WPwatercooler - Weekly WordPress Talk Show

Social media is here to stay, whether you like it or not. What is the best way to use it on your WordPress powered site and when not to do it. We'll be talking about how it affects performance and which plugins to use to get the job done. Keep in mind there is a difference between “Social Media” and a “Social Network” Defining Social Media: An outlet for social interaction Blogs (especially with comments) A WordPress site Major Social Networks: * Facebook * Twitter * Pinterest * LinkedIn * Tumblr * Google+ Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media: Do: Make it easy for people to share your post Have social share buttons on your posts (Jetpack) Easy to look at and share on a phone Choosing relevant titles for content you intend to share Target your audience – Make sure you know who your audience is so you get the most out of your SM push Don’t or Use your best judgement: Use affiliate links Use automatic publishing to push to Facebook Tools for Integrating Social Media into WordPress: * Lazy Social Buttons – Plugin When using SM Buttons, your site will have a performance hit. You’re pulling data from SM sites and that’s extra info being pulled into your site. Lazy Social Buttons is a plugin you can use to help speed things up. It uses an image rather than the dynamic content from SM sites. It loads things on the site much faster. The downside is you won’t get the stats you might value from this method. * Floating Social Bar – Plugin Does the same as the above but allows you to receive the stats. * Evergreen Post Tweeter – Takes old posts and will send out tweets linking back to your older content. This works best for “evergreen” content * Tweet Old Post – Does same as above * Sociable * Share This – It’s configurable and you choose which SM site you want to post to * Inline Tweet Sharer Mentions: * BuddyPress * Disqus * Jetpack * Klout * Instagrate (Makes new blog posts with your instagram pictures) [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep56-dos-and-donts-of-social-media-integration-with-wordpress-5-52522cdd0e7″ show_gravatar=”true”]

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On this episode of WPwatercooler we're going to be discussing meetups. We'll be discussing: how to find one,  how to run one, why would you do either and what are the motivations or running one or attending. What is a meetup? A great way to get like minded people together and share ideas. * Steve: OCWordPress began with the intent of finding local WordPress talent in order to outsource overflow work for his company. * Natalie: SoCal WordPress MeetUp Los Angeles started Feb 2009 after reading an article about MeetUp.com. She started the WordPress meetup after finding a void at meetup.com * Patrick: Greenbay WI – Someone set up a group on MeetUp but never actually did anything with it even though there were plenty of people that joined the online group. He decided to run the meeting. * Se: WP for Small Businesses – The organizer for the group left the group so she decided to take over the group. One of the hardest parts of organizing a meetup is finding the space. Here’s how some of the organizers handle that. * Steve: they outgrew their office rather quickly so he looked for a location for his business that could also handle a large gathering of people and move his company into there. * Suzette: WordPress for Artists – She found an art gallery that was willing to host the meetups. * Verious: Inland Empire meetup. They had a very hard time finding space. It took about 8 months to be able to find a regular location. Now they meet at a hacker space called Riverside IO. * Se: She works with the Small Business Dev Center and they have a satellite office she can use in Long Beach. * Chris: North San Diego County Meetup: One of the people that wanted to join the group is a firefighter and worked it out so they could use the firehouse for their meetups. What’s a good way to come up with topics for your meetup? Have a companion Facebook group. Get your fellow attendees to join the group and keep the conversation going between meetups. Then you can source the group for topic ideas. Topics are dependent on who is in the room/group. Find out if they’re designers or developers, end users or what. Don’t be afraid to have a small focus for your group. It’s often better to have a smaller turnout of like minded people than a large group of people at all levels. Does anyone charge for their meetup? No. In the beginning, Natalie tried to charge to recoup costs for the space that she sometimes had to pay $100+ for. That didn’t work very well. They’ve all found that no one wants to pay to attend a meetup no matter what the charge is. Meetups are a good way to test out your material before presenting to a larger audience. Happiness Bar: It’s a way for people to ask an expert questions they have about WordPress If you’re looking for a WP meetup, go to wordpress.meetup.com. There are 490 groups with over 100k members. If you don’t find a local group, start a meetup! There are 19 meetups in the SoCal area. If you can’t find a local group, check meetwp.me They have an online meetup. [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep55-the-ins-outs-of-your-local-wordpress-meetup-wpwatercooler-5-5249144e52″ show_gravatar=”true”]

