Daniel Kossmann

45th WordPress Meetup Belo Horizonte: Q&A on Newsletter and Blog Content Creation

in

On February 25, 2026, I participated in the online event 45th WordPress Meetup Belo Horizonte. It was an incredible experience, where I got to talk for more than two hours with people from all over Brazil about creating content for newsletters and blogs.

Since I talked about a lot of interesting things, I wanted to write this post to record some of the questions and answers. I tried to organize them, so the order doesn’t necessarily match the order they were asked during the event.

What motivates me?

I created PainelWP because it was the newsletter I wanted to receive about WordPress in Portuguese (I wrote more about this in the two-year anniversary post of PainelWP [in Portuguese]). The project also helps me stay up to date with what’s new on the platform, which is important for my work.

On my blog, I know I learn better when I write about a topic, and it also serves as a reference for my “future self”. Several of my most visited posts are personal documentation of how I solved a problem, in case I encounter it again in the future, regardless of the subject:

My PainelWP writing process

A very summarized version would be:

  1. I open my RSS reader (I use NewsBlur because it’s free software) and check what’s new on the sites I follow, which are divided into two folders: Portuguese (has priority) and English. I’ve been building this list gradually. I open all links that seem interesting.
  2. I open my “read later” list (I use Instapaper) and open the ones I marked as potentially interesting for the newsletter.
  3. I copy a template I have for the newsletter in my notes app (I use Joplin [in Portuguese])
  4. Diverge: I open and read each item, if I choose to include it in the newsletter, I copy the most interesting excerpts and add some personal notes to help me remember when writing the summary. I select a total of 6 links here.
  5. Converge: I make a copy of the last email, remove the content from each section, and using the notes from the step above I write the summaries.
  6. I do a final check to make sure all links are correct, proofread the text (Débora helps me with this), and then create the post and send the email.

I learned the Diverge and Converge methodology from the book “Building a Second Brain”, which helps make the whole process faster and less exhausting.

How do I discover plugins, themes, and blocks to recommend?

I usually check the profiles of people who contribute to WordPress versions (there’s always a list of contributors at the end) and the PTE requests.

What techniques do I use to help me write?

Here’s a list of some items I opened during the event and others I didn’t show, but that are useful:

What do I recommend for those who want to start creating content?

Most of the posts below I wrote to answer this very question:

Where can I learn more about content creation?

Nobody asked me this question at the event, but I thought it would be a great reference to add. In 2021 I gave a talk at WordCamp São Paulo 2021 about PainelWP [in Portuguese] on this topic, where I mentioned several of the links I cited above. If you prefer, you can check out just the talk slides here [in Portuguese].

What is my biggest traffic source? What automations do I use?

To be very honest: I don’t know. I don’t track that number, nor the number of visits. I know the number of PainelWP subscribers because it always shows up on the MailPoet send screen, but I don’t see that as the success indicator. For me, what matters most is the feedback I get from people who subscribe, whether they reply to the email or send me a message.

What are my inspirations?

It’s hard to list all of them, but here are some I mentioned during the event:

What are my plans for PainelWP and my blog?

I’ve been thinking about expanding PainelWP to be more than a newsletter, so I can help the Portuguese-speaking WordPress community even more (not just Brazil, but all speakers of the language). I also want to improve the site and have more additional content for those who support the project. If you want to help, see how to support PainelWP [in Portuguese].

For my blog, I want to get back to writing more (this post is part of that) and also to doing fun things on it with the help of AI (like a new theme I’m creating with Telex).

Other interesting links

Some other links I mentioned:

Final thoughts

I wanted the event to be more dynamic than a lecture where everyone listens silently and leaves afterwards, so we did it in a format that wasn’t recorded to encourage more people to participate. The idea of people using the “raise hand” feature (which I experimented with at a Curitiba event [in Portuguese]) worked really well, and I loved that many people asked more than one question. It would be great to see more online events in this format!

Thank you to Pedro Emanuel, Caio Ferreira, Amanda Cardoso, and Christian van ‘t Hof for the invitation and for organizing the event. It was a pleasure to participate!

Note: my goal was to finish this post in 2 to 3 pomodoros [in Portuguese], but it ended up taking almost 4.

Daniel Kossmann

I am passionate about continuous learning and sharing knowledge, which is why I advocate for open source and Creative Commons. I believe that sharing knowledge can drive innovation and improve the world.

Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *