Here’s a quick wrapup of the talks I managed to catch.

1. Open Source mxPress Plugin

Eric Clements discusses Using WP to setup a Live Mxit Based Journal of Olympics Info. Using mxPress a small team setup a live Olympic Journal Mxit App fed with updates through WordPress. The setup took around 5 hrs and within a couple of weeks they had 10 000 followers.

• Why WordPress – Ease of content management
• Why Mxit – Quick Easy Mobile access to large user base

http://www.mxpress.co.za

• Quick Mxit App setup
• Go Mobile Quickly and easily
• Access non smart phone users
• Great Features of the Plugin – tight WP Integration
• Integration with Google Analytics

A suggestion from the floor was to make use of a setup like this for monitoring crime and crime reporting through a crowdsourced type setup where non-smartphone users can easily access and update the system.

Eric also mentioned that monitizing on Mxit is much easier than on platforms like facebook.

2. How to Hijack a Themeshop

Riaan Knoetze started creating WordPress themes out of necessity. He says he loves making money in his sleep and was looking for ways to establish passive streams of income. Riaan explains how difficult it is to break into the Theme sales market due to the sheer amount of players. His talk discusses how to leverage existing theme markets and develop extended products based on their products, eg. Developing WooThemes child themes.

Riaan says he’s not a PHP developer, marketing guru or Graphic design super star.

Enter – Premium Child Themes

Eg. Riaan Converted App Theme’s Classipress Classified theme to his own styled version Headline.

• Riaan goes into Hijacking 101, the tools, skills and knowhow needed to Hijack Existing Premium Themes legally and make money off modifying them.
• He further explains how to pick a theme shop – their themes need design improvements, functional extensions and users who want extensions.
• Advanced Hijacking tip – make it legit and get the backing of the theme shop.
• Cons – revenue split
• Pros – more exposure, less overhead, support infrastructure …

Imma get myself hijacking!

3. Fred Roed, CEO of WWCreative speaking about Community & Causes

Fred’s intro was a little unconventional discussing the story of the Apaches but boiling down to the issue of Having a serious and meaningful Cause.

Quick Stat – 95% of Brands in South Africa Use Social Media

Fred impressing on the Social Media Stats but reminding us that Trust is so important in the bombardment from multiple channels. People are still interested in trusted communities and connections.

3 Verticals They Focus on at WWC

1. Attracting Traffic
2. Converting Traffic
3. Maintaining

At the centre of it is Cause, something meaningful, something you want to fight for and are passionate about, something you feel for.

Citing the example of Apple, determined to develop Beautiful, Functional Technology. Something which resonates with the users. Fred goes on to cite a wide range of Causes from Virgin taking on the big guys, to Hitler to Steve Hofmeyer.

Why Causes

• It’s Profitable
• It’s compelling
• It’s sustainable
• Connects People

4. Does Social Media Affect SEO

Neil Starts off comparing statistics – correlation & causation data based on high ranking sites. The Data suggests certain important social functions seem to have some effect on Search Engine Rankings.

Neil Mentions an SEO Moz experiment asking his community to +1 a Post Ranked 16 which then Ranked 6th after many +1′s. He mentions Google Plus profiles linked on Google Webmaster Tools to blogging author page which should allow your author profile to appear on search listings, also shared his recommendation of the AuthorSure plugin to assist with this. He also showed how Google is starting to feature Social activities into analytics tools and reports. Many of the points mentioned are covered by Yoast in his latest SEO outline.

At this stage myself and a few of the guys rushed off to grab some food elsewhere and to stretch our legs, Catering wasn’t Halaal so we grabbed a steak gatsby or 2 down the road, because of which we missed the first session which focused on performance.

Sessions I Missed – Performance, Speed / Load Time

Basically the performance/speed related sessions cover using CDNs (Content Delivery Networks), Caching using built in and Plugins, Controlling which resources get served from your site and which get served from external servers and which versions get served. This includes being wary of the amount and type of plugins used, minifying and compressing some of your sites reosurces and lastly the server you host with. All of these elements work together to drastically improving your site’s performance, user experience and nowadays your site’s rankings based on Google’s new inclusion of major speed factors in their ranking system.

Implementing these enhancements help cut down on the cost of running high traffic sites as well.

5. Optimizing WordPress on the frontend

Byron Rode tackles the subject of performance from the front end side of things after the previous discussions centred around what can be done on the admin and server side. For those who are not able to spend the money needed to have dedicated servers or enhanced server side optimisations and are running on shared hosting there’s alot that can be done as to speed up your site’s load time as well.

