Orange County WordCamp, WordPress Love In Southern California

Last Call For Tshirts

By Brandon | Published: April 13, 2010

Ladies and gents, we’re getting ready to put in our order for the t-shirts that you get with your ticket. I’m sure there are some of you who are waiting for the last minute to buy tickets, but if you do that, you might be left with a shirt that doesn’t fit you (or one that doesn’t fit you). This Friday, April 16th, at 12pm Pacific time we’re placing our order. If you buy tickets after that, you may not get a t-shirt in your size. We’re going to do our best to buy extra shirts in all sizes, but if you buy your tickets after this Friday, it will be first come, first served. If we run out of t-shirts in your size, you’ll be out of luck. My suggestion is, don’t wait. Go buy your tickets now!

Posted in General WordCamp, Tickets | Leave a comment

WordPress as a Content Management System

By Colin Loretz | Published: April 13, 2010

Many people I’ve worked with on projects hear “WordPress” and immediately say that it is just for people who want to run a blog. This is no longer true. WordPress has come a long way and a lot of designers and developers are using it to create some very impressive projects.

Current State of Content Management Systems (CMS)

Bloated with features
Complex templating systems
Plugins and extensions are difficult to write without a degree in computer science

Why is WordPress an ideal candidate to use as a CMS?

Lightweight & flexible
User-friendly admin interface
Rich, existing developer and user community
Large number of existing plugins and themes

Join me for an in-depth look at how and when to use WordPress as a content management system. It is by no means a silver bullet for content management in all situations but there are quite a few plugins and tricks you can learn for getting the most out of WordPress.

We’ll step through some of the techniques including:

Use categories & tags
Creating a Functions.php file in your theme
Custom loops
WordPress 3.0 (Custom post types and improved custom taxonomies)
Plugins
Using the Codex to extend your themes

This session will address topics for all experience levels. If you’ve ever thought about using WordPress as a CMS to run a website or project, above and beyond a typical blog or podcast, this is where you will learn how to make it possible.

Posted in General Awesomeness, Presentation Topics | 3 Comments

Pimp Your WordPress Plugin

By Blair Williams | Published: April 6, 2010

WordPress Pimp Most WordPress Plugins are little more than small utilities but there are a growing number of them that can dramatically augment the way WordPress behaves or give WordPress advanced new features.

Platform Modifying Plugins

I like to refer to these plugins as Platform Modifying Plugins (PMPs or Pimps) because even though they exist in the same repository with all these other smaller, utility plugins, they are more substantial with more features. A few examples of PMPs include BuddyPress (and my own lighter-weight alternative — Mingle), NextGEN Gallery, WPTouch, Pretty Link and Formidable. Many of these PMPs have also become platforms themselves sporting their own hooks and APIs — with other 3rd party plugins in the repository that alter their behavior.

In my presentation at OC WordCamp, I’m going to show you an effective way to develop your own PMPs using a Model View Controller (MVC) approach with some additional tips and tricks that I’ve learned from coding and supporting two different PMPs. Read More »

Posted in General Awesomeness, Presentation Topics | Tagged AJAX, Database, Deployment, Design Pattern, Java, Model View Controller, MVC, Optimization, plugin, Routing, Ruby on Rails, Translation, wordpress | 9 Comments

Theme Workshop

By Drew Strojny | Published: April 4, 2010

Join me for a theme workshop titled “Customizing your WordPress theme: Best Practices” . The workshop is targeted towards beginners interested in learning how to customize a WordPress theme the “right way”. It will focus on six best practices relating to theme customization. An overview of each practice will be presented followed by a live demonstration. The goal of the workshop is to help you build a solid foundation and give you the confidence to start customizing your WordPress theme. The six best practices:

Setup WordPress locally
Use a proper text editor
Use a child theme
Use an FTP client
Use Firebug
Use the Codex

As you can see this talk will be targeted specifically to beginners that have little to no experience customizing a WordPress theme. If you are wondering what the heck a child theme is and have never heard of FTP or Firebug, then this is the presentation for you!

