WordCamp Whistler – Lorelle Van Fossen keynote – semi-liveblog

UPDATE 9.49 am – I am not 100% sure I will be able (or wanting) to liveblog and I still haven’t learned to do Cover It Live so I’m just going to go the good ol’ fashion – posting updates on my site. This place looks SO geeky. Kudos to Rebecca, Duane, John for excellent organization, thanks also to Lorraine and April and David for livestreaming, and Erica who is helping Rebecca at the door. I was commissioned to do the coffee

For those of you who don’t know, Lorelle Van Fossen is considered a worldwide authority on all things WordPress. I haven’t yet had the pleasure to meet Lorelle on a one-on-one basis but I’m sure I will. Lots of my friends are here, and if I mention everyone by name I might miss someone so let’s just get on with the fun!

Lorelle starts with a very cute movie to the music of Pinoccio “WordPress has changed a lot of lives” (it certainly has changed mine -e.g. Raul’s). After the photo slideshow, there is an additional few short videos from prominent bloggers who express how WordPress has changed their lives. Glenda Watson Hyatt (the left handed blogger) has a prominent segment in the presentation that Lorelle is giving. Glenda describes how WordPress has enabled her to have a voice and provide her with a visibility she wouldn’t get otherwise. WordPress has given Glenda a chance to meet and create connections online that then are taken to the real world. Glenda – your words were inspirational.

UPDATE 10:10 am – Rebecca and Duane are on the podium – thanking awesome sponsors (I can list them a bit later). Rebecca is about to introduce Lorelle – and Duane is thanking the sponsors – absolutely well deserved, but it also should be noted that Rebecca, Duane and John did an AMAZING job. Thank you guys for giving us a chance to attend this unique event!

Lorelle’s homepage was big around the world (Taking Your Camera on the Road). Lorelle also works for Woopra! It wasn’t even called a website! Lorelle is describing all the things that she does with WordPress (she is an evangelist for WP and everything associated). She is also going to be selling her latest book. She just had a conversation with Matt Mullenweg (his goals for 2009 include a lot of open sourcing).

Lorelle is describing Matt’s pet peeve with WordPress being actually WordPress (I knew this too, hehe). Now showing an LOLCats for the lowercase P. The resolutions of Matt include
- Making people learn that it’s “WordPress” not “WordPress”.
- Make people use the actual true logo (the W is much larger).

When you push the Turbo button on WP – works with Google Gears and creates a caching system so that the administration panels load much faster. WordPress 2.7 is major Java-script hungry.

Lorelle’s Number 1 tip – Future Posts – Timestamps - Lorelle does a lot of future posts. She writes 6-10 at a time and then schedules them across time (which allows her to have a life and time things). It’s very useful. In 2.7 you hit the edit button you can put in the date and time. Almost everybody is up to WP 2.7 (I certainly am!)

Lorelle’s Number 2 tip – FireFox – Spell Check – Webmasters Tool for Designers – Powerful extensions and add-ons – Greasemonkey Scripts – Lorelle certainly opens A LOT of tabs. I don’t go over 15 EVER.

Lorelle’s tip – Probloggers use HTML Editor. The FireFox extension that allows you to copy a full link (Greasemonkey Scripts). She is giving MAJOR SEO tips – I know for a fact that I don’t include code with the post title. Unless you put in a caption, it will NOT put the actual caption (“alt” in your HTML meta-tags, also known as “alternative accessibility”).

So, why use the HTML editor

- Fix poorly formed HTML.
- Total control over content formatting.
- You do not need to use paragraph tags.
- Pasted content cleans easily
- Faster blogging

WordPress-It & QuickPress
- Quick posting to your blog
- Built-in feature of WordPress
- QuickPress found on the 2.7 Dashboard panel (NOTE FROM RAUL – I do use the QuickPress to create drafts of blog posts) – Yes, the problem is that QuickPress does NOT have categories. They NEED to fix this up.

Press This Bookmarklet
- Fast blogging – You can now create a blog post out of links on the Internet. Very nifty! It does have a few flaws, though. It takes the text that you’ve selected and puts it into a paragraph, not block quotes. Lorelle does recommend that this gets fixed (and it should – Lorelle is a big advocate of copyright). NOTE FROM RAUL – This could be fixed integrating Sni.ps into WordPress. Matt and David Gratton should be talking, I think.

Speed Blogging
- Note Tab Pro
- FireFox

It’s important to backup your database.
NoteTabPro creates a paste board file.
CoLT and AtuoCopy FireFox extensions.

Lorelle is sharing a few details on Greasemonkey Scripts – frankly, I couldn’t capture them but I think you can explore them on your own.

Finding WordPress Plugins
- Plug In Directory
- WP-Plugins Database
- Blog Herald WordPress News
- WordPress Podcasts

UPDATE - Rebecca’s liveblog is here and John’s on the WC Whistler site is here.

UPDATE 10.48 pm – I am a bit overwhelmed by the quantity of information Lorelle is sharing, but I do hope that she might post her slides on Slideshare or something.

I added a remark when Lorelle asked me about a tip “no matter what platform you use (and you SHOULD use WordPress) make sure to write good content”. She also asked me if I have said nice things about her. Of course, Lorelle! You are rocking this session (a tad fast for my typing, but amazing nonetheless).

Lorelle is Twittering every day at least one plugin and one tip. She is also sharing awesome tips on Twitter (publishing her tweets on her site). She got a lot of complaints. So she recommends not to publish her tweets (I am guilty of doing it myself!)

Popular WordPress Plugins include – PodPress – PollDaddy – WP-Download Manager – All in One Video Pack – Viper Video Tags – Buy Me a Coffee / Buy Me A Beer plugin (I need to install this one).

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