Some suggested Plugins

• W3 Total Cache – Might cause problems when developing and caches are not cleared – old files showing
• WP Minify – Might not work with certain plugins
• Using Image Sprites to reduce the amount of loads

Discussing WordPress Transient API – WordPress way of caching Database Queries for serving cached queries later saving on reloading repeated queries.

Byrone makes no apologies for saying that he seriously dislikes plugins due to the various aspects of site performance they negatively affect.

3 Minute Pitches

One of the interesting features of this year’s WordCamp are the 3 minute elevator pitches delivered by some of the microsponsors.  The most interest of them so far for me was Blink Tower, who assist entrepreneurs in getting their messages out there by developing short video messages to help them articular and illustrate what they offer. Most of us could do with some improved articulation of what we do.

Other Pitches centred around raising funds for DARG, animal welfare organisation

a mobile testing platform and I forget some of the others.

Panel Discussion – Getting “Started Up”

A Group of 5 Tech Entrepreneurs Discuss how they Succeeded and how others could take their startup ideas forward.

As you can see I’m getting very tired and most likely won’t make it through the last of the presentations. In general it was a good day, some of the content was a little disappointing as compared to last year’s WordCamp. The networking was the best part of the event getting back in touch with some of the familiar faces in the community and meeting a few new ones.

MemeBurn has a writeup of the event to fill in some fo the gaps I’ve left and you can search #wcct on twitter for tweets form the event.

I Must Be getting Old

I was unable to see the entire event through to the end due in part, to some tight deadlines and lack of sleep over the last few weeks.

I’m super disappointed I missed Matt Cohen’s Presentation about Shifting the WordPress Mindset. See his slides below. From what I hear it was great and took the audience on a trip down memory lane from the early days through to where we currently are and into what lies ahead for WP.

My Recommendations:

Coming soon!

All in all it was a very well organised event, though I feel presentations may have not been relevant enough for everyone attending. Last Year’s split focus, publisher vs developer seemed a better configuration and I think this would be the best way to go going forward considering the split focus on the WP community. Those who attended seem to have benefitted in general, I couldn’t find a negative comment apart from one or 2 newbies being baffled by some of the tech talk.

Ashley Shaw & the Lightspeed team have done a fab job this year, thanks a ton again to them!

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A Much More User Friendly media popup

I’m specifically looking forward to a much more intuitive image editing interface which helps control thumbnail cropping and image sizing better for working with featured images in custom themes which require this.

WordPress 3.5 Is earmarked for release in Early December, so the year looks set for a fantastic ending in the WordPress department. New Year’s resolution my side – Blog Much Much More!

I Spotted this on WPCandy, a Site Dedicated to following WordPress developments quite closely. WPCandy is a great resources for Tips, reviews and other interesting news on WordPress.

The post WordPress Media Management Overhaul in 3.5 appeared first on nomad-one WordPress Web Designer.

The plugin allows for the creation of affiliate accounts where each affiliate user get’s their own link ID which they can use to promote your product or service. You can then use their built in widget to track leads through a contact widget on the referred page. It tracks clicks(hits) to the page and also referrals for those who complete the contact form.

I’ve got some pretty good results from just a few affiliates already who have sent me some healthy traffic to my course page and for each completed and paid signup I’m offering a 15% commission, which is quite a nice percentage for just sharing a link.

Become an affiliate and earn some cash

If you’d like to help us promote WP BootCamp sign up as an affiliate and we’ll send you your unique affiliate link. Click here to register.

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I’ve finally mustered up enough motivation to launch my own independent Public WordPress Course in Cape Town. I’ve been wanting to do this for ages since I’ve been teaching WordPress Development since 2008 privately, within companies and on behalf of Friends of Design Cape Town.

It a litte, ok maybe alot of prodding from Faye Elliot, one of the delegates who attended my WordCamp Cape Town Presentation last year. I have to say a big thank you to Faye as I was making up all kinds of excuses why now wasn’t the right time. It’s amazing what an enormous effort it can be to get a small little course up and running especially when you have to find an additional 4 or 5 hours in an already jam packed schedule.

Lot’s of Interest in the WordPress Course

I hosted a Free Introductory Presentation to the course this evening at my favourite Coffee Spot, Escape Caffe in Bree Street Cape Town. We has a few people attend, not massive turnout but everyone present registered to take the course so it’s starting off with a bang already.

We’ve secured a great venue at 200 on Main Claremont. Appropriately at the Executive Wellness Centre’s Gym Studio so I’ll be putting the WordPress students through their paces. There’ll be a few punching bags lying around when the code starts getting to your head.