Posted in General Awesomeness, Presentation Topics | 3 Comments

OC WordCamp Badge Widget

By Brandon | Published: April 2, 2010

We know there are a lot of you already coming, but we’ve still got room for more. To help get the word out, we’ve built a little WordPress widget that you can install on your blog to help promote the Orange County WordCamp event. You can download it at the link below.

Click Here To Download

To install this on your blog, follow these simple steps:

Unzip the files and upload the entire oc-wordcamp-badge folder to the plugins directory of your WordPress powered site.
Go the the plugins panel in the admin and activate the plugin.
Add the widget to your sidebar in the widgets panel in the admin.
That’s it!

Posted in Community Support | 2 Comments

How to Create a Premium WordPress Plugin

By Blair Williams | Published: April 1, 2010

Premium WordPress Plugins One of the biggest misconceptions among WordPress plugin developers is that you can’t legitimately make money from your plugins. This is complete bunk — the truth is if you develop a plugin that complies with the GPL and provides value to your users there are actually many ways to legitimately make money from it.

In my presentation at OC WordCamp, I’m planning on covering a complete process you can use to release a premium plugin including:

Selecting the type of plugin to write — This could be the hardest and most important part of this process. If you’re going to spend as much time as it takes to create a valuable plugin, you better select a feature set that you’re interested in, other people actually want and has a market large enough to make the development and ongoing maintenance of the plugin worth your while.
Technical differences between free & premium plugins – WordPress offers an awesome repository for deploying and upgrading free plugins — but not for premium ones. Since WordPress’ entire plugin repository and code-base setup to only deal with free plugins, you’ll have to create your own system for deploying and upgrading your premium plugin. This system will no doubt include code within your plugin that will link to a plugin repository of your own. Sound hard? Don’t worry, there are several other plugins and software packages that will help you to get your premium plugin deploying and able to auto-update in no time.
Legal considerations — WordPress is released under the GPL and is fully open source — doesn’t that mean that legally speaking premium plugins need to be GPL and fully open source? Well, yes … all plugins, including premium WordPress plugins need to be GPL and hence, fully open source — but that doesn’t mean you can’t charge money for them. The GPL restricts your plugin to being “Free as in Free Speech,” not necessarily “Free as in Free Beer.”
Strategy — There are many different ways you can release a premium plugin and you’ll want to select the one that works the best for your offering. Some of the strategies that I’ll cover include free plugins (monetized with advertisements), premium plugins, freemium plugins (premium plugins that offer a free version), and plugins that connect to a premium service you’ve created.
Marketing & Building Credibility — You may love to program in a dark room and only require that a bucket of mush be slid under the door every day to keep going — but you’re going to have to get out there and market your plugin if you want it to be successful. My presentation will cover some of the basics of getting your plugin some visibility.
How to get a system up quickly to deliver your plugin — This is where the nuts & bolts come into play — I’m planning on covering this from the technical setup to mobilizing your community and getting some help.
Ongoing Support and Updates — I’m surprised how many premium plugins make no mention of support or updates on their landing pages. It is absolutely critical to the success of your plugin that you plan out how you’ll put this in place well before you release your plugin.

I’m really excited to give this presentation at OC WordCamp — I think it will be highly useful to anyone wanting to release a premium plugin or service. Hope to see you there!

Posted in General Awesomeness, Presentation Topics | Tagged GPL, Legal, Making Money, Marketing, monetization, plugins, premium wordpress plugin, Strategy, wordcamp, wordpress | 12 Comments

Oops! Did I Scare You?

By Brandon | Published: April 1, 2010

You may have noticed a little grey box that says “Woopra” at the bottom right hand side of your browser when you visit this site and may not have thought anything of it. It’s a simple thing to overlook, but I can assure you that it’s something you should be paying a lot of attention to. Let me explain why.

