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Meeting Information Presentations

Resources: How to find the right WordPress plugins?

Great discussions ensued about using plugins and how to choose them. We went over the plugins repository screens in details and also looked at 3rd party sites with plugin reviews and directories. You’ll find all the links discussed in the Google Slides embedded below.

WordPress Plugins from A to Z

If you like podcasts and learn more about WordPress Plugins I recommend you listen to episodes on the WordPress Plugins from A to Z podcast, hosted by John Overall and Marcus Couch
The WordPress Plugins A-Z Podcast can be found on iTunes, Stitcher Radio and also on WordPress Radio. I have found it very helpful. Both hosts come prepared to their shows and it’s fast paced. The selection is always well rounded and I learned about new plugins and use cases for plugins, I haven’t considered yet.

Links to find more

John Elcik shared these links via our online survey:

  • http://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/top-100-wordpress-plugins
  • http://wpplugindirectory.org/
  • http://www.bloggingwizard.com/must-have-wordpress-plugins/
  • http://www.wphub.com/essential-wordpress-plugins-2014/

If you too, like to share some resources regarding WordPress Plugins, use the comments sections below.

The search is over. We have a new venue sponsor: Candels On Call.

Candels LLC logoMark and Linda Candels generously let us use their state of the art training room at their offices for the rest of the year. Please thank them and give them a shout-out on the social webs:

 

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Meeting Information WordPress Community

Upcoming Meetups and Topics Survey Results 2015

Last week our Topic survey came to an end. Here are the results.

Upcoming Meetups

We are always looking for presenters, so don’t be shy connect with organizer Birgit Pauli-Haack at birgit.pauli@gmail.com if you’d like to contribute to any of the above listed topics or to different topics.

Just a reminder for all folks involved as volunteers, presenters or attendees, we are an official WordPress Meetup and adhere to the Five Good Faith Rules

Suggestions for Topics (Questions 11)

    • Speak on the recent meeting in Miami if anyone attended.
    • The fuzzy world of menus, categories. Best way to set up website architecture.
    • Revenue producing ideas (as consultant or other)
    • WordPress Multisite
    • How to select the right company (or person) to do all of this for you – questions to ask and expectations to set.
    • How to get fresh material for the website from members and not just the admin.
    • These all seem to be popular topics that I would like to learn more about
    • Speed Optimization

Free Text Comments provided by participants of the survey

  • Self-hosted:
    • Cover as a step by step approach and provide “tips and cautions” for each step
    • Self-hosted: Curiosity killed the cat. Satisfaction brought it back.
    • self-hosted: I already have a self hosted wordpress website but I would like to learn more about wordpress and how to get more exposure for my site
  • Photos:
    • Managing event photo albums (large groups of photos), including controlling download capability, watermarks, etc.
    • Photo sizing and changing page layout.
    • and Videos
    • I have several plugins now but would like to learn about more
  • Plugins:
  • Themes
    • I’m seeking the best multi use themes, covering writers, photography and travel.
    • not sure what you mean by “core concepts” – design, use, something else?
    • bootstrap? multi-site?
    • How to change some elements of a theme to customize it
  • SocialMedia
    • What social media should we join as corporations (nonprofit).
  • BuddyPress:
    • I’m unsure what the BuddyPress program is. I’m interested in know more if it is beneficial for my needs.
    • Create an ancestory site… something everyone could relate to as the example?
    • I do not know what this is.
    • Not sure what this is.
  • Jetpack:
    • I would like to learn more about the program.
    • Jetpack: my host tells me jetpack is buggy, vulnerable, and causes high overhead/use of server resources. are they right?
  • Google Analytics:
    • I have signed up however, I have not initiated the program to completion.
    • Very very!
Categories
Photos

The Visual Web: Photographer Trey Ratcliff helps Bloggers

About a year ago, I published this post on NFN4Good.org. At that time, I already followed incredible talented and very successful photographers on Google+. And one of them, Trey Ratcliff published his Top 500 Photos Album and made it available with a “Creative Commons License – Noncommercial”. Here is a how to do attributions on photos and graphics that are not your own with WordPress.
This year, Google separated its Photo App from Google+ as a stand alone app and the tech news blogs have posted raving reviews about it. You can catch-up with it via this Storify Collection

Collage Photos by Trey Ratcliff Top 500 - StuckinCustoms.com
Last week Trey Ratcliff posted on Google+ a photo album of his 500 most favorite photos

Trey Ratcliff’s work is Creative Commons License – Noncommercial. If you want to know more about what that means, he has more information on this licensing web page.

