Takeaways from WordCamp Columbus 2013

Last week I attended my first WordCamp Columbus in Columbus, Ohio and had a great time learning new things about WordPress, helping out at the WordPress 101 workshop, and making new friends.

So happy to finally meet Angie Meeker in person, who along with Dave Donaldson and Jonathan Davis, helped organize WordCamp Columbus.

Over 160 people attended the event, traveling from cities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Missouri and beyond for the two-day conference held at Ohio State University.

The first day of the conference was a full-day workshop for WordPress beginners to learn how to set up their website. The second day consisted of five tracks of WordPress sessions.

Here’s my summary of the sessions I attended, with notes, presentation slides, photos and tweets.

WordPress 101 Workshop by Angie Meeker

Over 80 participants attended the WordPress 101 workshop to learn the steps to set up their first WordPress website.

From domain names to hosting to installing WordPress to installing themes and plugins, Angie shared tips and insights for the first-time WordPress user. By the end of the day, attendees had a working installation of WordPress.

Though the workshop had a bit of a hiccup due to downtime from HostGator and BlueHost, Glenn Kelley of Hop Off a Cloud stepped up to help attendees by setting up temporary hosting accounts at his hosting company.

https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/363316598960312320

Some of my key takeaways and favorite comments from the presentation:

• WordPress.com is like a hotel, while WordPress.org is your own home
• For domain name registration, consider Register.com or NameCheap
• Dreamhost, Site 5, and HostGator offer free hosting to non-profits (must provide documentation)
• Page.ly, Synthesis and WP Engine are WordPress-only web hosting

Project Largo Case Study by Adam Schweigert

https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/363665068955017216

Created as a WordPress parent theme by the Investigative News Network where Adam works.

• Supports National Public Radio stations that have little technology resources
• Easy to learn and customize
• Responsive design
• Built for news publishers
• Uses options framework
• Learn more about the Largo project or check out the code on Github

What is WordPress’s role in news organizations?

• The gap left as newspapers decline is huge, that gap is a big problem. WordPress is a great solution for that gap.
• If you’re a new publisher, a journalism student, you can start your own publication and look like a news site
• You can create content that matters, that advertisers and donors can support
• WordPress provides democratization of publishing. Washington Post uses WordPress a lot. For stuff they want to build more quickly, WordPress is an agile solution. It can move faster than the kludgey platform many news organizations use.

Buildings news apps with WordPress is an exciting new area.

Custom Layouts Without Using Page Templates by Chip Bennett

Key takeaways:

• Custom page templates are intended for custom content, not custom layout. And can only be used on static pages, not posts.
• Use custom post meta data, doesn’t depend on a page template. Works on both pages and posts.
• Can work with any theme; with child theme, some coding is required
• For naming, use underscore at beginning to hide from custom fields UI
• Define a function to get current layout
• Modify template files and CSS. Add layout-based classes to body tag.
• Example: WordCamp Nashville child theme on Github

Keynote: Building Your Business With The Power Of People by Syed Bahlki

One of the reasons Syed created WP Beginner was to help his clients who were still on HTML sites.

• Identify your target audience. You can’t add value unless you know your target audience.
• Use reader profiles, customer profiles so that you can put yourself in their shoes
• Create content that adds value. Solve problems for your audience.
• Don’t do social, be social
• Show that you care (listen to your audience and be involved)
• Review analytics, ask for suggestions, listen to feedback

Stay connected

• Connect with other communities, comment on blogs, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn
• Go the extra mile to help others. Example: Help A Reporter Out
• Word of mouth is really powerful
• Listen to and respond to your followers

Encouraging Community Development with Themes and Plugins by Pippin Williamson

How to Encourage People to Contribute

1. Ask for it
2. Make it easy
3. Give contributors credit they took the time to provide fix, correction, review
4. Be nice

