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:
- Modified default themes
- Deprecated functions
- 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.
- Mobile themes
- WordPress plugins
- Media Queries
- 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:
- CMS Tree Page View (extremely handy if you have A LOT pages!)
- CollabPress (for project management)
- Contact Form 7
- Easy Table Creator
- Custom Post Type UI
- EG-Attachments (for external document files)
- Front end editor
- Regenerate Thumbnails
- Widgets on Pages (just check it out, it’s really cool)
- 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..
- Keyword Research – with Panda update, quality of website very important
- Basics – Homepage links – SEO friendly URLs, keywords in page name and URL
- Page structure – one keyword per page, maybe 2, images – title tag, images – file name
- Copywriting – at least 250 words per page
- (missed this slide :-/)
- Blog – Important to talk about topic website is about, become expert in the topic (authoritive)
- Social media and online PR
- Link building – get links from sites with related topic
- (missed this slide :-/)
- Call to action
Some handy tools:
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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