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On this episode we are recapping the events that happened during WordCamp Los Angeles 2013. WordCamp LAX was really smooth and well managed. General thoughts are that it was hard to imagine this was a first time organizer group for a WordCamp. It was also representative of life and diversity in Southern California. Events Friday: The traditional Speaker/Sponsor dinner in Hollywood Saturday: All day sessions running in 2 rooms at Cal State LA followed by the after party at the Blue Cow Kitchen and Bar in Downtown LA. Sunday: Afternoon sessions at Cross Campus in Santa Monica Q: Why did the organizers decide to spread the weekend out over the Greater Los Angeles area instead of keeping it to one location for the weekend? A: Natalie has a really good relationship with Cross Campus and immediately thought it would be perfect for the smaller Sunday event since not as many people attend the Sunday event as they do the Saturday event.  The Saturday venue needed to be much larger, and they were having trouble finding an appropriate location. Cal State LA kind if “fell into our laps” and it just worked out that way. It wasn’t planned to cover the east side and west side. Saturday Presentations Steve: Really enjoyed Paul Clark’s talk on Saturday Sass* and Less CSS. He’s a great speaker and funny with a great sense of humor. He inspired Steve to research Sass and work it into the development process. Steve also liked Konstantin Obenland presentation The Customizer and learned a lot. *Sass is a different way of creating CSS much more efficiently.   Jeff: Favorite was Paul Clark. Jeff also enjoyed Scott Bolinger’s talk on Lesser Known but Super Hip Responsive Design Tricks. Jeff was also inspired to take the information from Konstantin’s presentation and implement it into his own work.   Chris: Was anticipating the WordPress Consulting for Large Companies by Karim Marucchi, John Giaconia and Kara Hansen. A collaborative presentation between Velomedia and The Walt Disney Company.   Takeaway for future presenters Speak on a topic that you know. It’s that simple. If you know your topic, it becomes a conversation and that’s what makes a good session. A good session is not reading off of slides. It’s when an audience is responsive to what you’re talking about. WPwatercooler Saturday presenters * Steve: Underscores – The only theme that matters * Chris delivered the Keynote * Se: DIYWP: Making WordPress Work for Your Small Business * Suzette: You’re Live! …Now What?: Post Launch Setup Process and Procedures WPwatercooler Sunday Presenters * Jason: Improving Support Documentation by Using Video in the Dashboard * Jeff: Part of the Business Panel Discussion Mentions * Huberts Lemonade (sponsor of WCLAX and provided a ton of cold bottles of lemonade to attendees. * GoDaddy [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep54-wordcamp-2013-recap-show-wpwatercooler-5-523fd518644ae” show_gravatar=”true”]

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WPwatercooler streamed live with a panel from WordCamp Los Angeles 2013. We rounded up some of the brightest names in WordPress from the camp and got them on the show to talk shop and share their experiences. Due to low bandwidth issues at the event the video cut out at the beginning of the discussion. Many of regulars and past guests that have been on the show will be speaking at the event, here is our compiled list: * Cody Landefeld – Building your start-up with WordPress, Business Panel Discussion * Jeffrey Zinn – Business Panel Discussion * Mike Schroder – Command Line Workshop * Sarah Wefald – What is a child theme, and why/how should I use one? * Sé Reed – DIYWP: Making WordPress Work for Your Small Business * Steve Zehngut – Underscores – The only theme that matters * Suzette Franck – You’re Live! …Now What?: Post Launch Setup Process and Procedures * Wes Chyrchel – Setting Client Expectations in WordPress Web Development * Scott Bolinger – Lesser known but super hip responsive design tricks * Chris Lema – Keynote: The Commoditization of Intellect * Jason Tucker – Improving support documentation by using video in the dashboard.

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On this episode of WPwatercooler we celebrate about our first birthday and discuss the year in review. Live stream starts at 11am PST Mondays The one year anniversary of WP Watercooler Favorite Episodes: * Episode 28 – April Fools Day show – Drupal Watercooler * WordCamp Live shows * Orange County * Phoenix, Day two * Miami, Recap * Show and tell Favorite Guests: * Siobhan McKeown * Andrew Norcross * Carrie Dills * Jeff Zinn * Sarah Wefeld * Morton Rand-Hendriksen * Natalie MacLees Stats as of the September 16: * 54 Guests on the show * 2,982,983 episode views Other WP podcasts: * DradCast * Matt Report * This Week in WordPress Mentions: * github * jetpack * Media Temple * #blamelema [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep52-happy-1st-birthday-wordpress-year-in-review-wpwatercooler-sept-16-2013″ show_gravatar=”true”]

