September 2022 Let’s Catch Up Resources

At our September 2022 virtual meetup, members shared some of their websites, favorite WordPress resources, recent posts, and plugins.

Here’s a list of what was shared:

• Learn WordPress online training
• Simple Site Design with Full Site Editing
• Full Site Editing
• Simple Calendar
• Linky (plugin to create a landing page in WordPress, similar to Linktree)
• Oakland County Activities
  • WP 101 Elementor course
• Redirection

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Takeaways from September 2018 Share Your WordPress Journey

For our September 2018 meetup, two members shared their WordPress journey:

• How they first came to use WordPress
• What they were doing before using WordPress
• Aha! moments as they created WordPress websites

Thanks to Phil Salatrik and Colleen Sullivan Leh for sharing their experiences and stories about their WordPress journeys.

Their talks are a reminder to everyone working with WordPress that we all come from different places, whether it’s creating static websites, MySpace, logging, or starting a new business.

After the presentations, we enjoyed a good discussion about learning WordPress, dealing with spam, and setting up staging sites for WordPress sites.

Thanks to everyone who attended.

Slideshow

Check out the meetup welcome slideshow with info about upcoming events, three things about WordPress, and our WordPress meetups in metro Detroit.

Resources and Links

Here are some of the resources and links mentioned during the meetup:

• Get WordPress help from fellow meetup members. Share your question on our Meetup discussion group, on our Facebook group, or Slack.
• Two free online WordPress resources are the WordPress.org forums (recommended by Colleen) and WordPress StackExchange
• Phil found Udemy WordPress courses helpful, here’s a list of their top WordPress courses as of September 2018
• Another resource for learning WordPress are Lynda.com WordPress courses, including courses from Morten Rand-Hendriksen on WordPress Essential Training and Building Child Themes
• Deborah mentioned her post, On Getting Started with WordPress, which offers tips and resources about WordPress, including the difference between WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress, a free online WordPress guide for maintaining content, and more
• If you want to set up a test site, Local by Flywheel makes setting up a local WordPress development site easy. And it’s free.
• Andy mentioned the MOZ article on filtering junk traffic from Google Analytics
• If you’re looking for an alternative to Google Analytics, check out Gauges, a premium service for web traffic statistics
• Metro Detroit WordPress members can use our group promo code to save 55% off hosting through our sponsor A2 Hosting. Check out meetup group page for the code.

Stop by the meetup site for a few more photos of the meetup.

Shoutout to A2 Hosting and Grand Circus for their sponsorship of our Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup group.

Takeaways from April 2018 WordPress Show and Tell

Cleo Parker

For our April 2018 meetup, three of our members spoke about a WordPress site they worked on (their own or a client site), discussing how they built the site, challenges they faced, and successes.

Thanks to Cleo Parker, Jill Myllyoja, and Jim Luke for sharing their insights and experiences with their sites. We had a lively discussion with questions and suggestions for our presenters.

It was a great meetup! Thanks to everyone who attended.

Here are some of the resources and links mentioned during the meetup:

• WordPress 4.9.5 Security and Maintenance version has been released, update if you have disabled automatic background updates
• Justified Gallery: free responsive WordPress gallery offering image grid and lightbox, built with native WP gallery code
• The Canvas theme is no longer being sold, support will end Oct 24, 2018. You’ll want to to transition to another theme. GeneratePress is a free, responsive, lightweight theme you may want to consider.
• Upcoming event: April 11, 2018, Future of Information with Amy Webb (unfortunately, registration is now closed)
• Upcoming event: April 17, 2018, West Metro Detroit WordPress Meetup presents 9 Tips to Help you Safely Change Your WordPress Theme
• Job opportunity: Digital Specialist at College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Michigan
• Job opportunity: Graphic Designer at Sasche Construction in Detroit, Michigan
• Job opportunity: Web Developer (part-time or freelance) at tekwerx in Birmingham, Michigan
• Metro Detroit WordPress members can use the promo code to save 55% off hosting through our sponsor A2 Hosting
• Premium Toolset plugin that Jill Myllyoja used on the beach volleyball site
• Free Toolset plugin, with limited functionality
• PressBooks: easily create print and ebook editions of your book
• H5P: free and open-source content collaboration framework based on JavaScript

Stop by the Meetup site to check out the great photos that Dave Rotter took during the meetup.

