Davinder Singh Kainth launched in The WP Weekly in July 2020.
It quickly picked up steam as there were few newsletters like this one.
The newsletter was published online but sent in an email with action-packed, quick-hitting tidbits of info and news.
Since then Kainth has published over 75 issues of one of the most popular WordPress newsletters.
Late in 2021, Davinder got the idea to host awards in the WordPress spaced based on votes by the community.
He launched The WP Awards using his newsletter as a platform.
Recently, I asked Davinder Singh Kainth to reflect on the newsletter and the first-year awards at The WP Weekly.
Note: MainWP won in the WP Support & Services category.
Why did you decide to start The WP Weekly?
I have been into the WordPress ecosystem ever since WordPress came into existence but was always in the backend and was super busy building client websites. Getting the latest valuable action-oriented WordPress information has always been a challenging task as it is a time-consuming process and one has to wade through a jungle of biased content. Also, creators in the WordPress ecosystem are super busy with their own things like client websites and other services.
So, The WP Weekly started as an honest attempt to bring the best of WordPress not just from popular sources but also from new emerging corners of the world. So far, I am very happy with the progress of this project as evident from the amazing feedback I receive regularly from creators in the space.
What have you learned about yourself running The WP Weekly?
That I am very nice, LOLs. On a serious note, The WP Weekly resulted in a lot of interactions in the background with users from various corners of the world. This made me realize, I still got a lot to learn about people coming from different backgrounds – we all are the same, yet different!
Now with 1000s of people reading The WP Weekly every week, I am very serious about this project. As a result, for the last couple of months, I have been working on various workflows to streamline the process for more consistent and quality content delivery. And yes, learning never stops and shouldn’t!
For The WP Awards 2021, what did your tech stack look like? How did you create your poll and results?
I prefer to keep things simple, always! I researched a lot of online services for polls but went back to my WordPress tool stack to see if something can be done in-house. I used the Fluent Forms Pro plugin for the poll on a page made with the block editor and styled using a little bit of custom CSS.
For results, the votes excel sheet was imported into Google Docs and a query was executed to automatically see the votes tally for every product. Final data was displayed on the results page created manually using the core blocks (why not!).
Is there anything you will do differently in 2022 for The WP Awards?
Oh yes, I learnt so many things during the debut edition of ‘The WP Awards’. Like: giving more time to people during the nomination phase, categorizing products better, and a few other things (which should be a surprise in the 2022 edition).
What surprises did you have from running The WP Awards?
Well, the biggest surprise was the volume of participation. I was expecting a couple of hundred votes but the final tally went into 1000s. I made a lot of new connections with amazing people in the ecosystem and also got introduced to new products which I had no idea about their existence.
Also, surprising (and thanks) were companies like GoDaddy Pro, 20i Hosting, Cloudways, and StellarWP for sponsoring this debut edition – making the effort worthwhile in all aspects.
What kinds of feedback did you have while running The WP Awards?
Glad you asked because I did receive a lot of emails sharing various views, and a few poles apart. “I never knew this product existed for this use case in WordPress” – a lot of people emailed thanking for discovering new products via The WP Awards voting page.
A few did question about categories assigned to specific products, which for sure was valid but I had a tightrope walk in keeping everything still organized and easy to digest for someone voting on products. I have promised them to be more careful about this, going forward.
The biggest realization was, the WordPress community is ‘still’ amazing, engaging, sharing, and flourishing!
Wrapping it up
Thank you, Davinder for answering questions about The WP Weekly and the WP Awards.
I am looking forward to seeing what 2022 brings for your newsletter and the awards.
Did you vote in the WP Awards?
Let’s chat about it in the MainWP Users Facebook group.
