2011 content ideas

Post session ideas for WordCamp Portsmouth UK 2011 below.

• Precede names with flags to indicate:
  • Idea - My idea and looking for speakers.
  • Speaker - Will lead the session (if jointly post all names).
• Sessions are normally 50 minutes long. In rooms 2 and 3, as an option, shorter 30 minutes sessions can take place.
• Tag ideas with type and level
• To lead a session you must have a ticket for the event and, obviously, be present for the relevant session.
• The inclusion of any topic at the event will be confirmed by listing in the running order.
• To avoid breaking links do not edit the previously posted h2 session headings on this page.
• Always add new ideas at the end.

WordHack

Teams build useful and WordPressy plugins etc and demonstrate the results to all attendees.

If you're interested in taking part in this year's WordHack add your name and project idea.

Idea: Tony Scott

Tags: developer, intermediate, advanced

WordPress in Education - A Case Study Example

Currently thinking about presenting how I have integrated the use of WordPress on an Education website used by a number of students in a school. A history of how the website developed and grew from a static HTML site to a complex WordPress content management system using WordPress as the CMS. Also intend to touch a little about how the site has been integrated with Windows 2008 Server and how users are authenticated by their network login. The content really depends on how far I get with the site over the coming year.

Idea: Mark WIlkinson @equalmark

Tags: developer, Intermediate, Designer

How to structure your site

Talking about the ways to work out which Wordpress features you'd use to structure your site, and best represent your business/ideas on the site. It would cover things like:

• When to use categories, or tags, or custom taxonomies
• Posts vs pages vs custom post types
• Content vs widgets vs secondary loops
• Plugins that can help with the above

I'd do it as a case-study of some existing sites I've built showing how I used the flexibility WP has to build to meet the "business-need".

Idea: Lee Willis @leewillis77

Tags: Beginner, Intermediate

Installing WordPress locally on your Mac (or PC)

A session aimed at non-technical people who may or may not already have a live installation of WordPress on a web server at a hosting company, but would like to run a local server on their desktop/laptop to practice on, develop on, test on, and/or use to check that their backups are fully restorable.

There won't be time to cover this for Mac, windows and linux, and there are differences in the process for each OS, but I would focus on one OS and make documentation with screenshots available for OSX & Windows and possibly Ubuntu.

Depending on the time available I would aim to cover:

• Why you might want a local installation of WordPress
• installation of required server software: adding MySQL to the default Apache & PHP in OSX (or possibly installing MAMP, WAMP or XAMPP)
• Enabling and Setting up virtual hosts in apache to enable multiple sites to be hosted locally
• Editing the local hosts file and if a virtual PC (parallels etc) is used on Mac for testing IE, editing the hosts file on the virtual PC
• Set up local MySQL databases for WP using PhpMyAdmin
• Install WordPress locally
• Clone your live WordPress site to a local version & vice-versa

The aim would be to present this visually in as simple a manner as possible. Any terms such as 'virtual host' and 'hosts file' will be explained so that people understand why each step is necessary and how to perform it even if they have no prior knowledge.

Everything covered in the presentation would be made available as a post on my blog and also as a printable step-by-step pdf with screenshots, including links to the (free) software needed.

Idea: Michael Atkins, Speaker: Michael Atkins @cubecolour

Tags: beginner, server, database, hosting, local, PC, Mac

Marketing Your Website or Blog - SEO & Social Media

Talk and discussion on how to get visitors to your website and blog:

• Get customers to your blog/website (earn revenue, grow your business or profile and get more publicity)
• Wordpress and Google
• Top plugins for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)
• Top plugins for Social Networking/Media
• How to encourage people to share info/pages on your blog/website
• Structuring your pages and posts for Google (SEO)
• Integrating your blog with Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
• Case studies
• Crowd sourcing other ideas and tips

Idea: Mark Adams

Tags: Beginner, Intermediate, Marketing, SEO, Social Networking

Advanced SEO with Wordpress

Advanced SEO architecture and insight into blackhat link building with Wordpress:

• How to really get the best out of All In One SEO Pack
• Internal linking architecture
• Related links plugins to improve internal page rank flow
• How to use 'No Follow' wisely
• Robots.txt blocking off those messy parts of Wordpress
• Interesting SEO themes
• Cutting down on bulky source code crawlers don't like
• Blackhat:
  • Page cloaking
  • Link cloaking plugins
  • Auto generated content
  • Wordpress sites for link harvesting
  • Hosting multiple sites on different IP's

Idea: Nick Garner

Tags: Advanced, Marketing, SEO

Beyond the 5-minute install

A guide to the things you should or might do as a matter of course when installing WordPress. I'm interested for experts to come along and share their standard additions to the 5-minute install, as well as for beginners to come along and learn how to install WordPress well.