A Quick Outline of Course Modules:

Venue

200 on Main Building, 198 Main Road, Claremont, Cape Town – (Executive Wellness Centre Studio)

Times

6pm – 9pm

You can tell your spouse you’re going to gym and you won’t be lying

For Full Details & Registration Visit the Course Info Page - http://www.the-colab.com/wordpress-course-survival-skills

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So i’ve been trying to clear out some of the books I haven’t been using in a while and I found a set of real gems from my Web, Strategy, Creativity, Productivity collection. Each of these books has played a major role in helping me get to grips with the range of subjects I need to keep myself informed on as a Web & Creative Professional.

These books cover a wide range of subjects from Coding & Coding Standards, to Productivity, Time Management, Marketing & Communications Strategy, Web Strategy, Usability, Creative Thinking. The information contained in these books should be enough to get any web novice up to speed with the principles and methods needed to dive straight into the web industry. They’re also a great resource or reference for anyone working in this industry or teaching/presenting on these topics.

1. The Open Brand: When Push Comes to Pull in a Web-Made World
2. Six Thinking Hats – EDWARD DE BONO
3. Lateral Thinking: A Textbook of Creativity – Edward De Bono
4. The 4-Hour Work Week and Timothy Ferriss
5. The Truth about Email Marketing – Jenkins
6. rework – 37 Signals
7. don’t make me think – Steve Krug – New Riders
8. building findable websites – New Riders
9. Introducing HTML5 – Lawson Sharp – New Riders
10. Designing for Web Standards – Second Edition – Jeffrey Zeldman
11. The Ultimate CSS Reference – Sitepoint
12. A Designer’s Research Manual – Jenn + Ken Visocky O’Grady
13. eMarketing eXellence – Chaffey Smith – Third Edition
14. Starting & Running a Successful Consultancy – How To Books
15. The Art & Science of CSS – Sitepoint
16. Logo Lounge 2 – Rockport

I’m planning on selling this entire stash to the highest bidder to make space for some new material.

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The Case of Kim “DotCom”, owner of MegaUploads may not be the best of examples seeing the guy was living a really lavish and unbecoming lifestyle off of the profits generated from his network. What is significant is that MegaUpload was one of the largest, accounting for almost 1% of US net traffic with a huge following.

So it comes as no surprise that an even more widespread and possibly mroe dangerous piece of legislation is being forced through not only in the US but internationally. One of the most concerning factors in this Saga is the timing of all of this, co-inciding with a wide range of other legal actions taken by governments to curtail civil liberties and to clamp down on the free spread of infomation which governments deem a threat. Wikipedia defines ACTA as -

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is a draft plurilateral agreement for the purpose of establishing international standards forintellectual property rights enforcement.

It will become mandatory for ISP’s to enforce the legislation or become liable for it’s contravention should their user’s be found guilty.

We’ve seen additional corrosion of privacy from most notably Google with it’s new unified Privacy Policy seen by many as a mere announcement of intent to spy and share personal information including communications, interests and inclinations of it’s users in a more comprehensive manner.

Twitters new censorship policy of taking down content on a country by country basis surfaces at exactly the same time. No doubt these are all linked, and the decisions by these major players have been informed by their consultation with the authorities who use these tools to track sentiment and clamp down on objectors.

After witnessing clamp downs on social media and spread of information connected to the Arab spring, and the stifling of the OWS movement in the US, these pieces of legislation no doubt have more than piracy as a target.

It’s up to us, citizens of the web to organise, speak out and strategize ways to keep our world alive, free and safe so we can continue to make our voices heard, and protect ourselves from the times to come.

Check out Electronics Frontier Foundation, for the latest info and action on net privacy, activism and related issues. Sign the Avaaz Anti ACTA petition - http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_save_the_internet/

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WordPress.com is purposely censored today in protest.

Wikipedia is about to Join the Blackout as well

To learn more about SOPA, The “Stop Online Piracy Act”, visit the wikipedia page dedicated to explaining the details - Stop Online Piracy Act. We have no doubt that anti-Piracy is being used as a guise to clampdown in the freedom of spreading information and on legitimate free speech. Personally I’m not concerned about  prevention of actual piracy as i support this in that stealing other people’s products is obviously wrong. I am more concerned of the hidden agendas and ripple effect of consequences which this piece of legislation attempts to establish.

Some of the big players opposing the Bill include Facebook, Google, Twitter, eBay, Yahoo!, Mozilla, Wikipedia, WordPress.

Check out what Mashable had to say about Why SOPA is Dangerous.

