All posts in Previous Meetings

Really Useful WordPress Plugins – Sept 2011 Session.

by Declan O'Neill on September 29, 2011 in Previous Meetings with No comments

The following is a list Free and Paid WordPress plugins that Declan recommended for use on your WordPress website. They are part of a session he gave at WordPress Ann Arbor. If you have any other suggestions you think should be added to the list, please feel free to leave your recommendations in the comments below.

Gravity Forms

Contact Forms for WordPress Just Don’t Get Any Easier than Gravity Forms. Quickly build and design your WordPress forms using the form editor. Select your fields, configure your options, and easily embed forms on your WordPress powered site using the built in tools. Gravity Forms requires a minimum of WordPress version 3.0, MySQL 5 and PHP 5 in order to function properly. Please note that Gravity Forms is not compatible with the WordPress.com hosted service. Gravity Forms costs $39.99 for a personal license.

http://www.gravityforms.com/

WP-Table Reloaded

WP-Table Reloaded enables you to create and manage tables in your WP’s admin area. No HTML knowledge is needed. A comfortable backend allows to easily edit table data. Tables can contain any type of data and additional JavaScript libraries can be used to extend it with features like sorting, pagination, filtering, and more. You can include the tables into your posts, on your pages or in text widgets by using a shortcode or a template tag function. Tables can be imported and exported from/to CSV, XML and HTML.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-table-reloaded/

WP-DB-Backup

WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables. You may also backup other tables in the same database.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/

Redirection

Redirection is a WordPress plugin to manage 301 redirections, keep track of 404 errors, and generally tidy up any loose ends your site may have. This is particularly useful if you are migrating pages from an old website, or are changing the directory of your WordPress installation.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/redirection/

Broken Link Checker

This plugin will check your posts, comments and other content for broken links and missing images, and notify you if any are found.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/broken-link-checker/

Search and Replace

A simple search for find strings in your database and replace the string. You can search in ID, post-content, GUID, titel, excerpt, meta-data, comments, comment-author, comment-e-mail, comment-url, tags/categories and categories-description. It is possible to replace the user-ID in all tables and the user-login for more security in the WordPress-Application

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search-and-replace/

Widget Logic

This plugin gives every widget an extra control field called “Widget logic” that lets you control the pages that the widget will appear on.

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/widget-logic/

Cart 66

The Cart66 WordPress ecommerce plugin makes it easier to make money online than ever before. Not only can you sell physical products, digital products, and services, Cart66 will also turn your WordPress site into a membership website allowing you to sell subscription access to your content.

http://cart66.com/
Free Version: http://cart66.com/lite/

Theme My Login

This plugin themes the WordPress login, registration and forgot password pages according to your current theme. It replaces the wp-login.php file by using a page template from your theme. Also includes a widget for sidebar login.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/theme-my-login/

WordPress SEO Plugin

WordPress SEO is the most complete WordPress SEO plugin that exists today for WordPress.org users. It incorporates everything from a snippet preview and page analysis functionality that helps you optimize your pages content, images titles, meta descriptions and more to XML sitemaps, and loads of optimization options in between.

http://yoast.com/wordpress/seo/

Woopra Analytics for WordPress

This plugin adds Woopra’s real-time analytics to any WordPress installation

http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/woopra/

Akismet

Akismet filters out your comment and track-back spam for you, so you can focus on more important things.

http://akismet.com/

Introduction to WordPress Child Themes

by Declan O'Neill on June 30, 2011 in Previous Meetings with 1 Comment

Introduction to WordPress Child Themes

Introduction to WordPress Child Themes – Presentation Transcript

Introduction to WordPress Child Themes Level: Beginner”

What is a Child Theme – WordPress child theme is a theme that inherits the functionality of another theme, called the parent theme, and allows you to modify, or add to, the functionality of that parent theme. – Source: http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

Why use a Child Theme? – Child themes are the recommended way of making modifications to a theme.

Child Theme File Structure? –

WordPress Child Themes are located in /wp-content/themes/like any other WordPress Theme.

They’re activated from the WordPress admin like any other theme.

