Time to dust off this ol site and start calling on all the wordpress crazy guys & gals out there to meetup and share their wordpressy tales with each other once again. It seems like ages since we last met and so much has happened in the WP community including the release of the fabulous wordpress 2.7.
With the last wordcamp also behind us, we hope this next meetup will attract a mix of all our past attendees from both the meetups and the wordcamp. The planning of the last meetup though a small event was a really tough task as i did most of the running around myself with a help of a few peeps and of course our sponsors.
This time around I’m hoping to get a great team together so each person can focus on one aspect of the event and we can get it done without too much fuss.
So, without further blah blah, here goes the call. All those interested in Attending, planning, sponsoring, speaking or promoting this event stand up now and make yourself heard. Add a Comment to this post and lets get this ball rolling.
#wpcpt4 Here we come. Spread the word.press
One of the main reasons we have been so quiet with regard to wordpress meetups is that we have left the space open for the upcoming Wordcamp.
Wordcamps have been around for a while, but have never been held in South Africa. They are in a similar spirit to our little wordpress meetups but on a larger scale and held less frequently.
Younique, Tyler Reeds company is responsible for the organisation with a crew of other wordpress fundis, which includes Adii’s company (radiiate), but as yet they have not found a cool venue to host it.
Do you know of a cool Venue?
They’ve looked at UCT Tennis Club, CTICC(too expensive I think) and a few others but nothing available yet. If anyone out there knows of a nice place to host an (un)conference style event let them know by visiting www.wordcamp.co.za and leaving a comment or email info(at)wordcamp.co.za.
You can visit http://central.wordcamp.org/ for more info about wordcamps being held around the world, or how to start your own wordcamp.
For those who attended I’m sure we all agreed, the event was a resounding success due to all the involvement, sponsorship and the great turnout of industry gurus, web enthusiasts and other interested parties.
I’m going to write this post over a period of the next day or so due hectic schedule and will be linking to the presentations of those who spoke as they upload them.
Pic by Paul Weingartz
Presentations:
Johann spoke abut a lesser known topic, though one which has a major influence on the uptake of wordpress as a reliable content management system, that being securing your site and it’s data.
Ashley covered lots of the extras, tools most of us haven’t used and some which are still in the making. Wordpress MU(Multi-User) which blogging networks, buddypress which is dubbed to be wordpress’ next big step into social networking and bbpress, the forum extension to wordpress were part of Ashley’s presentation.
Adii’s presentation was really well planned, well delivered and insightful. It gave a great view of wordpress as a publishing platform (cms) for many different types of usages. Check out his post for more details.
Wordpress SEO tricks, tips & plugins - Rafiq Phillips
Rafiq is well known as one of Cape Town’s SEO evangelists & web addicts. His presentation had alot to do with plugins which enhance SEO rankings, an area I myself have not spent much time. there was a little rivalry which was clear between Rafiq & Chris of iMod, comparing their SEO practices though it was all in good spirit. Focussing on the Google sitemap generator plugin & google webmaster tools, Rafiq explained how to get your site ranking higher and get your pages to the first google page faster. I’m hoping there will be a few links to some of the examples he used so we can share with you all.
What others are saying about WPCPT3
We’ve had some great feedback on this meetup and quite a few blog posts detailing everyone’s experience of the event. Below are a few of those perspectives.
Post in progress >>
I just thought, it would be great if all attending could bring along their wordpress stuff, free themes, plugins and any other extra resources so we can all swop with each other.
We can load them all on a single PC and allow people to download onto flash disc or write cd’s.
Any further ideas welcomed.
