Now don’t get freaked out. You may be reading into the title more than you think.
Why? Because this is about Do the Woo, not the internet.
A decade or more of tutorials on WordPress and WooCommerce
When I made the decision to move the Do the Woo podcast to its own site, thus leaving BobWP.com with my meandering tutorials, it was a part of my newest pivot. I wanted to focus on the builder community and the people. Not on how to set up or use plugins and extensions. But as I mentioned at that point, it was more than that. I was sick and tired of doing tutorials.
Shortly after I got into WordPress in 2006, I started writing tutorials and actually built a brand around it. Those were good years.
But it was time for me to move on.
Now don’t get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with tutorials.. in fact the very opposite. Where would WordPress or WooCommerce be without them. Where would you be? And I am so grateful for those who continue or start new adventures in keeping us all educated.
The era didn’t really end till this month
Earlier this week I sent out this simple tweet.
So while I was in Porto, Portugal, in isolation, one of the things I did was delete all tutorals from the site. With the intent that I want the site focused on the builder community and the people, vs. how to’s.
Do_the Woo WooCommerce Builder Community (@DotheWoo) June 28, 2022
But in that tweet there is a lot to unpack.
When I launched this site, I left all my Woo tutorials on BobWP.com. Eventually I moved them here. I did this for various reasons. But as they loomed in the depths of this site, I come to realize two major things.
First, they would become outdated. In the good old days (really not that long ago), I took an extra effort to keep tutorials updated, specifically the ones that were getting a lot of traffic. But those days of updating were long gone. So I knew that soon I would have some fossils here on the site.
Secondly, it bugged me. By that I mean that I felt I had two audiences here on this site. The ones who found my tutorial posts via Google, read what they needed and then left. Which is a previous life was fine by me. But the other audience is you. Those who listen to the podcast and are more part of the Do the Woo builder community. The latter is where I wanted the focus of this site.
So as my tweet said, during my covid isolation in Porto post WordCamp, I went on a tutorial deleting rage. Got rid of every single one of those suckers, and yes, redirected each one. At this point I had it down to less than 200 posts as I had been slowly getting rid of some of them that were really outdated or not getting any traffic.
That’s it, an end of an era.
But not the end of education
In my tweet I said, “I want the site focused on the builder community and the people, vs. how to’s.”
This is true and not true. My focus isn’t that via tutorials. But in reality, with all the smart people I have both as guests and hosts, the listeners will always learn a lot. So in a sense, it’s an end of an era, but a continuation at the same time.
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