WordPress London Meetup is still a baby, with the first Meetup that took place 9 June 2011. Besides the success in attendance it also had a change in name. Starting out as London WordPress Meetup it is now officially WordPress London Meetup group. Clearly a much needed Meetup group for London locals, I am happy to have attended 3 of them so far. The 6th meetup took place Thursday, 20 October 2011—Publishing with WordPress, hosted by the Telegraph.

How the Telegraph use WordPress

First up was Paul Gibbs, core developer of BuddyPress and web developer at Daily Telegraph. That’s right, Telegraph Blogs is powered by WordPress and MyTelegraph is possibly the largest BuddyPress website in the UK. Paul shared some of the plugins they use for the respective websites.

Telegraph Blog plugins:

• Yoast Breadcrumbs (more information at yoast.com)
• WordPress SEO (also by Yoast, more information here)
• Widget Logic (lets you control on which pages widgets appear)
• Unfiltered HTML (gives blog Administrators and Editors the ability to post whatever HTML they want)
• TMG Open Graph (based on the Open Graph plugin for adding additional metadata to webpages to identify them as “social objects”— modified further by the development team at the Telegraph)
• Blackbird Pie (add embedded HTML representations of actual tweets in your blog posts)

MyTelegraph BuddyPress plugins:

• BuddyPress (a social network in a box—more information at BuddyPress.org)
• BuddyPress Groupblog (extends the group functionality by enabling each group to have a single blog associated with it)
• SSO (single sign-on) Integration
• WP Report Posts (puts a link to each posts and pages to report that particluar post or page)
• Yoast Breadcrumbs (more information at yoast.com)
• Sitewide Tags (creates a new blog on your server for all the posts on your site, much like http://wordpress.com/tags/)
• Blackbird Pie (add embedded HTML representations of actual tweets in your blog posts)

WordPress and Web Accessibility: Why it’s Important

Graham Armfield was on for the second talk of the evening. His presentation covered some issues that disabled and elderly users experience with websites. He shared valuable techniques to improve accessibility and why it makes business sense.

Graham’s presentation, WordPress and Web Accessibility, can be viewed at SlideShare.

Upcoming WordPress London Meetups

Thursday, 17 November 2011: WordPress SEO and Custom Post Types

Wednesday, 7 December 2011: Christmas social!

I attended my first WordCamp this year. It was also a first for me to Portsmouth! Below I talk about my personal running order. Read about more sessions at WordCamp UK 2011 Portsmouth here.

Saturday, 16 July 2011

Kicking the day off early, Saturday 16 July 2011, registering took place from 9:30 and I received my official WordCampUK 2011 t-shirt. Tony Scott started off the day at 10:00 with an introduction that followed onto sharing stickers that leads to more pleasand introdutions! I topic that all WordPress fanatics love followed after that: How are you pushing your WordPress install to the limit? I am even more impressed now…

Legacy to Latest by Kieran O’Shea

Kieran’s talk was about how plug-ins have an influence when upgrading WordPress.
For example before upgrading, consider:

1. Modified default themes
2. Deprecated functions
3. Phantom features (what is phantom features?)

Plugins can break an upgrade, or be broken by an upgrade, deprecated functions.
A solution is Custom Posts. Legacy plugins may over-use tables. Post framework makes code simpler. Migration then is simplified.
Visit Kieran O’Shea’s dedicated website for WordCamp UK 2011 Portsmouth. Where you can find loads off goodies, eg.
Slides: PDF of Presentation Deck
Code: Zip File of Code

WordPress and Mobile by Rachel McCollin

Rachel discussed 4 ways how you can turn your website into a mobile version.

1. Mobile themes
2. WordPress plugins
3. Media Queries
4. Bespoke mobile websites (or just make an app version)

Advanced SEO with WordPress by Nick Garner

Nick told a lovely SEO story of The White, black and illegal Hat in WordPress SEO. This story shared so much SEO information in a friendly way. Check out his presentation.
Some of his favourite plugins to use are:

• wp-supercache plugin
• yoost plugin
• wordpress categorie radion buttons
• seo-image plugin

WOW Plugins 2011 by Michael Kimb Jones

First few favourite plugins mentioned:

• Yoost SEO plugins
• Google XML Sitemaps (switch something off)
• WP Super Chache (W3 Total Cache – best to use?)

E-Commerce:

• WP e-Commerce
• Jigoshop (New)
• MarketPress (WP multi)

Other few mentioned randomly:

• Jetpack (loads if functionality in one plugin – X6)
• Members Only
• WordPress Beta Tester
• Widget Logic (conditional loads for Widgets) Dynamic Widgets
• Extended Page List

Final list of 10:

1. CMS Tree Page View (extremely handy if you have A LOT pages!)
2. CollabPress (for project management)
3. Contact Form 7
4. Easy Table Creator
5. Custom Post Type UI
6. EG-Attachments (for external document files)
7. Front end editor
8. Regenerate Thumbnails
9. Widgets on Pages (just check it out, it’s really cool)
10. WordPress reset (good plugin for a test site)

After this it was the wrap of the day that lead to dinner and a lot of free drinks at the Dolphin. After this… what happens at WordCamp stays at WordCamp…

Sunday, 17 July 2011

After a well needed full English breakfast the second (and last) day of WordCamp started off with a quick introduction by Tony Scott again.

Ten Proven Steps to the Top of Google (SEO) by Mark Adams

Another SEO session with more handy tips..

