WordPress has been an important part of my life for the last decade or more. I’m not sure when exactly, but I’ve been subscribed to WP Tavern for a long time now, and it has been an excellent source of news and updates about what’s been happening in the world of WordPress — everything from plugin acquisitions and notable theme releases to security breaches and fixes and other updates. Many of my favorite or most memorable articles were written by Sarah Gooding.
Unfortunately, Sarah has posted possibly her last article on the site, titled “Last Call“. She writes,
This has been an emotional, bittersweet morning for me, reading through old posts, as I close the book on my time at this beloved publication. Today is my last day before moving on to embrace a new challenge in the world of tech.
In 2013, the year I started writing at the Tavern, just 17.4% of the web was running on WordPress, but the momentum I felt at that last WordCamp San Francisco was intoxicating and undeniable. It marked the ascendency of the global WordPress community and the move to embrace new tools like Slack and GitHub for contributing to core.
At that time, one frustrating thing I frequently heard was “It’s just WordPress, don’t take it so seriously.” Yet there we were, standing on the edge of an amazing acceleration of WordPress’ adoption and expansion of the ecosystem that brought meaningful work to millions and gave people a voice on the web. It was never “just WordPress” to me. As the software enters its third decade, powering 43% of the world’s websites, WordPress continues to be an irrepressible force of good on the web. I’d like to think the Tavern had a small part in that.
WP Tavern has been a fantastic place to get a no-nonsense feed of excellent articles and many of them were written by Sarah herself. I’m actually feeling sad knowing that Matt doesn’t have a ready replacement for Sarah yet, and I’m definitely going to miss Sarah’s content.