Join the protest - http://sopablackout.org/

A Wide range of WordPress Plugins exist to support the Anti-SOPA movement - http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=sopa Some are even going to the extent of laying the ground for establishing an alternative internet to circumvent censorship and governmental controls by working on a plan to launch an Internet in space – German Hacker Group Working on Space Internet

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First off the welcome message, and pointer tips, though not needed for my experience of WordPress would most definitely enhance the newbie’s experience. And the ability for developers to hook into this feature with their own tips and helpguides takes the ease of use of WordPress to another level.

The reductions of clicks in using the interface which include instant flyout menus and drag & drop uploader for media, as well as media detection during upload shows that the developers at WordPress are pushing further and further to make it the ultimate user experience.

Quoting Matt Mullenweg at one of his state of the Word addresses.

“So easy even a caveman can do it”

They’ve really put their actions behind this statement, integrating a number of help features including an enhanced help slideout menu with contextual tips and guides to make the user’s experience pleasurable.

You need look no further than the WordPress.org homepage to know that ease of use, and minimal distraction free content creation is a fundamental part of the direction they’re moving in.

WordPress does certainly keep us WP professionals on our toes though, especially so those developing training materials and guides, their regular UI updates means we need to re-create our materials regularly to reflect the changes.

I’m generally more trusting of the upgrades so I wildy go about upgrading this site specifically as soon as upgrades appear.

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One of the important aspects of the course is the Learning theme which I’ve labelled Training Wheels. It builds from a simple HTML template, and over the next few lessons will grow to contain all the major functions and templates required of a fully fledged theme. The Template will be fully commented to facilitate a slow transition into understanding the purpose of each WordPress function added to the HTML.

If you’ve got HTML skills and have been wanting to learn WordPress Theme development this is gonna be just the tutorial series you’ve been looking for. I personally struggled from the beginning with tuts that merely dump huge chunks of code on you and say, “Paste Here”. This is going to be a step by step guide.

I’m also working on setting up my offline WordPress Theme Development course located at wpbedouine.com.

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TheiPlex is situated in the newly developed Boulevard Complex in Woodstock just outside of the CBD in Cape Town. Woodstock has become somewhat of a buzz in the last few years with creative, tech and corporates moving out of the city centre.

A Business Idea much needed in “Silicon Cape”

I really love what TheiPlex have gone about setting up and blogged about something of this nature way back in 2007. That was just before I decided to go solo and what a roller coaster it’s been since then. I’ve never fully mastered the art of confining myself to my work space at home and to be honest I doubt I ever will, so having the chance to catch some quiet time in a clean, clear workspace was really refreshing.

I called them up in a frantic rush, with deadlines hanging over my head and anxiety boiling up from the need to get things done.

TheIplex has been designed to set an atmosphere conducive to creative work and innovation. You’ll see form the get go colorful backdrops, themed meeting rooms & clean workspaces.

The Reception Area

Jts outside the building you’ll find a nice little Vida Cafe, one of my favorite coffee shops in Cape Town, though they are a little pricy. The iPlex offers some pretty decent coffee themselves at quite a good price and you can give the reception/concierge team a buzz when you need some caffeine to keep the engines firing.

The Workspaces

I Grabbed a spot in the corner near the window and plugged in. Wifi on tap and coffee a few meters away got me in the mode to get some serious work done.

Later on after feeling a little more relaxed i decided to poke around a bit and check out some of the meeting Rooms. My favorite one was the war room, which comes with whiteboard style wall paint so you can brainstorm directly onto the wall surface, take some pics when you’re done, if I’m not mistaken they take snaps of your ideas for you as well. I was alone so would probably have been a bit strange to test it out on my own, really looking forward to the change to brainstorm with a team in a space like that.

The War room is fitted out with netting and camouflage hang in from the ceiling, color coded seating and some really great little army figures running about to get you into combat mode.

After a couple of days of driving into Woodstock I needed to take a break from driving, LOL. But the cool thing is it’s flexible so if you buy some hours you can choose when to make use of them.

Some other meetings rooms and pics form the rest of the space below. I’v been planning on running my WordPress theme Dev course here as well, it’s a great venue and caters for events as well with a largish events room.

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Let me know what you think of the presentation and if there’s any specific areas you feel I should fill in on the presentation site.

Also read my brief Interview with Lightspeed on the topic of WordPress training.

I will be conducting various WordPress training courses covering the very basics of WordPress Content & Site Management, Basic WordPress Theme Development and Intermediate Theme Development. For more info on this visit www.wpbedouine.com

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