1. Keyword Research - with Panda update, quality of website very important
2. Basics – Homepage links – SEO friendly URLs, keywords in page name and URL
3. Page structure – one keyword per page, maybe 2, images – title tag, images – file name
4. Copywriting – at least 250 words per page
5. (missed this slide :-/)
6. Blog – Important to talk about topic website is about, become expert in the topic (authoritive)
7. Social media and online PR
8. Link building – get links from sites with related topic
9. (missed this slide :-/)
10. Call to action

Some handy tools:

• www.econsultancy.com
• www.sphinn.com
• www.seomoz.org
• www.majesticseo.com

How to content manage everything by Robert O’Rourke

A few points taken….

Menus

• custom menus
• drop down

Post types - register post type using available of arrays

• things that are neither posts or pages
• Forums – bbPress plugin
• Properties
• Events
• Static bloks or ‘boilerplate’
• Landing pages
• Other applications

Themergency is a handy tool to easily create post types. After registering it appears in admin bar.
Use Metabox API to add/remove or reorder meta boxes:

add_meta_box();

Also visit http://codex.wordpress.org/Settings_API

Site doctors: Let the experts help you! by Jonny Allbut (Jonnya), Nick Garner

A Questions & Answers session with informative discussions and tips going around.
Sadly all good things do come to an end. Well sort of… I noticed emails with loads of ideas going around already for 2012. And if you can not wait till then, the WordPress community do spread their wings to numerous Meetups and other smaller conferences.

I am really happy about my find on Brain Pickings, where they listed top 10 cross disciplinary conferences. I joined PechaKucha 20×20 group on Facebook and went to their second London event at The Archers. PechaKucha means chit-chat in Japanese. The 20×20 is a presentation of 20 slides while talking for 20 seconds about each slide.

PechaKucha Night started in Tokyo about 7 years ago as an event for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. It has now moved its way around the globe, covering 268 cities. The event is open to any topic to talk about. Photography and art seem to be the most popular.

The Speakers of Event #2

In Nerys Mathias‘s 20 slides, she showed off artwork of more explicit nature in mediums such as photography, painting and illustration. Including work of Marlene Dumas.

Trashed is the new online platform for teenagers to get creative! It is packed with news in the creative industry in the UK. Teenagers can also pick up new skills for projects and get access to work experience placements and workshops.

I enjoyed Valerie Pezeron‘s illustrations. Her style is the kind that I am rather fond of. She also presented it well with a bit of wit. She went through some of her archives and shared the beginning of a new project she is working on.

Bruno Wizard from the The Homosexuals / The Rejects presented with a lot of passion. Entertaining photos and (quick) stories about their career and friends of The Homosexuals.

Martin Barrett is an artist who likes making apocalyptic installations/art. At the event he preferred to share his experiences hanging on a rope off a mountain in mid air. The photos that he had in his presentation had stunning views of different mountains all over the world.

Jane Kellock has a lot of experience in the fashion industry. She is a trend forecaster, designer, writer, lecturer and creative thinker. I fully regret the fact that I missed out on this presentation {blush}.

Zoe Holloway showed some of her photography and shared the stories, with some travel related. She is also making tees from photos of street art.

Richard Adams talked about the new School of Communication Arts 2.0 that will be opening soon, operating as a not-for-profit organisation. It is a school that will focus on the practical side of things to prepare talented students for a successful career.

Minxy McNaughty ended off the evening on a high note. Very entertaining, excellent sense of humour and I loved the way she presented the slides about Deptford. I so want to go to Deptford!

It enlightens me to hear a person talk so passionate about his/her work or hobby. It really opens up a personality to grasp and appreciate. There was also enough time during the evening for socialising and getting to know some of the attendees, sharing the same interests and passions. From what I have heard, there is a PechaKucha Night every second month. I am already looking forward to the next one!

BarCamp London 7 was 24-25 October 2009 at IBM, Southbank, London and it seems like the dust have not settled yet. BarCamp London 7 was my first unconference and my excitement beforehand turns out to be not for nothing. Also read Ben Fletcher’s more in depth experience about this unconference.

It was an early start (for a Saturday) to get to the premises. Registration started from 9:30am. After the opening talk at 11:00am there was an opportunity for everyone to book a session on the time table.

My Schedule for Saturday

• BarCamp Bootcamp - It was a nice way to get into the groove of things and to get to know some peeps.
• How Facebook broke the tube
• Information and real options
• CSS nuggets
• @font-face – new fonts for the web
• Side project with Lego
• Graphic design of LOST
• The Government to release more data
• Ranting: Everything that is wrong with the world
• Why to say no to clients
• Web scale identifiers, use and abuse

My Schedule for Sunday

• The perfect match
• 10 F*$%ing awesome bands
• Developers Happiness
• The thing called Social Media
• Contradictions
• Lightning Talks - few peeps had 5 minutes to say something
• Clothing design as a constraint
• Combined session with Asian snacks and chatting about science and religion

Even though I made use of most of the time slots available to attend a session, it came to my attention that there was a lot of interesting topics I missed out on (I am still in the process of searching the web, hoping to find some).

The BarCamp was made possible by a great team: Cristiano Betta, Paul Brannigan, Mary Rose Cook, Tobias Kunisch, Robert Lee-Cann, Caz Mockett, Tom Morris, Kevin Prince, Melinda Seckington, Dan W and volunteers. Last but not least, great sponsors: IBM, Nestoria, TechSmith, The Team, Be Broadband, The Proactive Accountant, lastminutelabs, Nudge Social Media, Vodafone Group, Geekery.in, JISC, Nexus Globalnet, Starbucks VIA, PayPal, Guardian Open Platform, myMuesli, Nokia.

Everything was well thought through. I even received the Sunday newspaper to read with my breakfast and coffee. The only thing I can think of that could have been better: – I should have taken better notes of who was running the sessions, a website link etc.

Photos of attendees have been uploaded and can be viewed at the Flickr Group.