• Best security practices
• Guides to wp-config.php, .htaccess, robots.txt
• Must-have admin plugins

Any other ideas, things to cover?

Speaker: Steve Taylor

Tags: Beginner, Intermediate, Installation, Security

BuddyPress: What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been

• A "state of the (BuddyPress) union"
• What's new in the project in since 2010

Speaker: Paul Gibbs

Tags: Beginner, BuddyPress

Create a unique theme in just 1 hour!

• A whirlwind guide on how to create a complete custom theme design for your site using the Wonderflux theme framework in 1 hour!

Speaker: Jonny Allbut

Tags: Intermediate, Design, CSS, Themes, Wonderflux

Site doctors: Let the experts help you!

• Does your site feel off-colour? We can help! An active group discussion on how to improve your site including some great tips and tricks for any WordPress user, designer or developer.

• A call for sites to be submitted will be made nearer the conference - don't be scared, we are here to give you constructive feedback to improve your site!

Speaker: Creative/CSS/WordPress Structure: Jonny Allbut (Jonnya)

Speaker: Plugins: Kimb!!

Speaker: SEO/Social/Conversion Optimisation: Nick Garner

Speaker: WordPress/PHP Coding - Templates/Plugins: Jordan Hatch

Tags: Beginner, Intermediate, CSS, Themes, Plugins

WordPress Beginners Hands-on Workshop

A beginners hands-on workshop, probably need to be 'bring your own lap top with wifi and a modern browser'. I can set up a fixed number of virgin WP installs on a server, to play with.

• A hands-on Workshop for WordPress beginners: -- Covering:
  • What is WordPress?
  • A walk around the admin interface - basic settings
  • Posts, Pages, categories and tags
  • Media upload, featured image
  • Introduction to themes, adding widgets
  • What next with WordPress

Speaker: Mike Little. May need an 'assistant' to help people out who might get stuck.

Tags: Beginner, WordPress, hands-on

Mike, I'd be happy to assist with this if you do need an assistant: Michael Atkins

OpenAid - What happened after WordHack

To continue the story (if indeed there is a continuation!).

Speakers: John Adams Shaun Hare (Shaun, please volunteer!)

Tags: developer, advanced, social activism

WordPress in the Enterprise

A review of some case studies of WordPress being used within larger organisations. Suggest 3 or 4 case studies to compare or contrast, of approx 5-10 mins each.

• What was the objective
• What was achieved
• Why WordPress?
• What were the challenges - and how were they addressed
• What lessons did you learn from doing this?

Leader: John Adams - please volunteer if you would like to share your story.

Tags: developer, intermediate, advanced, enterprise

Beginning WordPress Plugin Development

A session to introduce plugin development - how to create your plugin, hooks/filters, and maybe making a simple plugin for a widget or another idea (open for suggestions).

Speaker: Jordan Hatch

Tags: beginner, plugins, widgets, development

Legacy to Latest

A number of small top-down case studies concerned with WordPress upgrades, bringing plugins up to date with the latest WordPress features and transforming legacy custom tables into latest custom posts.

Speaker: Kieran O'Shea

Tags: plugins, widgets, developer, intermediate, advanced

Vlogging with WordPress

I am personally starting a weekly WordPress video blog hopefully by the time WordCamp 2011 comes round I will have plenty of experience and tips to share with the attendees.

• Installing Plugins for a Video Blog
• Youtube, Vimeo etc?
• Interactive episodes e.g. video responses

Speaker Michael Cromarty

Tags: Video Blogging, Plugins, Social Networking

The WordPress Intranet

This is a project I'm interested in - creating a core for a Wordpress intranet to compete with Sharepoint etc.

Early days, though - thoughts from others appreciated

Leader Jon Eland

Tags: Video Blogging, Plugins, Social Networking

Customising WordPress

• Custom fields
• Custom post types
• More customisations

This session will show some code. For the beginner/intermediate developer

Speaker: Johan Dahlstrom

Tags: Beginner, Intermediate, Developer

WOW Plugins 2011

A follow-up to my popular presentation from last years event.