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This week on WPwatercooler we will be discussing analytics for WordPress. Analytics is the way you go about tracking information about the people going to a website. It tells you how they’re arriving on your site, what pages they’re viewing, browser type, country of origin. There are 2 types of analytics.  Site based: Input code into the site and google will monitor the flow of traffic to/around/from your site. People Based: It answers “What are the people doing on the site?” You can follow a person’s movements through your site. What can you do with GA? * real time analysis * segmentation * integration of specific goals (such as tracking purchases and newsletter sign ups) * track pages they took to get to certain pages * Follow the dollars they spend What are resources to learn GA Beginners should look at WPBeginner Google offers its own training as well. sign up for free and go through their library of resources GA is constantly changing so you should look at those resources often Spend time using it as much as you can Jetpack How long should you wait with a new site before really getting into GA? At least a month or 2 for a new site. If it’s an older site that just wasn’t tracking, there might be data available pretty quickly Jetpack (plugin) is a great place to start for learning GA. You get the basics such as page views and growth, common search terms, outgoing links and more. Once the novelty of GA has worn off and you will begin to want more detailed information. Be more strategic in what you want to track and make that information work for you. You are able to set up a custom analytics dashboard. Jason highly recommends Occam’s Razor.  He makes really great prebuilt analytics dashboards you can install with a click and drop on all of your site profiles. Clients should be in charge of their own analytics. If you need access or they want you to monitor the analytics, they should add you as a user to their GA account. We really recommend you keep client analytics separate from your own GA account. Mentions: * Jetpack * Yoast SEO * Yoast Analytics * Occam's Razor * OCWP Meetup * Woopra Analytics Services * Google Analytics * Slim Stats * CrazyEgg * clicky.com * chartbeat * orbtr.net * Analytics360 Higher-end Analytics Services * Dashfolio * Cohort Analysis * Mixpanel * Custora [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep51-wordpress-analytics-wpwatercooler-sept-9-2013-5-522d361724c9b” show_gravatar=”true”]

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Today's topic is Learning resources – What's the best way to get started with WordPress? Chris’ best tip for any and every WordPress beginner question is to go to google and type in “WP Beginner” and then write your question. Sarah suggests getting offline and going to a local reputable WordPress meet up. Instead of just reading blog posts and tutorials, get in front of people that know WordPress. Have a conversation in person. Go to wordpress.com, set up a site and just start playing with it. About WPBeginner – 95% of articles come from users submitting questions. You’re always going to be a beginner of sorts because WP is always changing. You’ll always have to be learning. If you really do know WordPress, be a resource yourself! “Know enough to know what you don’t know.” If you don’t know something, don’t give out bad information. Resources for WordPress beginners: * WP Beginner (free) * Lynda.com (paid) * Suzette’s Speaker Deck from WC Vancouver * teamtreehouse.com * WordPress for Dummies by Lisa Sabin-Wilson * WP101 * carriedills.com for more advanced beginners * wpsessions.com * chrislema.com * quora.com * wordpress.tv * YouTube video tutorials * Find a local wordcamp * support.wordpress.org * StackExchange [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”learning-resources-whats-the-best-way-to-get-started-with-wordpress-5-5223f” show_gravatar=”true”]

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On this weeks episode we will be discussing ways to speed up your WordPress website.  This includes plugins that speed it up, explain caching and CDNs, and talk hosting providers that help. Caching – A way of taking the content and storing it into something more static to that gets pushed out to the internet. CDN – Content Delivery Network, the way you distribute all of the content be it Java, CSS or images out to a 3rd party that has fast servers. What are possible causes for a site running slow? * It’s possible that the issue is with your code and no matter where your site is hosted it will be slow. * Themes can also be an issue. * Often problems happen on the front end with a lot of or inefficient JavaScript, large image sizes. Image optimization is key. * Media in general takes up a lot of bandwidth. What are some possible solutions to slow running sites? * Hosting with a company that provides SSD (solid state drive) technology. SSD currently serves data at the fastest speed available. Compare hosts and find one that uses SSD rather than spindle based drives. * Use P3 Profiler (Plugin Performance Profiler) Use P3 to see which plugins are slowing your sites down. The plugin creates a performance report for the site. CDN Solutions: * Amazon s3 * MaxCDN * Cloud Flare * Google Page Feed Caching * Use a plugin * W3 Total Cache (not recommended not for the casual users, difficult to use, not set it and forget it) * WP Super Cache – Recommended * Hyper Cache – Recommended * Hosting company * WP Engine * Page.ly * Dreamhost * HostGator * Site Ground * Cloud Flare Once you’ve run optimizations, how do you check to see if your site is actually faster? * Webpagetest.org * Pingdom * yslow * Google Page Test * GT Metrix Mentions: * WP Engine * GoDaddy * WPSitecare * P3 Profiler * Jetpack * Photon * Sass * Less * DB Migrate Pro * Lightroom * Photoshop * Gimp * smush.it * JPGmini * CSS Tricks [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep49-how-to-speed-up-your-website-wpwatercooler-august-26-2013-5-521a...

