Users Helping Users
Don't let the volume of users fool you: WordPress has bragging rights to the most helpful blogging community on the Web. Don't worry if you're not a member of the WordPress community. Joining is easy: Simply start your own blog by using the WordPress platform. If you're already blogging on a different platform, such as Blogspot or Movable Type, WordPress makes migrating your data from that platform to a new WordPress setup simple. (See Book II, Chapter 7 for information on migrating to WordPress from a different platform.)
WordPress support forums
The WordPress Forums page (shown in Figure 4-1) can be found at http://wordpress.org/support. This is where you find users helping other users in their quest to use and understand the platform. The support forums are hosted on the WordPress.org Web site, but don't expect to find any official form of support from the WordPress developers. Instead, you find a large community of people from all walks of life seeking answers and providing solutions.
Figure 4-1: WordPress Forums page.
Users from beginner and novice level to the most advanced level browse the forums providing support for one another. Each user has their own experiences, troubles, and knowledge level with WordPress, and the support forums are where they share those experiences and seek out the experiences of other users.
It is important to remember that the people you find and interact with on these official forums are offering their knowledge on a volunteer basis only — so, as always, common courtesy rules apply. Using “please” and “thank you” go a long, long way in the forums.
If you find solutions and assistance in the WordPress support forums, consider browsing through the forum entries to see whether you can help someone else by answering a question or two.
WordPress user manual
You can also find users contributing to the very helpful WordPress Codex (a collection of how-to documents) at http://codex.wordpress.org. Codex, by the way, is Latin for book.
The WordPress Codex is a collaborative effort to document the use of the WordPress software. All contributors to the Codex are WordPress users who donate their time as a way of giving back to the free, open source project that has given them a dynamic piece of software for publishing freely on the Web.
WordPress mailing lists
You can subscribe to various mailing lists, too. These lists offer you the opportunity to become involved in various aspects of the WordPress community as well as future development of the software. All the available WordPress mailing lists are on the Automattic Web site at http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo. The most popular ones include
- wp-hackers (http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-hackers): Subscribe to this mailing list to interact and talk to other WordPress users about hacking WordPress; otherwise known as altering WordPress code to make it do what you want it to do.
- wp-testers (http://lists.automattic.com/mailman/listinfo/wp-testers): This mailing list is filled with people who are testing new releases (as well as Beta versions) of WordPress and reporting any bugs or problems that they find.
- wp-edu (http://lists.automattic.com/pipermail/wp-edu/): A mailing list dedicated to educating people on the use of the WordPress platform.