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WordCamp Chicago 2010 Followup

Posted on Jun 9th, 2010 in General, Wordpress | 1 comment

This past weekend I spent my time at WordCamp Chicago. It was an amazing weekend nonetheless and here’s a quick followup from my weekend. First, if you’re not familiar with WordCamps and are a user of WordPress, I highly suggest you go. Its a weekend full of WordPress users, developers, writers, and everything in between. These events reiterate how awesome the WordPress community really is!

Read more and find a WordCamp near you: http://central.wordcamp.org/

The night before, I attended a WordPress Chicago meetup and got the chance to meet a lot of great WordPress users and developers of the community.   If you’re in Chicago make sure to check out the meetup group:  http://www.meetup.com/mywplife/

(Happen to crash a ritzy lil party at Millennium Park with some new friends afterwords)

As for the conference itself, the quality of the content and the presenters was definitely worthwhile.  I was very impressed with the amount of great content I was able to take away.  There was two tracks, a developers and a users track, in which I found myself bouncing back and forth too.

There was a lot learned, so thank you to all of the presenters.  If you’d like to see the topics shared, check out the slides: http://www.slideshare.net/event/wordcamp-chicago-2010/slideshows

In short here’s a few bullet points from the weekend:

  • WordPress 3.0 to be released June 14th
  • New affiliate plugin for the WP-ECommerce plugin
  • New event ticket plugin for same WP-ECommerce plugin
  • SpriteMe.org – Great service to help sprite images on your site for performance
  • The WordPress community is extremely friendly and simply awesome
  • Widget Logic – Plugin to determine which widgets show on which pages
  • Custom Post Types in WP 3.0 is my favorite new feature, WordPress is heading into the CMS direction, finally!
  • Update Notifier – Plugin to notify you when plugins and themes need to be updated
  • GoDaddy has WordPress designed hosting packages

Ultimately, though, these events are about connecting with people who are just as passionate about what you do.  This is my strong reason for going.  Think of them as events with speaker breaks. :)   And the after parties are where it’s at.  If you go to one of these events DO NOT MISS THE AFTER PARTY!   WordCamp Chicago had their after party at the Bull&Bear.  Again, the night was great, such a stellar group of individuals.

After chatting with a few new friends, we got on this sharing book spree, that it inspired me to put together a little internet book club.  Its invitation only, but feel free to email me for an invite code.  For now check out the great books we’re sharing here: http://www.pixelminute.com

Lastly, WordCamp Chicago couldn’t have ended any cooler.  I watched a very inspiring presentation of Cory Miller (at iThemes) and we all teamed up, raining GoDaddy stress balls on him.  I recorded a video of it with my phone but Qik is being stupid with me.  Luckily Mike Torbert was able to catch a shot of the mayhem:

UPDATE: My video of the Cory Miller ball rain finally uploaded, fast forward to about 3:55.

If you’re looking for something to do this fall, I’m helping with the organization of WordCamp Detroit this October. Register now at: http://www.wordcampdetroit.com

WordPress fans unite.

Thanks to everyone in Chicago for making it an amazing experience, see you next year!


An Epic WordPress Resource Roundup – Videos, Tools, Guides, Podcasts, Sites, Events and more

Posted on May 26th, 2010 in Wordpress | 1 comment

One of the great things that makes WordPress so easy to use is the vast number of resources available.  If you’re just getting started or are a 5-year veteran, you’ll never run out of great resources available to help you further excel your WordPress skills.  In this post I want to share some of my WordPress resources that has and continues to enhance my WordPress experience.

WordPress Specific Sites


The following sites below are dedicated to providing you quality WordPress content…

  • WPBeginner.com – If you’re just getting into WordPress, this is a great site that shows you a simple step-by-step approach to getting WordPress installed and setup.
  • WordPress.tv – This is a great resource of videos all related to WordPress. If you want to learn how to use WordPress, plugins, or other unique tools with WordPress, watch these videos!
  • WeblogToolsCollection.com – I love this blog for the weekly selected plugins and themes. You’ll quickly discover how fast WordPress continues to grow.
  • WPCandy.com – Full of fun goodies, tips, guides, and updates relating to WordPress.
  • WPDesigner.com – As a developer you’ll find great WordPress code snippets, tricks, and tools to enhance your WordPress development skills.
  • WPTavern.com – Keep up to date with the newest stories and features being talked about around WordPress and the WordPress community. This site has an awesome corresponding podcast too (featured below).

Blogs with Great WordPress Content

The following blogs have excellent WordPress categories full of great content….

