This past Thursday (2/4) I attended my first MSP WordPress (WP) user group meeting at The Nerdery. There were four panel sessions but I could only go to two.  The four to choose from were:

1. Intro to HTML
2. Intro to CSS
3. WP Widgets
4. WP 3.0

WP Widgets

The WP Widgets coding demonstration was instructed by Ray Champagne (@raychampage) who did an awesome job “dumbing it down”, at least for me.  Ray showed us some professional examples of how WP can be used in lieu of traditional print media but how to transform that print media into an online web presence.  He broke the presentation down into smaller parts:

• What are widgets?
• What does the code look like?
• Coding a simple widget.
• Implementing your widget.

WP 3.0

The WP 3.0 presentation was very enlightening in that I didn’t even know there was a new version of WP coming out and that some of the features will be changing, hopefully for the better .

In short, this presentation was more about what changes are going to happen with WP 3.0 but also how anyone can help contribute to the development.  Here are some useful links and insight that Mitchell Hislop (@mitchellhislop) provided:

• WordPress Foundation.org -”…founded by Matt Mullenweg to further the mission of the WordPress open source project: to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software.” – Also debuting the 2010 WP theme.
• Example of the P2 Theme – A theme for threaded discussion instead of using the standard WP blogging or email.
• The single user version WP and WPμ will be merged.  Within the WP settings you will now see a “network” section.  This will be the multi-user part of WP.
• WP Mailing lists – Use these mailing lists if you want to stay informed or help out with the various functions of WP.
• Mitchell’s Ultimate WP Starter Pack

In Conclusion…I’m super excited to go to the next one to meet even more people and to learn more about WP!

MPS User Group Info:

Google Group
Twitter

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Just added the twitter widget to the blog.  Very simple and can be done in less than 5 minutes!

1. Go to http://twitter.com/goodies/widgets
2. Select “My Website”
3. Select “Profile Widget”
4. Enter your twitter username
5. Change the preferences, appearance, and dimensions to your liking
6. When you’re done tweaking click “Finish & Grab Code”
7. Copy your code
8. Paste it into a WordPress “Text” widget
9. Save
10. Check it out!

And by no means is this the best option.  Just another way that simple and can be added to any site.  There are numerous WordPress plugins that also work well.

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