Regarding attribution he gives you some leeway:  “Attribution to Trey Ratcliff and Stuck in Customs must be made along with the image.” It’s specific enough and we know what to do.

Here is the code example I used on this post:

Photo: “Apple In New York” by Trey Ratcliff, <a href=”http://www.stuckincustoms.com/” >Stuck In Customs</a>

When you upload the particular photo to your WordPress site you can add attribution to the following sections to cover all your basis, regarding attribution to artists.OnUpload-TreyRatcliffAttribution

  • add the artists name in the file name, ie – Chicago-by-Trey-Ratcliff.jpg
  • add attribution to the “Title”
  • add attribution text to the “Alt Text”
  • full code example from above in the “Description” field.

If you are on a different CMS, make sure you find out where to set the “Alt” text for your particular editor.

Have fun with using the photos by Trey Ratcliff, and make sure you head to the non-commercial part of the Creative Commons licensing.

 

Categories
WordPress Community WordPress: What's New?

Help us find the right mix of topics for our WordPress Meetup SWFL

We are in the planning stages for the second half of this year and if possible even next year. In order to serve the community best, we collected a set of topics in this survey. We are also looking for additional ideas, as well as connect with possible presenters.

PS: We are still looking for a central venue for our meetings. If you know a sponsor or are able to host the meeting that would be wonderful. We are normally between 15 and 25 people need a white wall or screen and if possible a data projector. And central so people from Naples as well as Cape Coral are able to make the meeting. Close to the freeway would be beneficial, too.

 

 

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WordPress: What's New?

WordPress 4.2 and Mobilegeddon – News around the Internet

To get us past possible WordPress Meetup withdrawals until our next meeting in June 25, 2015, I will be posting on this website in between.
Today, I have a few WordPress News articles that might be of interest to our WordPress Meetup members and beyond.

 Update to WordPress 4.1.2 immediately

WordPress 4.2

Mobilegeddon

Today – April 21 is the day Google is rolling out their changes of ranking regarding mobile-friendly ness, and the Internet is predicting an Armageddon for websites that have not seen the signs before, and will supposedly feel their ranking on Google drop considerably.

For the last few months we published on Relevanza quite a few articles and most meetup members are subscribers of our blog, so this is nothing new. Just in case you missed it and to keep others updated as well, here are a few suggested reading links:

Free Responsive Themes for WordPress

Just in case you haven’t yet acted on it for whatever reasons, put this article with a list of Themes based on Twitter’s open source Bootstrap framework for responsive layouts.

Even if you need a custom developer to tweak these, to your layout, your site, it’s certainly a great start when trying to find a new look for your website built on WordPress.

For our June 25th Meetup, which is the last meeting before our 1 year anniversary, we will create a topics survey so we not only can plan the next meeting but we can all work on planning future meetings as well.

Make sure you stay connected with this site via comments or connect with us un twitter @wpswfl – put the private messaging feature on twitter to good use.

 

 

Categories
Presentations

Videos: WordPress Image Galleries and Jetpack Modules

How to Use the WordPress Image Gallery

Birgit Pauli-Haack walks you through the task to created an image gallery to be displayed in a post or a page and how to change some of the display options for Thumbnail Grid and Slideshow built into WordPress Core. You don’t need to install any plugins to make this basic functionality work beautifully on your site.

How Jetpack Modules improve WordPress Gallery

Once familiar with the WordPress Image Gallery built into WordPress Core, Jetpack gives you additional options and and features to augment the look of your gallery or to display various galleries in the side bar widgets.

For a quick peak at the display options available through Jetpack Tiled Galleries module you can also
These videos were brought to you by Relevanza, Inc., sponsor of WordPress Meetup Southwest Florida

Categories
Meeting Information

Resources: Portfolio & other Custom Content Types

Below you’ll find the slideshow of my presentation on Jetpack’s Portfolio and other Custom Content Types.

Since then the Jetpack Portfolio module was expanded to include also “Testimonials” as post types, however integration into the site is not as seamless as it is for the Portfolio Content Type. To successfully integrate into the site, the Theme would need to support it on its templates. More details for Theme developers and designers can be found  on Jetpack’s site.