Hummingbird604.com » WCWhistler09

WordCamp Whistler – Dave Thorvald Olson on “Are You Worthy”

Raul — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 00:16:49 +0000

Dave O is speaking about blogging as delivery of content. His talk is kind of the “rounding the event” kind of keynote. Dave is doing some story-telling, which I absolutely adore. He is taking us to Guam and speaking about Jerry Garcia. Weird topic, but I am sure everything is going to tie together. DaveO quit his job and then decided to move to San Francisco (following “all the answers”).

DaveO is such a wonderful artist and storyteller! He is basically telling us his story of how he got into the Internetz and the whole business of social media. His first slide is giving us the bullet point list – in learning about the Internet, he realized that this was the whole element that was missing. There were tensions or syndromes. The first puzzle is distribution. Artists making stuff getting it to people who are interested in reading. How can you transfer these bits of information to the people who want to consume it?

Helping educate other people about how to do different things. Dave O is going to show us the last two artifacts that close the loop and the whole story.

There are logistical, legal and social challenges. He has now moved on to The Odyssey (yes, the greek mythology story). So now he is going to read a passage of Agamenon’s journal, returning from battle. Different parts and elements to writing.

Who were the monks translating for? Other monks.

I interrupted my liveblog because it’s such a great story telling exercise, it’d be a pity to miss his talk. Back with a recap later.

SUMMARY – Looking beyond the platform. Have SOMETHING to express (which ties to my suggestion to Lorelle, a WordPress tip – focus on the content). Now DaveO shows a Venn Diagram Awesome (X) intersecting with Audience (Y). Your goal is to end up in the middle (at the intersection of writing awesome stuff AND deliver it to your audience).

Putting the blog back into blogging.

WordCamp Whistler – Andy Peatling on BuddyPress

Raul — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 22:43:53 +0000

Andy Peatling is not only a friend of mine, but also a fantastic WP developer. Andy is the Social Engineer at Automattic. This presentation is an overview of BuddyPress in early 2009. BuddyPress will transform an installation of WordPress MU into a social network platform.

BuddyPress is actually a suite of 8 plugins. You can specifically pick and choose which plugins you want to use. If you want to add profiles you can just install the Extended Networks component. You can just drop in the Messaging module. It’s very module, none of the other plugins need each other, but they extend them. Andy is going to provide an overview of the first 8 plugins.

1. EXTENDED PROFILES – Lets administrators to create descriptions of themselves and the users of the network.

2. PRIVATE MESSAGING – Internal email, threaded messaging – any user can respond to other users.

3. FRIENDS – Creates friend-like relationships amongst the users.

4. BLOGS – Activates all your blogging activity across all your network.

5. GROUPS – Allows any user to create 3 types of groups – public, private and hidden.

6. WIRE – You get a wire on your profile page (kinda the wall on Facebook).

7. ACTIVITY STREAMS.

8. FORUMS – Makes use of BBPress – people can create conversations in a forum style.

9. STATUS UPDATES

10. ALBUMS

Plugins 9 and 10 are slated to come out in 2009. There are two themes. Default Home Theme — WP theme (basic) – creates a static page on the front page. The second theme is the Member theme. A WordPress blog theme can be converted to a BuddyPress member theme with a few simple steps.

All the members on a site can be searched (by name or specific content on their profile).

Installation is pretty simple. Plugin Files (wp-content/mu-plugins) – Home Theme (wp-content/themes) and – Member Theme (wp-content/member-themes). You can drop the widgets (about 8).

Potential uses
- Business or school internal social networks
- Niche social networks
- Adding social networking features to existing blog networks
- Interacting with fellow bloggers on WordPress.com

Gives the administrator full control (something I appreciate from BuddyPress and is sorely lacking on Facebook!)

WHY USE WORDPRESS

- Easy database access and manipulation.
- User management and control.
- Powerful XML support, importing, exporting, XML-RPC
- Active and supportive community
- Localization support built right in

Existing plugins and themes with BuddyPress
- Add new features to already existing plugins
- Use any Wordpress theme (with some easy steps)
- A complete developer platform already exists – if you can write a WordPress plugin, you already know how to create or extend BuddyPress components.

