Going Introspective

A couple of guys reached out to me on X by sending me a direct message asking what my offer was and what I was trying to build.

I'm happy to write whatever I feel each week for my newsletter. I thought I couldn't keep that up, but I could—it's excellent writing. I don't know where it will take me, but in the back of my mind is the monetisation question: What's my product or offer? In my first newsletter, I mentioned my three areas of interest and my three pillars.

I looked it up, and my first newsletter was about my three pillars: self-improvement, neuroscience, and WordPress. I want to talk about WordPress because I can write about it all day.

So, I think that's where I'm heading with this newsletter. My first WordPress-focused newsletter will describe WordPress, how it works, and what I can offer. That's a good question—I think my offer on WordPress will explain what WordPress is: the who, what, why, and how.

Nearly half a billion websites are now using WordPress as of 2024. That's over 43% of the websites on the Internet and over 60% share of the content management systems (otherwise known as CMS). WordPress’ history began in 2003 when Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little started it.

The first version of WordPress, 0.7, was released in May of that year. As of this newsletter, we are at version 6.6.1.

WordPress is very easy to learn, extremely flexible, and suitable for almost any genre of website. It’s not just for blogging! There are many thousands of themes and plugins, both free and premium, that can be installed onto the ‘core’ WordPress to enhance and personalise any website to just how you envisage it to be.

I've been using WordPress on and off since 2014, when I first started using it for my first website. It still exists, but I have yet to do much with it in recent years. I've used WordPress for affiliate marketing. There are plenty of opportunities to write, but SEO has changed over the years, and I have put that to bed. I'm not fighting Google. There are other ways of driving traffic to your website, and until Google changes its ways with SEO, I'm not playing their game. I'm much happier writing without the shackles of SEO.

The underlying language behind WordPress is PHP, which is convenient for me because I've used that in my day–job writing scripts to update Vtiger—a Contact Management System written in PHP—from the company's admin system. This allowed me to practice using PHP on real projects—an excellent exercise; I learned a lot.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ Go on, Paul, and start sticking your screwdriver into the inner workings of WordPress!

I've been thinking about this a lot, but I'm still undecided whether to stay niched in WordPress or broaden my horizons to coding in general.

Looking Ahead

I’m already planning next week’s newsletter. I'm still on the lines of my three pillars. I'm going into deep thought about what I really want to do and where I really want to go with my digital writing.

Be Happy!

Paul.