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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.

 

 

Categories
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.

Categories
Presentations

Connect your website to social networks #wpswfl

My slide deck of last night’s presentation. How to connect your website to the social networks.

Links to mentioned Tools & Services

eNews: Blue Streak

The Blue Streak

Reality Based Approach to Virtual Life

Subscribe with your Email Address

 

Happy Holidays and a great start into the New Year 2015

Next Meetup will be January 22, 2015. Topics and location still to be determined. 

Categories
WordPress Community

The State of the Word – Matt Mullenweg and more

Video of Matt Mullenweg’s “State of the Word” at WordCamp San Francisco couple month ago. I always find listening to Mullenweg talk about WordPress fascinating. His poise and his passion has not diminished since he started out ‘Democratizing Publishing’ through Blogging and WordPress in 2003, when he forked an earlier blogging software and created an open-source community that span the whole world. Get yourself some coffee, sit back and listen in on “The State of the Word 2014”

The WordPress in Numbers

  • 23.6% of the web is powered by WordPress, from 17.4% in 2012.
  • 785 contributers to WordPress core
  • 6,458 new plugins have been approved, bringing the total of plugins in the WordPress.org repository to 34, 016.
  • 684 new themes were approved, an increase of 36% to a total of 2,781 Themes on WordPress.org. Note: this doesn’t count the 3rd party and premium themes that are available for WordPress ecosystem.
  • A total of 1,000,000 commits in the SVN repository (WordPress’s version control system), 22% happened alone in 2014

WordPress Version used around the Internet

WordPress Versions Installed

If you haven’t installed 4.0 yet, don’t procrastinate any longer! 

See Slides of 2014 WordCamps in Florida:

  • Tampa (the slides are link from the sessions pages)
  • Orlando (no slide page yet)
  • Miami

 

After his presentation, Matt Mullenweg stayed around for a 45 min Q & A session.

Categories
Meeting Information Presentations

Improve your online store! #wpswfl at Hodges University

Chris Christoff, @chriscct7, WordPress eCommerce Expert will be in Southwest Florida and has agreed to be our speaker on November 26, 2014.

He has been a speaker at WordCamps through out the nation, and just recently at inaugural the WordCamp in Tampa last month.

Do you have a business that sells online, or do you have an idea you’d like to talk through? This is a great opportunity to quiz the expert on online shopping and online conversion, to make sure you are ready for year-end sales.
Chris Christoff works on on , @woocommerce and @eddwp. Part of Awesome Motive (makers of WPBeginner, OptinMonster, Envira Gallery, Soliloquy, List25, etc). Owner of Apyco (we’re hiring). Student at UF. I specialize in WordPress eCommerce. His code runs over a million online stores.

Big “Thank You” to Professor Tracey Lanham, Chair of the CIT Programs, Fisher School of Technology at Hodges University for collaborating to make this event happen on short notice!