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Today's topic is Working locally instead of cowboy coding where we will be discussing local web development utilizing tools such as XAMPP MAMP WAMP and other tools like DesktopServer, Vagrant or even Vagrantpress. Beginners For beginners Suzette suggests they use DesktopServer because it’s easy to install and you don’t have to ruin your server testing everything out and can test locally. Shooting from the hip Cowboy Coding: is when you make live changes to a website everyone can see. If you do anything that might break your site, you’re cowboy coding. You’re pulling the trigger and hoping something doesn’t break. Local Server So why use a local server? * It’s too easy to make 1 little mistake and break everything. Doing it locally prevents you from taking the site down live. This way you’re making changes and testing it out on a local server and if something breaks, it won’t take down the entire website. * You get good speed because you aren’t waiting for the internet to load. * You can work with no internet connection at all. Test Environment When is it necessary to make that test environment? Some sites are very small and don’t get a lot of traffic. So is it necessary to have a testing environment for those sites? * Steve: Yes you need a testing environment and you need it right away. * If the content is important to the user, then a test environment is very important. * Say something breaks, what good are backups if you can’t repair them locally? * It’s a good habit. Always do it the same way and you’ll be safer. From the local server you can send it to a staging server to test out before then moving on to a full deployment. Version Control Is it always important to always have version control to roll back to previous versions? For “casual” sites, no. They can use something like DropBox and have the “poor man’s” version control. They can learn the ropes and then segue into a more mature solution such as Git or Subversion. DesktopServer About DesktopServer * It’s quick and simple to use. You can set up to 3 sites with the free version and have a local working environment right away. DesktopServer takes something that was really difficult and tedious to do, and makes is quick and simple. * Before going from local to deployment DesktopServer will go through and “scrub” the site to make sure the links have been changed before going live. Staging Server It’s really good to move from a local server to a staging server before deployment. It’s likely there will be issues moving from an Apache server to a server running Nginx. There are also PHP versions that aren’t compatible. MySQL may also cause problems. You don’t have to go with a company that provides staging, you can create your own with your host via sub domain. If you do this, make sure you block robots or set up a log in page or you might get an angry call from a client asking why your agency staging site ranking higher than their website. Hosts that provide staging servers: * WP Engine (1 click staging) * Site Ground

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On this episode we will be focusing on tools and techniques to backing up a WordPress installation and how to backup before a major upgrade. Backups are really important, and everyone should backup their sites. It doesn’t matter what platform you’re using, you need to be checking your restores every now and then to make sure that in the event of a site crash, your backups will work. Make sure your backup is going to a separate server and NOT on the same server your site is on. How often should you backup? * It really depends on the site and how your site changes. * It’s content dependent. If you have a site that puts out content all day, your would do well to back up several times a day. * Many sites back up nightly. * If you’re in e-commerce and having a lot of customer transactions in a day, you need to back up multiple times a day. * Back up every time you make any change whether it’s upgrading WordPress, a plugin, activating a plugin, updating a theme, anything. Ways to test your backup/restore: Restore it locally on a desktop server – DesktopServer is built for just about anyone. It’s a single solution you install on your computer. It creates an entire environment for a WordPress site. On Migration: If you pick a host, and your site fails, having a backup is important so you can migrate to another server.  The same infrastructure can be used to get you to a different server/solution/company. Some hosts will do the migration for you if you give them a good backup Solutions for Backing Up in WordPress * Backup Buddy * Sucuri * VaultPress – will restore a backup to a new site * WP Engine – Provides instant restore points with 1 click * WordPress backup to Dropbox (Free option) * BackWPUp * Desktop Server Other Mentions: * Host Gator * AutoMattic * Dropbox * Amazon S3 * WPMigrate DB * Server Press * 1&1 WebHosting * Site Ground * GoDaddy * MediaTemple [LISTATTENDEES event_identifier=”ep47-backing-up-wordpress-regularly-and-before-an-upgrade-wpwatercooler-aug” show_gravatar=”true”]

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