Roundup of WordPress Roundups

Here’s a collection of some other great WordPress roundups I’ve stumbled upon…

WordPress Books Worth Buying

Extend your WordPress resources beyond your computer…

WordPress Podcasts

If you don’t feel like reading, listen to these great podcasts as experts and developers share their expertise…

Awesome Lists of Free WordPress Themes

Overtime I’ve found some great lists of free WordPress Themes that I find myself going back to all the time when building a new WP site…

More WordPress Related Links…

These links may not be WordPress specific, but are still great resources to exploring WordPress even further…

  • Community Supported WordPress Forums – This is the official WordPress support forum. You’ll be surprised how quickly someone will help you out for free, I know :) .
  • Official WordPress Plugin Repository – This is the official place to download WordPress plugins. If you’re looking to extend WordPress with additional functionality, always make sure to check here first!
  • Professional WP Help Center – If you’re looking for professional WordPress help here’s a great premium service to ask for assistance.
  • WordPress Jobs – If you’re looking for WordPress jobs, here’s a job board for your career hunt!
  • WordPress SEO – A quickstart guide to SEO for WordPress. If there’s one thing everyone wants to know, its SEO. SEO can get real in depth, but this is a great beginners guide to SEO for WordPress.
  • 23 WordPress Cheatsheets – Sometimes you just need a quick cheat sheet reference guide. Download and print out these 1 pages and keep them on your desk for quick references during WordPress development.
  • Blogger Pro
  • Copy Blogger

WordCamps and WordPress Meetups

It doesn’t stop there!  Discuss and learn even more about WordPress by finding local WordPress meetups or spending a weekend at a WordCamp near you!

Are you in the Detroit area?

Don’t miss out on this fall’s WordCamp Detroit! Click here to register now.

Did I miss something?

What should we all know about?  Share your favorite WordPress resources in the comments below…

24 WordPress Plugins to extend WordPress beyond a blog

Posted on Feb 7th, 2010 in Wordpress | 1 comment

There’s been many times where people are amazed that WordPress can be used as a tool to not build a blog, but an honest looking professional website.  It wouldn’t be possible without the endless development of WordPress Plugins.

WordPress as a core is an appreciative blogging platform with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) publishing and some simple settings, but with plugins and themes you have everything you need to build a website many people would spend thousands of dollars for.  WordPress was developed with the focus for extensibility and it continues to practice this concept as WordPress continues to evolve and ultimately, get better.

I’ve followed the WordPress development channels and blogs for quite some time now and as new features are mentioned for the next version, the question, “Can that be a plugin?” has come up more often than not.  Actually most new features should start with this question.  The beauty of this concept allows WordPress to stay rather minimal and allow the user create the perfect WordPress setup with a collection of plugins.

This rather simple guide is here to share with you plugins that I’ve come to love over the years.  Hopefully I can share a few plugins and truly show you that WordPress is more powerful than you may have even known.

Core Plugins

These plugins have become standards, defaults, plugins I install on nearly every WordPress setup.  These core plugins setup my WordPress sites for search engine optimization (SEO), site tracking, and security.

Akismet

Akismet is one of two (Hello Dolly being the latter) plugins that comes packaged with every installation of WordPress.  Akismet protects your site from potential comment spam on your articles.  It’s accuracy is incredible.   If you’re planning on allowing comments on your WordPress site, Akismet should be activated and registered.  Akismet requires a WordPress.com key (which can be attained here).

All-In-One-SEO Pack

If you’re unfamiliar with SEO (Search Engine Optimization) I suggest you read this and this and this.  This plugin is designed to practice common SEO strategies.

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin extend the strategies of SEO by creating an sitemap that is complaint with many search engines, such as Google.  To understand more about sitemaps read this.

Robots Meta

This plugin continues to expand the strageties of SEO as well as protect parts of your site out of search engines.  It does this by creating a robots.txt file.  This file is read and honored by search engines as what it should indexed when it crawls your site.  Learn more about robots.txt file here.

WordPress Database Backup

WordPress is strongly dependent on a database to store everything from your site’s settings to all the posts and pages you wrote.  When you think about it, the things in the database is the irreplaceable data to your site, the content that makes your site unique.  This plugin will allow you to automatically schedule periodic backups of your database, if in an unfortunate circumstance, you would lose your site.  This plugin even will email you a database backup file periodically.  I suggest you setup a GMail account just for WordPress database backups and get in the habit of setting up your WordPress sites to send the backups to that account.

Google Analyticator

If you’re not using Google Analytics by now, stop what you’re doing and go register yourself here.  Google Analytics is an extremely powerful and free tool to monitor and track your visitors on your site.  It will tell you how many hits you’re getting, where in the world your users are coming from and even tell you what search terms people are using to find your site.  This plugin extends and optimizes the setup of Google Analytics to your WordPress site.

WP Super Cache

This plugin will allow your WordPress site to be cached.  This basically means that your site is ready to potentially accept a potential spike of traffic without crashing.  You never know when it may happen, but who wants their site to fail when the most people want to see it?

