WPwatercooler - Weekly WordPress Talk Show

Today's topic is Tips for WordCamp Speakers. We'll be sharing our tips and tricks to a great WordCamp presentation. WordCamp Speaker Preparedness Here are some helpful tips for planning and presenting your WordCamp presentation. Preparing to present: Practice, practice, practice. Know your material in and out. You’re speaking as an expert so it’s important that you actually know what you’re talking about thoroughly. It’s a good idea to run through your presentation out loud several times. This will help you with your timing and your transitions. Make sure you use the time given to you for your presentation, but leave a few minutes at the end for any questions your audience may have. Practice your material at a local meetup before taking it to the big time. Delivering Your Intro: Don’t start off with slides of your family or pets or vacations. No one is interested in that. You have 30 seconds to 2 minutes to hook your audience. If you don’t capture their attention within that window, you’ve lost them for your entire presentation. You might want to start your presentation highlighting what you’ll be speaking about and what you hope they will take away from it. If you have the ability to arrive a bit early and head to the stage, you can then begin having conversations with your audience in an effort to get them warmed up to you and engaged with you ahead of time. Slides: Font size. Make sure your font is large enough to be seen from the back of the room. This is especially important if you’re trying to present code on the screen. Do not stand there and read your slide to the audience. Keep the slides minimal. Use the slides as a cue to help you move from point to point. You want your audience focused on what you’re saying rather than reading your slides. If you do want to have bit more information, don’t just read from it. Some people will want to go back later and reference your slides. Be prepared for something to go wrong. Save your slides in multiple formats (for Windows and Mac), have it on a USB drive, save it to the cloud , save to dropbox, and have a PDF deck as well. In General: Be kind to yourself. No one expects you to be super polished so cut yourself a little slack if you make mistakes. Know your audience. As you’re speaking, look at the audience and see if they’re engaged. Maybe you’re starting with something to basic or too advanced. Consider inviting questions at the beginning. Let them know the presentation is for them and you’d like to meet their needs. If someone asks a question on a point you’ll be getting to later, you can tell them you’re getting to that and just hang tight a few minutes. Saturday sessions usually have more people attending at a beginners level. The Sunday attendees are fewer and tend to be more technically minded. Make sure your presentation title isn’t cutesy and fun and doesn’t tell them what your presentation is actually about. Articulate what you’ll be speaking on. Keep in mind that people will be attending 8 or so sessions at a WordCamp. They will not retain everything they heard. Given that, stress that one thing you want them to take away and build a talk around that one thing rather than covering a lot of material. Mic control is important. Speak into the mic and be clear. If you don’t need a mic because the room is a smaller room, ditch it and talk loudly. Don’t give the same talk over and over. Change it up! Make new points. You can use the same basic topic but change the delivery. Hit the talk from different angles. Lastly, don’t be afraid to share your knowledge! Just put yourself out there and do it! Slide creators: * Reveal.JS – http://lab.hakim.se/reveal-js/#/ * Biggie – http://www.macwright.

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On this episode of WPwatercooler we will be discussing the various form plugins that are available for WordPress, which you should use and why. Forms show on your website and allow you to put data into the website. Depending on which form you’re using it does different things with it. Forms will take the data and send it to email, paypal, a post… etc. This allows you to collect data and send it off to another service or save the data and save it for yourself. In order to decide which form plugin would work best for you since there are so many options and they all do similar things, is really look at what your goals are. What is your work flow, will you get very detailed or keep it simple/ The more info you can provide before looking for the form, you’ll be able to figure out which one will work the best. It’s important to note that there are certain types of information you shouldn’t be collecting and storing such as credit card information, medical information, or anything about children. With information you collect regarding medical and children, you have a responsibility to make sure it’s HIPAA (medical) or COPPA (child) compliant. Whatever form plugin you’re using should be captcha compatible. Gravity Forms is the WaterCooler pick for best plugin. Form Plugins: * Gravity Forms * Formidable Pro * Formidable Lite * Contact Form 7 * Jetpack * Form Maker * Contact Form Maker * Contact Form Manager * Easy Contact Forms * Ninja Forms * Fast Secure Contact Form * Visual Form Builder * Wufoo Forms Other Mentions: * Mail Chimp * Akismet * Picatcha * WooCommerce * InfoGenius Advanced Form Analytics [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep64-which-form-plugin-should-you-use-with-wordpress-wpwatercooler-dec-9-5-” show_gravatar=”true”]

