I’ve started compiling information and ideas for what I want to do with Broken Kode. The site is a constant evolution. Everytime I get into one of these I end up knowning that much more about WordPress, PHP, CSS and other web technologies. I also end up knowing and probably contacting various plugin authors around the world asking them why their beautiful plugin does this or the other. It’s how I learn, and I guess that’s why I like to dive into the design and coding of websites. Since this is my playground this is what gets hit first.

Originally I didn’t want to touch the design of the site for at least a year. However the actual site mandate outgrew the design and that was something honestly I didn’t actually think of. So what’s the deal now you ask? Well there are many new ideas I’d like to implement and the whole site shouldn’t take me more than a week to deal with coding-wise (friggin IE will probably take up more time fixing, but I’m more prepared now than I was a version ago so that’s reassuring).

However that’s not what this post is about. In doing my research I decided to see what new functionality I could actually provide to users and to the site in general. Where to start?

Well we’ve got the excellent BlogginPro and WeblogToolsCollection doing a bang up job day in, day put, providing us with the latest information about themes, plugins etc. Scripty Goddess has been very quiet of late, but I’m sure she’ll get back into it sooner or later. How about going to the Wp-plugin repository. Ok, so it’s not the easiest of things to download plugins from. Every file is seperate, and only in some cases do all files come as one whole zip file. What a shag, 15 plugins later and their respective readme files downloaded seperately, placed in their own folders for archiving, and I started thinking to myself… there’s something seriously lacking in the WordPress community.

That something is a well structured, fully searchable, design , coding and interview PORTAL. What I’m talking about is an actual graphical website that provides the latest WordPress information in such a way that makes it appealing. Tutorials and interviews could be active features of the site. The reason behind this is pretty apparent. You have one place to go to for information, articles, tutorials etc.

I would happily contribute the design of the website, and write an article a week for it. I’m sure I could persuade people (under penalty of death ^_^) to contribute stuff to the site as well. Hell we could have a rolling RSS counter on the side that links directly to BlogginPro and WeblogToolsCollection as well.

Ideally speaking that is what the official WordPress website should be all about, alas it’s not my baby and I’m not the one fronting up the cash and time to run it and maintain it so Matt is obviously free to do as he pleases with the site. Just got me thinking is all.

I know people like James, Podz and others would be pretty good for this sort of thing. They’d really enjoy it I think, better sense of community. I dunno, maybe I’m just rambling here.

Structurally I guess it would be something akin to PixelSurgeon or Wired, although I would want more images involved, make it less boring.