Popular Feature Plugins

These plugins extend your WordPress site to include many popular features found on websites.  These features range from contact forms to e-commerce platforms to photo galleries to social media tools.  These aren’t the only plugins to achieve the extended functionality of WordPress sites, but they are my plugins of choice.

Adding Photos and Image Galleries

NextGen Gallery

This plugin is the ultimate plugin for creating photo galleries in WordPress.  Easily upload images, create slide shows, galleries with numerous image effects and automatically add watermarks to your images.

Adding Videos

Viper’s Video Quicktags

Getting video into your website can be somewhat tricky, but if you’re willing to use a social video service such as Youtube, Vimeo, or Metacafe, this is the plugin that will make integrating your videos much easier.  In some cases you have the option of customizing the design and layout of your video to better match the design of your site.

Adding Audio Players

Audio Player

This is by far the simplest way to get audio files to play on your site.   Upload your videos with WordPress’ media manager and then link your audio files inside of a post or page.  Here’s a great tutorial on doing just that.

Adding Downloads

WordPress Download Monitor

Sometimes there are situations where you want to offer file downloads such as PDFs or other files on your website.  Use this plugin to not only upload your files, but to protect its original location with its rewrite URL feature as well as keep track of the number of times the file is downloaded.

Adding Forms such as Contact Forms

cforms II – contact form

Contact forms are the most popular method for a user to submit content to you, the publisher.  This plugin will allow you to create simple to complex contact forms ranging from a simple “Contact Us” form to a detailed request form.

Gravity Forms

If you’re really serious about forms, Gravity Forms is by far the best plugin you’ll find to creating forms on your site, but it is a premuim plugin that costs some money.  Being that it is a premium plugin, you can definitely tell these guys are on top of things with this plugin, as they continue to better the overall form creation process.  Add to it, their support and this plugin is worth more than what you pay for.

Adding Content Ratings

GD Star Rating

This plugin will give you the ability to allow your users to vote and rate your posts.  If you’re creating a review website, you’re given a variety of options to displaying stars and multiple rating systems.

Adding Polls and Surveys

PollDaddy

PollDaddy is actually an independent solution for creating polls on your website.  This plugin simply allows you to integrate your polls you create in PollDaddy into your WordPress site.

Integrating Social Media

TweetMeme

Social media plays a huge role in the popularity of websites, Twitter being one of them.  This plugin is a solid choice of using TweetMeme to retweet your posts, allowing your users to easily share your content on your site to their followers on Twitter.

Digg Digg

This plugin allows you to add a collection of social voting icons to your blog posts.  If you’re looking to see and share the popularity of your content, this plugin will do the trick.

Sociable

Sociable is very similar to Digg Digg but includes a much large set of icons.  The icons are simple and not as dynamic as Digg Digg, but if you are looking for some of the more less popular social bookmarking links, this plugin has a large library to choose from.

Intergrating Advertisement

Easy Adsense

If you’re looking to integrate advertisement to your blog or website this plugin has numerous locations inside of your post/page content to insert advertisement code such as Google Adsense.

Selling Your Own Products (eCommerce)

WP e-Commerce

Selling products on your website might be what you’re site is all about.  This plugin has a variety of great features such as inventory management, multiple product images, digital product delivery and more.  If you’re looking to start a low cost shopping cart ecommerce website, this plugin will quickly bring you up to speed.

Shopp Plugin

This is by far my favorite ecommerce plugin, its premium (which means it costs money),  but for its relatively low price, its well worth it.  This plugin seamlessly integrates into the whole design of the WordPress admin and has great features such as coupon codes and multiple shipment and payment gateway integrations.

Advanced Feature Plugins

Integrating a Forum

BBPress

This isn’t really a plugin, but moreover an independent forum.  Its created by the same developers of WordPress and has easy integration to your WordPress blog/site to allow your WordPress users to interact with your forum with BBPress.  Think of this as an extension to WordPress, not a plugin.  Just a side note, integrating a BBPress site to your WordPress site has an independent theme, so you may have to create a custom theme to match your current WordPress theme; that is if you want to make your site with a forum look seamless.

Creating a Social Network

Buddypress

Until recently Buddypress was standalone similar to BBPress, but now Buddypress is official a WordPress plugin.  BuddyPress easily lets you transform your WordPress blog into your own social network. The features are ever increasing and is a great way to create or develop your own social network about your topic, company, or brand.

Creating a Membership

WP Wishlist Member

If you are looking to create a multi-tier membership only site, this plugin is for you.  Its a premium plugin, but has the ability to turn your WordPress blog into a membership site hiding all of your content and only making it available to your members.  Starting a coaching club or a membership site of software or other digital assets?  I strongly recommend using this plugin.

Conclusion

There you have it a rather short list of excellent plugins that I’ve grown to love over time with the development of WordPress blogs and projects.  Have you used any of these plugins?  What is your thoughts on any of these?  What are some other favorite and essential plugins that you absolutely love?

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