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Today's topic is our favorite plugin Jetpack. What is Jetpack? It’s a plugin that comes with WordPress, it’s not always automatically installed but it does require an API key in order to work. Although in some server infrastructures it is automatically installed. Boiled down, it’s basically a lot of plugins within one plugin. Jetpack has 2 main focuses. The first is to offer a lot of cloud services that are hard to do on a small shared hosting environment. The second is to offer a closer feature parity to WordPress.com so if someone has their blog on wordpress.com and they want to spin it off into a self hosted site, there are some short codes they may be missing from their content or widgets they might not have. By offering those in Jetpack, they have the ability to let their content flow in either direction. Some of the Jetpack modules: Photon – Free image CDN (content delivery network) Tiled Galleries: With Tiled Galleries you can display your image galleries in three new styles: a rectangular mosaic, a square mosaic, and a circular grid. The rectangular and square tiled layouts also have hover-over captions to save space while making captions accessible. Stats – WordPress.com Stats lets you know how many visits your site gets, and what posts and pages are most popular. Likes – is a way for people to show their appreciation for your posts. It's also a way for authors to show the world how popular their content has become. Notifications – It allows you to view and moderate comments right from the toolbar, anywhere on your site or across WordPress.com. Happy Face – it’s for non javascript users. It’s an image that’ll be loaded even if you have javascript disabled and triggers that hit. Json API: Jetpack will allow you to authorize applications and services to securely connect to your blog and allow them to use your content in new ways and offer you new functionality. Developers can use WordPress.com’s OAuth2 authentication system and WordPress.com REST API to manage and access your site’s content. Publicize: Publicize makes it easy to share your site's posts on several social media networks automatically when you publish a new post. Contact Form: A contact form is a great way to offer your readers the ability to get in touch, without giving out your personal email address. Monitor: Jetpack Monitor will keep tabs on your site, and alert you the moment that downtime is detected. Custom CSS: The Custom CSS Editor allows you to customize the appearance of your theme without the need to create a child theme or worry about theme updates overwriting your customizations. VideoPress: The VideoPress module allows you to upload videos from your computer for hosting and playback directly within your site. Gravatar Hovercards: A gravatar is your profile on the web, and the Hovercard is one way your information is made visible to others. It’s an easy way to help people find your blog, or access your identity on other services like Twitter, Facebook, or Linkedin. [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep64-love-it-or-hate-it-what-you-need-to-know-about-jetpack-for-wordpress-w” show_gravatar=”true”]

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On this episode of WPwatercooler we will be discussing the best ways to work with WordPress Multisite, why should you use it and what are the best ways to extend it's functionality. Live stream starts at 11am PDT / 2pm EST / 7PM UTC [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep63-what-are-the-best-ways-to-work-with-wordpress-multisite-wpwatercooler-” show_gravatar=”true”] Multisite Multisite is the art of having one WordPress installation manage many multiple sites on one WordPress instance. Each site on the network gets its own tables and each site will get its own table except the users table. You get 1 easy way to install plugins and themes and so on. Three types of multisite: * subdomain * subfolder * virtual domains When not to use multisite: * If you’re a WP beginner * If you don’t intend to use premium hosting Good uses for multisite * Creating enterprise level solutions for multiple states/locations/etc * When you have multiple sites that use the same theme * Universities/restaurants/medical facilities/religious institutions/real estate Highly recommended plugin to help with multisites: * Proper Network Activation * Plugins to break off your database and make it more manageable * HyperDB * SharDB * WPMU – good resource for many multisite plugins Takeaway: Know that implementing multisite takes a lot of planning and know how. It might be best for you to hire someone that really knows what they’re doing and plan to keep them on retainer. If you’re a dev, have a test site to make sure you plugin plays nice in the multisite sandbox. If it doesn’t then document that. Other Mentions: * DesktopServer

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Today's topic is How to manage events in WordPress. Live stream starts at 11am PDT / 2pm EST / 18:00 GMT [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”how-to-manage-events-in-wordpress-5-528981707193cs” show_gravatar=”true”] How to manage events in WordPress Define what your requirements are when deciding which plugin to use such as do you need recurring events, purchase tickets, multiple tickets etc. The plus side to a premium plug in – When the business is using a plugin to make money, they should be expecting to pay for a premium plugin that offers good support. Plugins Available: * The Events Calendar * The Events Calendar Pro * Event Espresso * Timely * All-in-one Event Calendar * Event Organizer * Ajax Event Calendar Mentions: * Brown Paper Bag * WooCommerce * Gravity Forms * JetPack * Stripe * Eventbrite * WooThemes

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On this episode of WPwatercooler we will be discussing our favorite WordPress people to follow on social media. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Github Dribble even Instagram! We're not leaving one stone unturned (ok, we may.. this is a 30 minute show!) Live stream starts at 11am PDT / 2pm EST / 18:00 GMT Google+ mentioned WPChatter Advanced WordPress Twitter accounts mentioned [followbutton username=”chrislema” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”Steveorevo” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”GreggFranklin” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”Kovshenin” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light” [followbutton username=”markjaquith” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”nacin” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”otto42″ count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”Ipstenu” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”BobWP” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”pippinsplugins” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”jpetersen” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”BillErickson” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”jaredatch” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”leftlane” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”wp101″ count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”Glandrum77″ count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”jakemgold” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”williamsba” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”armeda” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”alexkingorg” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”jeffr0″ count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”wptavern” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”socalwp” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”bastosmichael” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”thetorquemag” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”syedbalkhi” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”] [followbutton username=”SiobhanPMcKeown” count=”true” lang=”en” theme=”light”]

