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!

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I recently redesigned my website and it is also responsive (web design that is fluid and responds to change depending on screen size). It requires me not to just test my website in different browsers, but also on different devices, such as an iPad and anyone’s smartphone I can get my hands on. Spending a lot of time on my phone loading pages made my Google Analytics inaccurate.

I filtered out my personal computer’s IP address. The idea was to find out the IP address of my phone and iPad, it use to connect to the internet, and do the same. Luckily I stumbled across this very useful article by fritteritter on HubPages:

The Simplest Filtering Method to Exclude Traffic from Your Internal Computers in Google Analytics, No IP Address Lookup!

Instead of adding a filter for an IP range in Google Analytics, this article share JavaScript code to paste in the address bar of the website/page that needs to be filtered out.

Basically, I just had to create a filter in Google Analytics to set a unique word. Paste the code with the unique word in the address bar of whichever browser or device I am using to test my website. A popup box with the unique word will appear to indicate it has been sent successfully. This code store the unique word for Google to identify the computer when browsing the website and exclude the ‘hits’ out of Google Analytics.

With no copy and paste option for my Android phone the process was a bit tedious… but after careful touch screening I did get the ‘good to go’ pop-up!

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London WordPress Meetup had its 3rd meetup 28 July 2011. It is still a relatively new Meetup group, but has grown at a very nice speed. Three people attended the first meetup, where as fifteen attended the second. The third, hosted at Headshift, was a ‘sell out’ with a capacity of fourty.

The meetup started off with ice-breakers. People attending had the opportunity to introduce themselves and show off a few WordPress projects. This was followed by 3 presentations.

1. yeah! Hackey

Emily Webber talked about her amazing sideline venture yeah! Hackney. yeah! Hackney is a website, serving as an online community for Hackney locals sharing local knowledge. It is a WordPress website using the BuddyPress plugin, that creates the function for members to join and interact ‘as a community’.

This platform has become a great way for local people in the borough to share, discuss and collaborate about the great things around them. Thus in essence it is the community that creates the content and not administrators. The main features of yeah! Hackney website are the groups, discussion forums and members.

2. Beginner Theme Development

Keith Devon‘s talk was a nice summary of all the basic elements when starting out with theme developement in WordPress. Starting off with the basic theme structure, such as the necessary files WordPress require, The Loop and the heirachy of WordPress files. Followed by an explaination of Child Themes and using Custom Page Templates.

He also share a handy bundge of WordPress resources, tools and functions. Keith’s presentation can be seen at Prezi.

On the topic of Prezi, it was the first time I have seen Prezi. If you have and iPad, make sure to check it out. Great for presentations and it takes the in and out zooming of iPad to the next level.

3. Getting to The Loop

The presentation of Chris Adams dig right into the core of WordPress. By looking at some of the key items in the ‘brain’ of WordPress and how it works, gives a better understanding for developers when developing themes and plugins.

The 5 key topics of the presentation:

1. Load in files for bootstrap phase
2. Set up Plugins
3. Turn the request URL into a data base query
4. Choose a Template
5. Start The Loop

You can also view the presentation at Slideshare.

The next London WordPress Meetup is scheduled for 16 August 2011.

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I made a custom WordPress template for Printhouse Corporation. Printhouse has a blog with a seperate WordPress install (and subdomain). It was required to show an excerpt of the latest blog post from the seperate blog, in the footer of the official Printhouse website.

The way I thought about it, was to use the blog’s RSS feed to show the latest blog post. I found a bit of code from WpRecipes website. This only list a few titles of the latest blog posts. In this post I explain how to display the latest blog post from a different website, using SimplePie and the RSS feed in your WordPress website.

1. Install SimplePie Core Plugin

Most importantly use the SimplePie to make this work. As it says on the SimplePie website:

SimplePie is a very fast and easy-to-use class, written in PHP, that puts the ‘simple’ back into ‘really simple syndication’.

Thus, first install the SimplePie Core WordPress plugin to load the core SimplePie API library.

2. Call RSS Feed

The code snippet start off by placing the following where you would like the latest post to show, eg. sidebar or footer. This is to call the RSS feed that is going to be used.

<?php
$feed = new SimplePie('http://www.exampledomain.com/feed/');
?>

3. Code snippet for the post excerpt

Then add the rest of the code to create the title and an excerpt of the latest blog post of the RSS feed.

<h3><a href="http://www.exampledomain.com">Example Heading</h3>
<?php $item = $feed->get_item() ?>
<h4><a href='<?php echo $item->get_permalink(); ?>'
  title='<?php echo 'Posted '.$item->get_date('j F Y | g:i a'); ?>'>
<?php echo $item->get_title(); ?></a></h4>
<p><?php print $item->get_description(); ?></p>

The image on the left is an example of the result.

First a static heading. It depends on the website structure and where this go, which heading tags to use. Followed by the latest blog excerpt with the title as a link to the blog post.

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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.

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