All components follow the same file and code structure. Standardization and consistency makes happy developers.

UPDATE – 3:05 PM – Andy is telling us the view to the future for BP.

- Beta 2 – next week / final early February ‘09
- Albums and Status Updates components
- BuddyPress.org developer community site
- Open standards support/distribution of data
- BuddyPress for WordPress

WordCamp Whistler – Tris Hussey on How to Use WordPress as a Basic CMS for Your Website

Raul — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 22:00:29 +0000

“My name is Tris and I hate to code”. Tris does a quick poll – how many of us create websites with WordPress? Well, some people don’t do it. When the design and the content are together in the code – updating can be less than fun – therefore, websites aren’t updated, a simple change breaks links, etc.

Note – Tris had already written a blog post as a precursor for his talk, you can check it out here. Tris loves to use the WP template system to create websites. The content remains the same. Is this the right solution for you? May or may not work for you.
- Need easily updated content
- User control
- Flexible design
- Static info and a blog
- SEO tuned
- Fast initial build out

STEP 1 Make two pages
- Home page
* Call it whatever you want
* Use Lorem Ipsum text if needed
- Blog page
* Static page
* I like to call it “Blog” it’s really up to you
* No content, just a title.

STEP 2

STEP 3 Menus
- This ties into Morten’s talk very nicely

That’s pretty much it for the basics – the next thing is – tweaks, themes and plugins.

Tweaks – make your permalinks pretty – .htaccess will have to be updated – you want the titles of your pages and posts to be the URL of your permalinks. Create a good title for your WordPress blog and a nice tag line!

UPDATE – 2:07 PM – I’m feeling way better and I’m very focused on Tris’ talk.

Tris’ list of plugins
- All in one SEO
- WP Supercache
- WP Backup
- Google Sitemaps XML
- Akismet
- Cforms
- WPTouch & WPMobile

You want Google to index your posts, not your blog title!

Picking a template
- This is the hardest part
- Finding a non-bloggy template important
- Newspaper style
- Magazine
- Navigation

Themes
- Arthemia
- Digital Remix
- Thesis
- Revolution

Tris is now taking questions, which I think everyone appreciates. I ask about stats plugins (given that mine isn’t working, the WP-Stats) and Tris suggests Woopra AND Google Analytics. No, you can’t really change themes per page.

Rebecca’s afternoon sesions dayblog is here. Don’t forget to check on it. Those of you who COULDN’T make it for one reason or another, sorry that you’re missing on an excellent event. Honestly, it’s been fantastic!

WordCamp Whistler – Morten Rand-Hendriksen on WP in alternative configurations

Raul — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:30:51 +0000

Morten changed his title – how to emancipate yourself frmo the shackles of “the blog”. The information gets put on the table (MySQL database) – the template talks to the MySQL database, then to HTML, then to CSS – the final outcome of what the page looks like is the template and the Cascading Style Sheets (you have control of the content and the appearance).

WordPress – a blogging platform? Is it really? Depends on how you define blog. Morten showcases The Huffington Post and the Anti-Benjamin Button Club blog as not complying with the definition of blog as widely admitted. What defines a blog is the way in which the content is presented.

blog – a web site or part of a web site that features articles published and offered in a reverse chronological order (Morten’s Encyclopaedia). Morten is quite funny.

WordPress should be thought of as a publishing platform that allows you to create content that can be published as a blog. [Raul's notes - this is exactly what I am doing with my research blog - changing the landing pages and show the website as a site with a blog page]

UPDATE 12:48 pm - I am NOT feeling well so I have missed part of Morten’s very detailed descriptions on how you can edit the template page (Custom Template Page)

Morten is really describing the process of editing the CSS and the Custom Page template in detail, but sadly, I can’t really think straight because my body is not feeling well so what I’ll do is send him an interview email with questions about his talk and update this liveblog. Sorry everyone. Also, sorry for the momentary crash on my site.