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On this episode of WPwatercooler we will be discussing mobile solutions for WordPress, themes, apps and ways to integrate mobile with your project. Mobile solutions Start by asking yourself what the purpose is? Define what the goal is, who your audience is, how will they be experiencing your website? If you’re serious about making your site responsive and mobile, start with Mobile First Design by A Book Apart  It’ll get you thinking about how people will be interacting with your data and what they’ll likely be doing when accessing your content. Stop thinking about mobile versions of your site as an afterthought. Think about mobile first before you begin the design process. Know that they way people use a mobile site is different than how they do on a desktop. Just adding a responsive theme to your site is not going to cut it. Make sure your mobile site loads fast. No one will wait for your site to load when they’re on the go. The term “Mobile” means more than iPhone and Android. It means devices that sometimes don’t have color screen, javascript or css, gaming consoles and so on. 25% of your audience will access your site ONLY from a mobile device and that percentage is rising. Track your stats so you know who’s trying to access your site and how. Gather data through analytics. One way to implement this is to make your desktop site blazingly fast. You can use picturefill and make sure the content is the main thin you’re seeing, not images and sidebars. On mobile you simply want to see content. Simple speed tricks Having a caching plugin in place like WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache or something better if you have something like WP Engine. Adding a CDN such as Max CDN so images load as fast as possible. Aside from the web browser itself what are other ways for taking content from a WordPress interface and display it on a mobile environment? Appmaker.com redfoundry.com Both of those will take an rss feed or customized type of feed, and deliver them to an app that you can now use to deliver to an app store. For more advanced devs Titanium from Appcelerator Phonegap – These both take some programming know how. Some people will take a Json feed or an xml feed from your WordPress site and use something like phonegap which allows you to make a native app with HTML and Javascript  and get your content into it that way. The problem with that is you still have to build a static site and all you’re doing is taking a feed from WordPress. AppPresser is a way to use all of the native WordPress plugins and themes and use that as a native app and you’re able to use things like the device camera, and the contacts etc… through WordPress using the skills you already have. You won’t have to get your hands dirty with native code. Available soon Other Mentions * Appbreeder * WPTouch * WordPress Mobile Pack * is_mobile() * JetPack * Store Locator * Geo My WP * HTML5Rocks [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep60-mobile-solutions-for-wordpress-wpwatercooler-nov-4-2013-5-5276fa4d58a6″ show_gra...

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Today's topic we will be discussing the use of images and galleries in WordPress. There are many plugins and prebuilt solutions to help with these, we'll be exploring a few of them from the 1000ft level and then digging deeper into our favorites. Tips for working with imaged and galleries in WordPress When used correctly (as in do not upload all images or even all files from your computer onto your WordPress site) the new and improved Media Library and its ability to attach and put galleries directly into your post without needing any plugin is pretty amazing. Make sure you properly name your images so they’ll be searchable. Plugins for managing images consistency and size: WP Smush.it which is supported by WP Engine. It has a way of being able to smush down those images, remove the excess metadata and reduce the file size. Auto Image Resizer: This Plugin reduces all uploaded images to the maximal used image dimensions of your WordPress website. Imsanity: automatically resizes huge image uploads down to a size that is more reasonable for display in browser, yet still more than large enough for typical website use. Simple Image Sizes: This plugin allow create custom image sizes for your site. Override your theme sizes directly on the media option page. You can regenerate all the sizes you have just created and choose which one you wanted to regenerate. Typically if you’re going to use a gallery, especially with a lightbox, what happens is it’ll give you thumbnails with the right size. But the links inside of those  actually link to the original full size source file. So if someone has uploaded a 3000×4000 image, that’s what’s going to pop up when they click on the gallery. Plugins for managing a gallery: NextGEN Gallery: It provides a powerful engine for uploading and managing galleries of images, with the ability to batch upload, import meta data, add/delete/rearrange/sort images, edit thumbnails, group galleries into albums, and more. Soliloquy: This plugin is technically a slider and it has an addon called (see next) Soliloquy Thumbnails Addon:  and what that does is it puts an image on top which is the slider and puts the thumbnails of the rest of the pictures below it which is the gallery. These plugins are responsive. Other Mentions: * ACF Advanced Custom Fields * Foobox * Picturefill: A javascript file that allows you to serve up responsive images. * WP Engine * Colorbox * Simple Lightbox * Jetpack Carousel [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep59-working-with-images-and-galleries-in-wordpress-5-526df3eae609f” show_gravatar=”true”]