Child Themes always have a style.css file and may often include a functions.php file.

style.css is the only file required for a child theme.

The Child Theme CSS File
/*Theme Name: Twenty Ten 1.2 Child Theme URI: http://wordpressannarbor.com/Description: Child theme for the Twenty Ten by WordPress Author: Declan ONeill. Author URI: http://wordpressannarbor.com/. Template: twentyten. Version: 1.0*/

Theme Name: Twenty Ten 1.2 Child Theme [Required]

Theme URI: Webpage [Optional]

Description: Child theme for the Twenty Ten by WordPress [Optional]

Author URI: Author Webpage. [Optional]

Author: Author name. [Optional]

Template: Directory name of parent theme. Case-sensitive. [Required]

Thank You! Questions? Declan O’Neill / www.cake.ie

Ten lessons learned from a decade of blogging

by Declan O'Neill on June 30, 2011 in Previous Meetings with No comments

Our WordPressA2 meetup group was honored to have Ed Vielmetti as our June 2011 featured speaker. Ed spoke about “Ten lessons learned from a decade of blogging”, here are the main bullet points:

0. You have to decide at the outset whether you are trying to make money or you are trying to make sense.
1. Tools matter.
2. Keep the project in scope.
3. Repetition is the soul of the net.
4. Work from a calendar.
5. Writing is hard work.
6. Write for a reader, and make sure that reader sees what you write.
7. Set long term and short term goals, and be prepared to measure success on each of those goals.
8. Measure success where you have succeeded, and build upon that success.
9. Leave room, if your style allows it, for questions.
10. Know when to bring a project to a close.

Read Ed’s full post over at his site Bloggers Secret: http://vielmetti.typepad.com/secret/2011/06/10-lessons-learned-from-a-decade-of-blogging.html

May 2011 WordPress for Small Business

by Declan O'Neill on May 26, 2011 in Previous Meetings with No comments

WordPress small-business

View more presentations from John Pratt

See full commentary at http://www.jtpratt.com/wordpress-small-business

March 2011 “100 Things you Need to Know About WordPress”

by Declan O'Neill on April 1, 2011 in Previous Meetings with 1 Comment

On March 30th, Anthony Montalbano and John Pratt gave a presentation to WordPress Ann Arbor about WordPress Best Practices called “100 Things you Need to Know About WordPress”. Anthony and John broke down the discussion in 10 slides on different topics. Anthony presented 5 (50 things) and John presented 5 (50 things). Anthony and John told the WPA2 group that they would post them on their blog(s) (one per day) to give a more detailed resource and account for all to benefit.

So here they are…

Slide 1: 10 Things to Know about WordPress and Web Hosting

Slide 2: 10 Things to Know about Setup and Installing WordPress

Slide 3: 10 Things to Know About Choosing a WordPress Theme

Slide 4: 10 Things to Know about WordPress Security

Slide 5: 10 WordPress Plugins to Install by Default

Slide 6: 10 Things to know about WordPress Content Creation

Slide 7: 10 Things to know about Theme Modification

Slide 8: 10 WordPress Plugins to Install for Fundamental Functionality

Slide 9: 10 Things to know about Content Organization in WordPress

Slide 10: 10 Types of WordPress Helpful Resources

Feb 2011 Slides

by Declan O'Neill on February 24, 2011 in Previous Meetings with No comments

As promised here are the presentation slides from our Feb 2011 Meetup.

Monte Fowler: Optimize your Images and Video for WordPress

Declan O’Neill: WordPress Tips and Tricks

WordPress Ann Arbor: WP Tips and Tricks

View more presentations from Declan O’Neill

Special Thanks…

…to the Workcantile Exchange for allowing us to us their conference area. Workantile Exchange is a membership-funded coworking space and community in the heart of downtown Ann Arbor, MI. To become a member you can Contact Mike (mike@workantile.com, 734 395 6779) or Trek (trek@workantile.com, 734 834 2328) and they can arrange a time to meet, sip some coffee, and chat. Membership is $160/mo (only $35/mo for full time students¹)