June WordPress Meetup at AJ’s Cafe

Here’s my notes from yesterday’s meetup. Next time, I’ll try using real-time update on P2 theme (probably using this blog).

Roll call:
Naoko, Tim, Shawn, Raphael, David, Trevor, Ed, Matt

We talked about…

  • WordPress 2.8. Not everyone has upgraded yet – waiting for 2.8.1?
  • Facebook content is kind of “scattered around”. Shawn said he started a WordPress blog wanting to write more.
  • Windows Live Writer/Ecto – desktop apps for blogging
  • WordPress Stats. WordPress.com has built-in stats, which is also available for WordPress.org [screenshots]
  • Tim (@hogpath) said Role Scoper plugin for role management. Looks like a nice alternative to Role Manager. The author lives in Michigan 🙂
  • Talked about BuddyPress… You can test it out by signing up on BuddyPress.org or bp-dev.org
  • Raphael (@rsmudge) is presenting his project/WordPress plugin “After the Deadline” at the Ann Arbor New Tech June Meetup (today!).
  • Some discussion about WordPress.org/MU merge.
  • WordCamp San Francisco. Video will be up on wordpress.tv soon, I recommend Tim Ferriss’ presentation if I need to pick one to watch (besides the Keynote “The State of the Word”)
  • Matt (@lincolnwebs) talked about setting up 2 sites using 2 DBs and one WordPress install: using conditional statement based on the domain in wp-config.php.
  • He is looking into Vanilla forum software for integrating with WordPress.
  • Also Matt’s PHP book recommendation: Visual Quickstart Guide (beginners) and Visual QuickPro Guide (intermediate) by Larry Ullman, and an Apress advanced PHP book (not sure which)
  • Detroit Area PHP June Meetup is on Saturday, June 27th.
  • Ed mentioned JavaScript: The Good Parts book.
  • David (@Admore) stareted a FriendFeed Group for the meetup. Ferndale WordPress Group

Thank you all for coming.

Reminder to myself: send a reminder on the night before the meetup!

May WordPress Meetup at AJ’s Cafe

Happy 6th Anniversary to WordPress! Did you know WordPress just turned 6 years old today? (their first version 0.7 was released on May 27, 2003)

We had our third Ferndale WordPress Meetup at AJ’s yesterday.
I decided to start a WordPress blog here for this group to share links and keep track of things we talked about.

  • Tim is building a site for his client using a custom theme and plugins like Mass Edit Pages, Contact Form 7, and Faster Image Insert
  • Tina is working on a home page design for her church web site. I (Naoko) suggested using something like JQuery Cycle Plugin for slideshow (note: this is not a WordPress plugin!)
  • Raphael’s project After the Deadline is now released to the public and available as a WordPress plugin. He also mentioned usability testing site Feedback Army which he had built
  • Trevor said he custom-built his server and have it hosted at a hosting company that has a local location. Sounded like an alternative to self-hosting for having your own reasonable and reliable server.
  • Joe mentioned a couple of PHP-based community site building tools, Dolphin and Elgg that he had used. Maybe something to compare BuddyPress with?
  • We also briefly talked about WordPress 2.8 – it will include improved Widgets and one-click Theme install.
  • I showed some comps from my past project as inspiration for blog designing. Making iterative changes is good, and launching fast & making more changes after feedback is important.

Kirk & David, I was sitting too far away from you guys… please add things I didn’t catch!