WordPress Basics by Mitchell Hislop (twitter / website)

What is a theme? A theme is basically a skin or template for your content. Themes will contain different styles, layout options, and some other customizable features. Some of these features include: multiple column support, customizable headers, icons, and more.

Two themes that Mitchell recommend are:

• Atahualpa “is a good theme to start with and there are a ton of options.
• P2 “is another good theme – focuses on microblogging”

There was great discussion around canned themes vs. customizing vs. creating one from scratch. This decision will likely depend on the purpose of your blog, the desired branding, and the required functionality. Note: if a theme doesn’t have the functionality you desire there is probably a plugin for it.

If you choose to customize themes there are different ways to go about it. You can choose themes that are easy to customize, this might include child themes, or you can get dirty and edit the HTML, CSS, and PHP.  Child themes are fairly easy to edit as the code is usually separated. As in, all the core PHP, JavaScript, and etc are in different files than the customizable code. This helps distinguish what is the customizable items vs. the “don’t touch this or your site will break” stuff.  Note:  If you ever need help looking up a WordPress function, variable, or code snippet refer to the Codex.  It has all the information you need to get help from installation to customization.

Hint:  If your WordPress site is “broken” try disabling all of your plugins, test the site, and enable your plugins one by one. If you’re a little savvy with your FTP client you can easily rename your plugin folder to disable all of your plugins at once.

Pushing Content to Twitter – Two popular plugins are Twitter Tools and Twitter Feed

Documents / Attachments – Is there a way to show the file size of a document? Mitch’s recommendation, use a thirdparty site like Scribd, Dropbox, Flickr, etc.  A comment from the audience was, “more often than not, clients will want to stay within WordPress and not have to use/learn another service.”  With that said, you can manually add the file size as part of the file name and then add the file URL manually through the WordPress interface.

BuddyPress by Toby Cryns (twitter / website)

Installing – In order to use the BuddyPress feature you must Install the BuddyPress Plugin. This can be done by going to the Plugins –> Add New –> Search for “BuddyPress”.  Note: The plugin is named “BuddyPress”.

BuddyPress Forums – To use forums you’ll need to create a forum by creating a bbpress forum.

Notes:

• Currently BuddyPress is not available on WordPress.com
• You cannot combine themes.  You need to use the BuddyPress theme or a BuddyPress compatible theme.
• If you don’t know what you’re doing, go with the default theme.
• Toby’s tutorial can be found here.

How to move WordPress to a different server by Ray Champagne (twitter / website)

- Long story short, use Ray’s tutorial. – Note: There are some references to WordPress MU… The doco will be updated with WordPress 3.0 information in the coming weeks.

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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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Tonight I found an awesome plugin for WordPress that will optimize your blog for mobile users. Specifically, readers that are using an iPhone. Take a look at the following screenshots.

Features:

• Optimized loading compared to loading a “standard” theme.
• Apple-esque icons (comments indicator).
• Clean interface.
• Easy to install (just like any other plugin).
• FREE!

For more info please refer to the plugin website: http://www.bravenewcode.com/wptouch/

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By popular demand… actually by a friend asking for some insight -  here’s how to integrate your personal WordPress blog into your Facebook account.

1. Login to your Facebook account.
2. Hover over “Settings” and select “Application Settings” [top menu bar]
3. Select “Notes”
4. Now in the Notes settings, select “Import a blog”. [top right of the screen]
5. Enter your blog’s URL.
6. Check the check box. You’re import YOUR blog, right?
7. Select “Start Importing”
8. Review the content and select “Confirm Import”

Now your blog posts are integrated with your Facebook account.  When you write a new blog entry and publish it a little snippet will be placed on your Profile and a new Note will be created.

I can’t take full credit for this..  I found all the steps here:  http://wordpress.tv/2009/07/22/import-your-wordpress-blog-into-facebook/

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