UPDATE 12:51 - Morten describes how to adjust the Custom Fields so that you get the fields you want on your Custom Page.

Step 5 – Think outside the box – you can create ANY kind of website with it (I agree, Morten!). Go to the Template Tags website every time you have a question.

WordCamp Whistler – John Biehler on how to “sex up” your blog with photos

Raul — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 20:04:16 +0000

John Biehler is describing how to integrate photos and video differently from other plugins. The first one I could capture is FAlbum – you have to get a Flickr authorization that allows you to create a page and you can set the page – pulls in the Flickr content (your photo-stream) – for a link to John’s demo site click here.

John describes some of the various settings of the plugin. Videos don’t work on FAlbum, sadly. But luckily for us, he is going to give us other tips that will allow us to embed videos and create playlists and stuff.

pb-embedFlash – another great plugin – allows you to create playlists of videos and you can skin it in such a way and customize it so that the playlist works exactly the way you want it.

Finally, John talks about Vimeo-Embed – the nice thing about this plugin is that it looks complicated but it really is a very easy mechanism. I can totally see how my and Tris‘ guest video-review of Carmen’s dress rehearsal for Sexy in VanCity could have enhanced if I had installed this plugin beforehand.

WordCamp Whistler – Dale Mugford’s talk on WordPress on the Go

Raul — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 19:10:18 +0000

Dale Mugford from BraveNewCode has titled his talk “An Inconvenient Blog – WordPress is Going Mobile – You Should Too“. I look forward to an amazing talk! I was telling Rebecca that the WordCamp is going SO well, and just had a very brief chat with Duane, checking in on the wireless. I may not be able to liveblog, as I’m getting physically tired (I didn’t get any food for breakfast, despite kind offers from Jeremy on the way up).

Developers of the iPhone wanted to create apps that linked directly with the API. Many people hadn’t thought about mobile WordPress. Dale is sharing some statistics on mobile webpages views (since I have a super basic cell phone, I really don’t do it – but I can see how mobile blogging is increasing). Mobile internet users

WordPress Mobile Solutions

Mobile WordPress.com (m.wordpress.com) – Summer ‘06

AlexKing.org – WordPress mobile edition

MobilePress – Great simple cross-platform solution

wPhone - Awesome admin for WordPress for iPhone, iPod Touch. — still mroe versatile than native WP iPhone app, works with other mobile browsers as well.

WordPress PDA & iPhone
- Still in development (beta)
- The plugin enables the WordPress blog vewable for PDA and iPhone browsers

Mobile by Mippin
- Employ re-directs to services which format content for mobile devices
- iWPhone – probably the most advanced solution for iPhone but was missing some key features that people wanted.

Now Dale turns to WPtouch -WordPress for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android. It is activated as a plugin but works like a WP theme. Users can switch between WPTouch and their own theme – it’s lightweight and customizable. Dale is now giving an awesome description (with visuals) of how WPTouch works. I recommend that you install the app and test it, it’s such an amazing one! If only I had an iPhone!

Where is WPTouch going?

- Launching on WordPress.com
- Full localization support.
- More themes, support for user created themes, APIs
- Native Adsense, Google Analytics, Mint, Twitter and More
- Podcasting integratino with native iPhone/iPod tie-ins
- More efficient code, re-written admin engine for MU sites.

After a great overview of WPTouch – Dale is now showing what they hope for the future of the app. It’s really hard for me to visualize all the power of WPTouch because I don’t have a mobile internet-enabled phone, but I can totally see the value, and I am proud to call the developers of WPTouch my friends.

- We can expect more and more traffic coming from mobile devices.
- Greater browser support for more advanced features.
- Less proprietary features, more standards make it easy.
- Mobile audio/video/photo publishing.

UPDATE 11:42 AM - Dale has just completed his talk, and he did a fantastic job!

WordCamp Whistler – Lorelle Van Fossen keynote – semi-liveblog

Raul — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 17:54:21 +0000

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).