouraging us through.
She also was wise and gracious enough to connect with us privately, which we really appreciate – she didn’t have to, but she chose to engage with us in that way before being overtly public. Cool stuff, and honored to have such community members among us.
Recently she send us an email that I wanted to post here, with her permission, to showcase her thoughts as well as to show that we’re not perfect and that we’re open about the issues that a growing blog might face.
This was via our Contact Us Form:
Name: Naomi
Email: naomicbush.com
Comment:
Hi, I reached out to you on Twitter about your caching just because that’s where I happened to be at the time and it takes much longer to search for a contact form. That being said, I’m aware that the conversation is public and my goal is not to shame or humiliate, but obtain a solution.
Here’s the conversation:
https://twitter.com/NaomiCBush/statuses/303855846834708480
It’s worth noting that I’d been experiencing this behavior for weeks before I even said anything, just because it ends up being too much trouble to take time out to explain to someone that there’s a problem with their site.
That being said, “working out the kinks is part of the process” is just not adequate or even remotely acceptable for a *news* site that’s been around for almost 3 months now (first post Dec 1st) – emphasis here on news.
Podcasts and Harlem Shake videos are cool, but by your own mission, *news* is the fundamental thing here and when I wake up in the morning, I can’t get the news because your site won’t show it to me. Which makes me sad 🙁 because you have the only living and active WordPress news site (since WPCandy dropped off) and I think you have a good thing going here. However, I can’t trust that I can get the daily WordPress news from your site without waiting some unspecified period of time before it will show up for me 🙁 🙁
“Our mission is to create the #1 news source for all things WordPress. Community-powered, curated, trusted, daily.”
I hope this will be fixed very soon (as in I’d actually like to be able to see the latest news on your website on Monday) and that my feedback is taken as friendly — we live and work in the same area and I’d like to see you grow and succeed.
As a matter of fact, the Gwinnett WordPress developer meetup I organize is meeting tonight and I’m happy to discuss this with you face-to-face as well (http://meetu.ps/qsgLR) — no hiding behind the keyboard over here! 🙂
We love this and thought it was our responsibility to let our audience here and Naomi know that we’re working on it and that we’re doing more than just experimenting with the kinks.
In hindsight when we share even more about what we’re doing at the hosting level and architecture it’ll be all 20/20 but we’re sorry that you and our growing audience is experiencing those bumps along the way! We’re working hard to keep this growing business floating without dropping the responsibilities of our already-existing company over at 8BIT.
But you’re right – it’s not enough, and we’re going to make a concerted effort to correct some of the issues, as best as we can, to make sure you get the news when you want it without delay. Tomorrow, as a team, we’re sitting down and going to make some progress.
Thanks Naomi for speaking up and being awesome – and we’ll see you tonight. Just as you said, no hiding behind keyboards here too!
And by the way, that Harlem Shake video was such a fail. I’m so personally sorry that I published that. What an embarrassment!
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