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Today's topic is WordPress 3.7, auto updates and quick iterations. 3.7 released in October and 3.8 will be released in December. Is that a good/reasonable release schedule? It’s possible that this kind of release schedule will create more diligence as far as custom theme developers in keeping the standards and prevent “hacked” versions of themes. A rapid release cycle is a discussion about how they’re going about building WP so instead of everyone contributing to 1 branch of the code that will hopefully get rolled in and become the new version, they’ve decided to approach it via plugins. They rapid release approach is an approach that changes the model for how they construct software and how they collaborate to build software. Auto updates: it’s less about HOW things get built, it’s much more about how things stay updated for customers. Right now the auto updates are really related to security updates, small patches. The “dot” releases ( ex .1 and .2 versions) are security releases and not functionality changes. Moving from 3.6 to 3.7 is a functionality difference. People will have to move from 3.7.1 or 3.7.2 to 3.8 34,000 people had been on the previous release and they did the auto upgrade to the release candidate 1, and no one had to roll back. The code was looking to see if anything broke, and nothing did. They aren’t looking at small things such as plugins and widgets, but making sure everything is functioning properly. The code appears to be stable long with the update process. If you use standard plugins that are well maintained, there typically won’t be many problems. Problems arise when people are using themes and plugins that are several years old. Whatever technology you’re using, just pay attention to ratings and # of downloads and how often they update the technology of the theme or plugins you’re using. Keep in mind you have the ability to turn off auto updates. If you choose to allow auto updates, it’s imperative you have good, current backups of your files and database and NOT stored on the same server as your production server. Of course you should be doing regular backups anyway, but especially if you’re allowing auto updates. We talked about his on EP47 – Backing up WordPress regularly and before an upgrade – WPwatercooler – August 12 2013 VaultPress is an excellent option for storing your backups. There are 3 pricing tiers you can chose from. A few more WordPress 3.7 features: * Stronger passwords built into core. * Improved search results * More global support (Language packs) * Read more here Other Mentions: * Go Daddy * MediaTemple (mt) * Jetpack * SearchWP * Search Meter * FacetWP [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep58-wordpress-3-7-auto-updates-and-quick-iterations-oct-22-2013-5-5264da51″ show_gravatar=”true”]

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Today we are talking about the latest plugins we are using in our day to day WordPress web development. What’s a Plugin? A plugin is architecture which allows users and developers to extend WordPress's abilities beyond the core installation. Each plugin offers custom functions and features enabling users to tailor their sites to their specific needs. These customizations range SEO (Search Engine Optimization) enhancers to content displaying features, such as the addition of widgets and navigation bars. Our new favorite plugins Codepress Admin Columns: Allows you to add extra columns to admin screens – aka backend. You can tweak every post type and how it displays from the admin screen. This is highly recommended customizing your backend and have access to data you wouldn’t normally see. It’s also really fantastic for photographers. WP Migrate DB Pro: You’re able to push and pull databases to and from your local environment and a staging or production server. It allows you to sync between a test site and live site. $39 for 2 sites. Unlimited is $99. Brandfolder: You can go into your dashboard and access any brand assets like a logo or  a logo bug and that kind of thing and put it in the file section. It lets  you also upload fonts and if you use Google Fonts it shows you a preview of the font in the dash board. You can put in color palates so if they have a web color and print color, you can put the colors on the same color swatch. It’s totally free, but you do need to sign up for a free account. Soliloquy: Responsive slider. Makes slide decks for presentations. Slide Deck: makes slide decks for presentations Forms 3rd Party Integration: Connects a form plug in, either Gravity Forms or Contact Forms 7, and connects it to a 3rd party source. If you need to post info from a form to a custom CRM, it allows you to do that. It has hooks and filters built into itself. It has a full customization panel. Before – After Viewer: Your gallery that can show one or a list of before/after items infoGeniuz Form Analytics for Gravity Forms:  (In the paid version) You can set up virtual pages so when they finish inputing information into a gravity form, it will trigger an event in Google Analytics that will allow you to know when someone has finished a form in jquery. iMapper – WordPress image mapper: You can put up an image and add hot spots on the image for presentations. This is a paid plugin. What the File: For Theme Developers. It allows you to go to any page on your blog or website that has a drop down on the admin bar that allows you to see which template files are making up the existing view. Great debugging tool. WordPress Debug Bar: Another good plugin for developers Video Thumbnails: It pulls in thumbnails from any url you’re using for embed codes from all the major video services. You can even make a featured image for you. WPWatercooler uses this one. Fluid Video Embeds: Makes any any youtube and vimeo video fluid so that your video is responsive. Simple Lightbox: Anything you have linked to the media file pops up in a nice lightb...

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