How to Encourage People to Continue to Contribute

1. Respond in a timely manner
2. Maintain quality; you may have to turn down some patches. You need to monitor quality of patches.
   1. Overall quality of project, no consistent voice or pattern
   2. No cohesion, becomes more difficult to work with
3. Accept criticism
4. Be constructive
   1. Explain what the problems are, and provide suggestions for improvements
   2. Want a read on how not to respond to a one-line patch, read linux on Github, issue 17
5. Maintain standards
   1. There will always be sub-par contributions
   2. There will always be someone who wants to help you
   3. Don’t just allow contributors in just because they7rsquo;re contributors

Never be rude or throw insults

1. Some people are different
2. Take them down with kindness
3. Be polite, don’t be rude back
4. Stern is fine, not rude

Tools to encourage community development

1. Github
   1. Provides version control
   2. Manages pull requests
   3. Increases participation. Example: moved from Google Code to Github, community development increased 10X
   4. Not sure where to start with Github? Check out Pippin’s YouTube video: How to submit a pull request on Github
2. Forums
3. BBPress

Summary

• Give credit to those who participate, even if it’s just a spelling correction
• Make your code extensible
• You need to implement the tools, encourage it, make it easy, respond to people well

Tips and Tricks to Make Sure Your Website is Accessible by Angela Bergmann

https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/363739347553484800

In her presentation, Angela Bergmann highlighted the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 and explained the four principles:

1. Perceivable
2. Operable
3. Understandable
4. Robust

To improve the accessibility of websites, Bergmann recommended:

• Ensure images have alternative text
• Include captions and transcripts with videos
• All videos should provide user controls to pause, stop and start video
• Content can be interpreted when formatting is disabled
• Provide sufficient color contrast between text and the background
• Provide ability to navigate by keyboard
• Include Skip to Content links

WordPress and Accessibility

• WordPress core has good accessibility, with a few issues regarding search, redundant title attributes, and “read more” links
• Unfortunately, many WordPress plugins and themes have accessibility issues
• One method to improve accessibility on your WordPress site is to use Joe Dolson’s WP Accessibility plugin which
  • Removes redundant title attributes
  • Removes target attribute from links
  • Removes tabindex from elements that are focusable
  • Adds post titles to standard “read more” links
  • Corrects other accessibility issues

Accessibility Resources and Tools

• Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 Guidelines
• Web Accessibility Evaluation Tool (WAVE)
• Add Skip to links with PayPal’s Skip-To widget
• Easy Color Contrast Ratios
• 3Play Media and Automatic Sync offer cost-effective video transcripts and captions for ~$2.50/minute
• Get involved; help make WordPress accessible

WordPress for Startups

https://twitter.com/wilsonmelanie/status/363756613527543809
https://twitter.com/redcrew/status/363758607554605057

Why you should use multisite:

1. Create unlimited number of WordPress sites using one WordPress installation
2. Share users, themes, and plugins across the created sites
3. To manage all the sites with one dashboard

WordPress multisite is used by many organizations, including:

• WordPress.com
• BestBuy
• Bowling Green State University

Before you start, decide on your format

1. Will you use subdomains or folders? Example: charlie.mydomain.com or mydomain.com/charlie
   1. If you use subdomains, you need to have a host that supports the sue of wildcard subdomain
   2. You’ll need to add a wildcard subdomain pointing to the folder of your installation. If they don’t you have to use folders.
2. You need access to wp-config and htaccess files, so you can edit them
3. Backup
4. Remember to turn multisite on

WordPress Multisite Resources

• WordPress Codex
• WPEBooks

I got a lot out of #wccbus this weekend. Grateful to @angiemeeker, the other organizers, speakers and helpers. Very well done. Thanks! 🙂

— Jacki (@jacki890) August 3, 2013

Yet so impressive with great speakers and authority on the topics. If this was sold by IBM, this would cost $600. #wccbus

— Toby Foote (@TobyFoote) August 3, 2013