Speaker: Michael Kimb Jones

Tags: beginner, pro, plugins

How to make money from an agency

A session on the economics and simple rules for running an creative business where there is more than one of you.

Speaker: Norman Wilson

WordPress and Mobile

This session would cover how to make your WordPress site mobile-friendly, using the most appropriate means for your site. I'm not an expert on this as yet but am doing some fairly intensive mobile development work for clients which will boost my learning curve before July! If anyone else is an expert and would like to lead this or lead it with me, please shout.

This session would cover:

• Why go mobile?
• Things to consider when developing a mobile site
• Deciding whether to use a plugin or your own theme/styling
• Mobile plugins - a roundup of the popular ones and what they do best
• Recognising mobile devices - the different methods
• Mobile themes - using, tweaking, developing
• Using CSS for different types of mobile - styling for handheld devices and small screens

This session will show some code (mainly CSS). For the intermediate/pro developer.

Speaker: Rachel McCollin

Tags: Intermediate, Pro, Developer

Genius Bar

A range of WordPress experts will be available to advice attendees on a one-to-one basis.

Idea Tony Scott

Tags: Beginner, Intermediate, Developer

Grid

Any blank sessions at the beginning of the WordCamp will be filled using a BarCamp style grid.

Idea: Tony Scott

Tags: Meta

Lessons Learned from running your own Theme Marketplace

A session aimed towards the ups and downs of running your own WordPress Theme Marketplace, plus what I've learned from the experience that is continually growing.

• Brief Introduction: Theme Force & Me
• Landscape of "Premium" Theme Environment as it is Today
• Lessons Learned: Managing your Time (Theme Building vs. Selling)
• Lessons Learned: Pricing & Packages
• Lessons Learned: Support & Beyond
• Q&A

Idea: Noel Tock

Tags: Theme, Business, E-Commerce

Our Biggest Mistakes

Too many conference talks are about the successes of the speaker or the people around him or her. Well, that's great, except it's actually pretty hard to learn from success. After all, maybe for every one person who took the speakers approach and succeeded another nine failed - but we don't have that information. But imagine if it is - a 90% failure rate isn't very attractive, yet could be what you face if you do exactly what the speaker does.

So I'm proposing a presentation on the failures of Interconnect IT over the past five years or so. Projects that went awry, business relationships that didn't work out well, and the things we could have done better. Had we not started on such a sound financial footing we'd have gone bust by around late 2008 or early 2009. I'll tell you why. I may even explain a little about how we got out of that mess.

• Intro: How to turn a modest pile of cash, into a smaller one.
• Identifying your market - and where you can go wrong.
• The Joy of Selling.
• Don't give away your skills for free or at a loss.
• How to price an intangible service.
• The UK tech problem.
• Q&A

Idea: Interconnect IT - David Coveney

Tags: Business, WordPress, Marketing, Selling, Management

Open discussion

Open discussion on the weekend and the next event. Speaker: Tony Scott

WordPress, JavaScript and AJAX

An introduction to existing and future APIs, and how they can/should be used by plugins to build more intuitive interfaces.

Speaker: ??

Idea: --Ear1grey 10:40, 8 February 2011 (UTC)

Choosing the BEST Theme for your site

With what seems to be an infinite amount of themes on the free and premium markets how do you choose one that's right for your needs?

In this session I will break down 3 popular theme options that are available to anyone choosing WordPress to power their website:

• 1. Build your own - Hire a professional or learn the required skills.
• 2. Modify an existing theme - Re-work/hack a free or premium theme.
• 3. Out-of-the-box dynamic theme system - Use an advanced package such as Thesis, PageLines or the WooFramework powered themes to achieve a customised outcome.

Idea: Kimb Jones

Tags: themes, business, design, websites

Xtreme One - The new powerful and flexible WordPress Framework

We like to introduce the new WordPress Framework Xtreme One. How you can create complete different layouts in minutes! Using the powerful widgets which are included in the framework and much more. Xtreme One is not yet another WordPress Framework! You can find more information at http://xtreme-theme.com

Speaker: Alex and Micha of http://wpengineer.com

Tags: Themes, Framework, Premium, Customization, Design, Websites, WordPress, Beginner, Intermediate, Developer, Webdesigner, CSS

You've Installed BuddyPress, What Now?

Learn how to set up and start using BuddyPress. We'll share our experiences of how to use BuddyPress to build a community, and our favourite plugins and themes.

Speakers (joint session): Paul Gibbs, @hnla & @karmatosed Tags: beginners, BuddyPress