Shoutout to A2 Hosting and Grand Circus for sponsoring our meetup, we are grateful for your support!

Takeaways from May 2017 WordPress Q & A Workshop

At our May 2017 Q & A workshop, our WordPress experts answered questions about website performance, web hosting, styling content, setup and configuration, child themes, and plugins.

I joined Eric Malcolm, Andy Melichar, and Randy Walker in helping our members with their WordPress questions.

Before we broke out into small groups, we had a good discussion among our Metro Detroit WordPress members about performance, themes, and identifying the goal for your site.

Here are the top takeaways from the workshop:

Recap of March 2017 Meetup: Distributed, Working Remotely at Automattic

Our thanks to Howard Dodd for taking notes from our March 2017 meetup.

Two Things About WordPress

• WordPress 4.7.3 was released last week. Get updated quickly if you’re not on automatic updates. It includes important security & maintenance upgrades.
• Two-factor authentication service Clef is closing down. If you are using it, you must seek an alternative before June 6, 2017.

Distributed, Working Remotely at Automattic

Our presentation was given by member George Hotelling, JavaScript Wrangler at Automattic, the company behind hosted WordPress.com, Jetpack, WooCommerce, Akismet, and other online services.

George spoke about remote work at Autommatic, how employees around the world communicate with each other, and work together in teams. Here are highlights from his talk:

Why work remotely?

• There is a much wider job market
• Quality focus time becomes available for deep thought work.
• Structured flexible time can be very beneficial to the family.
• The forgone commute has huge benefits in studied measures of happiness. The equivalent of a 67% raise for a $60,000 per year employee.
• Automattic’s corporate culture is that all of the employees are fully remote.

Disadvantages of Working Remotely

• Discipline can be difficult. Many potential distractions exist.
• You must be diligent and thorough with communication. Document processes and write out thoughts so that details can be communicated.
• Social isolation – you need to take the initiative to be social and make it a priority.

Types of Remote Companies

• Fully Remote – Employees are all over the world. The different time zones need to be considered. Space, autonomy, and authority needs to be distributed to keep things moving.
• Partially Remote – Usually involves an office where colleagues have occasional meetings. In this scenario it is important to take the initiative to attend the meetings that are relevant.

Where is Remote Work Done?

• Home
• Coworking space. This was discussed at length, with many members recommending coworking spaces throughout metro Detroit. Randy Walker graciously published a post with coworking spaces in and around metro Detroit.
• Wherever!
• Traveling, out of town, hotel rooms.
• Even on the road (as a passenger)

Communication is Oxygen!

• Slack – This is a chat program for office and day to day work. Communication is generally asynchronous.
• Screenhero (owned by Slack): Collaborative screen sharing tool. An invitation is needed to obtain it. It is highly functional and recommended, with high screen resolution.
• Google Hangouts / Skype / Zoom – Video chats. It’s very important to understand text vs. video vs. audio. Text is easy to misinterpret. It lacks tone and nuance that could be essential to making a point.
• IRL – In Real Life! Two or three company meetups are planned each year. Distributed companies travel a lot to encourage bonding and team building
• P2 Theme: that is much like a Twitter feed. It is generally left open all day and serves as Automattic’s watercooler conversation point. Hashtags can be used to start a conversation thread and it is searchable!
• Note that emails are minimized. – P2’s are the focus. All of the conversations are dropped into a searchable database and becomes a warehouse of accumulated knowledge.

Everyone who starts at Automattic does frontline support. It is part of the corporate culture and a lot is learned from this exercise.

Thank you to Grand Circus and A2 Hosting for their sponsorship of our meetups!

Our view from our meetup venue, snowy view of downtown Detroit