At Pixel Jar, we use Woopra to track stats for nearly every site we own/manage these days. We used to use Google analytics, but we were frustrated by the delay in actionable information. So much of the web happens in real-time these days, why shouldn’t our ability to act on it be real-time as well. Woopra allows us to do just that. If you’re browsing this site and can’t find what you’re looking for, take a look at that little grey box. If it says “Chat with us”, you can click it and immediately put directly in contact with me, the guy with the answers. How sweet is that?

Now, here’s the part that might freak you out. I say that, because I think I’ve scared some of you off. Sorry about that. We can see what pages you’re browsing…in real time. When you click any link, we know it immediately. Now, we’re not stalking you, but having this information at hand helps us to better deliver the kind of content you’re looking for. If I happen to be looking at the stats app and notice that someone is spending a lot of time on the site, has a history of coming to the site, they bounce around from page-to-page, that tells me that they might be looking for something that just isn’t there or is hard to find. This can also be the sign of a frustrated user.

I’ve tried to reach out to a few of you to see if I could answer any of your questions, but I think I scared you.

If you see a chat notification, don’t freak out. We’re still trying to figure out how best to harness it’s awesomeness. If you’re browsing around this site and get stuck and one of us is online, feel free to reach out and say hello. I bet we have the answer you’re looking for.

Woopra has some strong ties to the WordPress community through John P. (One Man’s Blog), Lorelle VanFossen (Lorelle On WordPress) and early adopter/promoter Cali Lewis (GeekBrief.tv). It was unveiled at WordCamp Dallas in 2008 and immediately went in to closed beta. Keep your eye on this technology folks, it’s just going to continue to get better.

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Posted in General Awesomeness | Leave a comment

Checking in With UC Irvine

By Brandon | Published: March 31, 2010

Here’s a little back story on why we chose UCI as our venue.

First off, UCI wasn’t our first choice. As a graduate from Chapman University in Orange, I thought it would have been be a perfect venue for OC WordCamp. It’s small, central to Orange County and has a good community. Unfortunately, they don’t use WordPress at all internally and therefore didn’t have any sort of motivation to help us out. My wife is a UC Irvine graduate and suggested we look there.

Guess what?

It turns out that UCI is using WordPress MU to facilitate Blogs @ UCI, a blogging service for UCI faculty, staff and graduate students. I spoke with the manager of the UCI blogs, Sylvia Bass, who works in the OIT department about sponsoring the event, but due to reductions in university budgets they aren’t able to help us out. However, we were able to secure two rooms on campus that have the technology that we’d need to put on a successful event.

Today I went down to campus to drop off our deposit. OC WordCamp is right around the corner and I’m super pumped.

Much WordPress love goes out to all of the people who have already registered. There’s still tickets left, but the price is going to go up pretty soon. Don’t wait to get your tickets…and why not donate a few bucks to the cause while you’re there.

Posted in General WordCamp, Sponsors | Leave a comment

The End of An Era

By Brandon | Published: March 28, 2010

My WordPress branded pen just ran out of ink. I got this pen at my very first WordCamp, WordCamp San Francisco 2009. It lasted me only a year, but with that pen, I’ve proudly planned and executed many WordPress projects. Lucky for me (and for you), Orange County WordCamp is right around the corner and Automattic has kindly donated a bunch of the very same pens, stickers and other awesome shwag. Make sure you pick up one of these trusty pens on April 24th. It’s not only a writing utensil, but a symbol of your connection with a great community.

If you haven’t bought your tickets yet, head over to the ticketing page and snatch them up before the early bird discount is gone. See you all on April 24th.

Posted in General WordCamp | Leave a comment

Jane Wells

By Brandon | Published: March 28, 2010

Jane is the user experience lead for WordPress, and has worked in the web industry for 10 years. She is often on the road, meeting WordPress users to incorporate their feedback into each new version. In between WordCamps, she tries to find time to restore her 1968 Austin-Healey Sprite. Jane is a former San Francisco resident. Her first computer was a Commodore Vic-20.

Posted in Speakers | Leave a comment