Archive for the ‘Sessions’ Category

Session Details: A Site Seeing Tour

Posted by Nick Gernert on December 1, 2009
Posted in: Sessions

After all the plugins are plugged-in, after all of the themes have been applied and content added have you ever stepped back to look at your site and seen Frankenstein? We’ve all been there, a site that looks cobbled together, or like three sites smashed into one. We have a tendency to lose sight of the real goal of the sites we create – giving our users a great experience. There’s no magic plugin for great experience – we have to design, nurture it and ultimately deliver it.

So rather than ramble on, Jeremy Harrington thought he would take you through a visual tour of some of the web’s best experiences. Together, you will look at a variety of sites on various platforms and have some fun along the way. Hopefully this will inspire you try something new or maybe reconsider some a plugin or two.

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Session Details: WordPress on Windows using Web Platform Installer

Posted by Nick Gernert on November 25, 2009
Posted in: Sessions

So, interestingly, there has been a bit of chatter around WordPress and Windows lately. Last week, Matt made a surprise visit to Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference to discuss WordPress, Apache, MySQL and PHP running on Windows Azure. It just so happens we have Brian Johnson, a startup evangelist for Microsoft, living right here in Orlando and he has a bit of experience around WordPress and running it on a Windows server with IIS. Here’s what we’ll learn:

Web Platform Installer (Web PI) is a tool from Microsoft that allows developers and system administrators to easily add Web applications to a Windows server or a developer box running IIS. In this talk Brian will walk through deploying WordPress on a Windows developer machine using Web Platform Installer. He’ll also talk about some other features of Web PI, including SEO optimization and the large number of Web server applications you can install using this tool.

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Session Details: A BuddyPress Primer

Posted by Nick Gernert on November 24, 2009
Posted in: Sessions

What would WordCamp Orlando be without a session on one of the hottest topics in the WordPress community right now… BuddyPress! We’re just now seeing the first generation of sites coming up that are using BuddyPress and the potential of the tool is really exciting. John James Jacoby is a BuddyPress core contributor from Miami that’s here to educate us on BuddyPress. Here’s what you can expect…

BuddyPress is a new and exciting way to turn an ordinary WordPress blog into a multi-user community of friends, blogs, groups, and more. John is going to walk us through what BuddyPress is, why you will want to use it now (if you aren’t already), and how to leverage it to start your own completely customizable social network. He will also touch base on the future of BuddyPress, what to look forward to in future versions, and how you can take part in helping to shape its future.

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Session Details: WordPress as a Content Management System

Posted by Nick Gernert on November 23, 2009
Posted in: Sessions

WordPress made its mark as a great blogging platform for taking a clean, simple approach to content publishing. The beauty is, these same principles are not exclusive to blogs and can be applied to the management of many different types of websites. Orlando’s Eric Marden of Xentek will touch on the following:

Defining what a CMS is and where WordPress fits within that role
Quick overview of the built in features of WordPress
Extolling the virtues of the flexible, light weight approach WordPress takes
Brief Case Studies of successful WordPress deployments
Different Use Cases for maximizing WordPress as a CMS for organizations of any size.

Update: Eric’s slides are now online.

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Session Details: From Podcast to Print: Sneaking Into Publishing Through The Basement Window

Posted by Nick Gernert on November 18, 2009
Posted in: Sessions

WordCamp Orlando is offering a great set of sessions with perspectives from all around the country on things like communities, publishing and development. I’m really excited at the chance to showcase great things happening right here in Florida. J.C. Hutchins will be heading up from Fort Lauderdale to share how he basically took control of his own promotion and built awareness of his works through some very creative tactics. Here’s a bit about what you can expect at WordCamp this year…

In 2005, author J.C. Hutchins chased publishers the traditional way … and heard “no” at every turn. Convinced his novels were worthy of an audience, he took to the “podwaves” in 2006 and released his 7th Son thriller trilogy as free serialized podcast audiobooks. A thriving community soon formed around J.C. and his fiction. By 2007, St. Martin’s Press saw the grassroots platform J.C. had created, and offered to publish the series’ first novel, Descent, and a supernatural thriller, Personal Effects: Dark Art. Learn how J.C. used innovative “zero budget” marketing techniques, savvy cross-promotion and community-building to get his novels on bookshelves.

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