We really need to get everyone participating, so if you haven’t presented anything yet, this means you should strongly consider stepping up.  It’s not hard, we’re a very friendly audience, and a 10 minute talk is a great place to begin if you’ve never spoken to a group before.  One benefit of this approach (dividing a topic into subunits) is that you don’t need to be an expert, you just need to present one idea that you use to make your site a little faster.  If you don’t have one, you can look on the web and learn one, and then show it to us.

An example topic is the one I plan to present, namely, how to prepare images for use in a post/page.  Easy/peasy.

If you’d like to present your tip, please leave a comment and claim your topic.  There’s no need to give any detail; save that for the meeting.  Unclaimed topics can be volunteered at the meeting, but it’s risky, since 2 or 3 of you might want to do the same one.

I hope you like this idea, and I look forward to seeing you all at CDB’s Southside on Wednesday January 12th at 7:00 PM.

Shopp is a commercial (starting at $55) plugin, but it is extremely well reviewed and is quite inexpensive.  The biggest free alternative is WP eCommerce.

The group had a huge number of questions, appropriate for such an interesting and complex subject matter.  Andrew answered them with clarity and detail, and I think everyone left with all their questions answered to their satisfaction.

At the last meet-up we tried an experiment in which we were going to pair up experienced developers/users with those that wanted to learn more about a particular subject. Two major topics seemed to dominate the requests – HTML to WordPress theme and e-commerce. I volunteered to work with a couple of front end designers to put together a talk for November on the subject of HTML to WordPress theme, with the goal of taking an actual HTML page and converting it into a WP theme. Certainly an exhausting topic that couldn’t be covered completely in one meet-up, however I believe we can show exactly how working HTML can be transformed into a basic theme. I believe these principals will not only help developers looking to explore working with WordPress for client work, but help users and hobbyists better understand how WordPress themes work. As usual, we will have time afterwords for questions and answers.

As for the topic of e-commerce, the very talented WordPress designer and developer Andrew Norcross has volunteered to discuss the basics of how he’s used WordPress plugins to extend functionality and provide e-commerce solutions right within a WordPress site. This will be for the December meeting. After the November meeting, we will have more on Andrew and his presentation.

In the meantime, RSVP for the meet-up and spread the word.

And remember, feel free to use the comments to ask questions, volunteer, offer suggestions. This meet up is all about the members.

Central Florida was lucky enough to have WordCamp Orlando in December of 2009, however there has been no word of a follow up event. Enter Dan Denney. The man behind Front End Conference started whispers of wanting to help organize an event for the Tampa Bay area earlier this year. Finally, after some encouraging signs, he has gone public with his plans. But he needs the Tampa Bay WordPress communities help. He is trying to get the attention of the WordPress Foundation and get their blessing to hold an “official” WordCamp.

Visit his blog for more details and discover how you can help get the word out that Tampa wants a WordCamp. Not only can you help show the greater community that we have a thriving WordPress community here in the Tampa Bay area, you can win a great prize.

Stay tuned for more news on the upcoming Tampa Bay WordPress User Group meetups for November and December.

Much like the genius bars at WordCamps, it is in this spirit that I suggested for the next Tampa Bay WordPress Users Group that we split into small groups led by a more experienced WordPress user to work with and help the less experienced users with their questions in a hands on manner. Not only do I think this will help build closer relations within the Tampa Bay community, it is exactly this spirit that makes WordPress great.

So with that said, the first order of business is for the novice users to throw out some topics they are interested in learning more about, then those with experience in those areas volunteer to lead a group. That is also the beauty of such software, one not be an expert in all areas to be able to share knowledge within the community. There might be 3 or 4 people who don’t really understand how to fully use the built in media features (upload images, insert into posts, crop, etc), that you fully grasp. Likewise, you might not know the first thing about CSS or theming, but you’ve written a few plugins, for which some PHP developers are looking for the basics on how to get started writing their own WordPress plugins. I imagine this will be a very fluid discussion. We may find more than one group on a particular subject, or you may find yourself moving from one group to the other. I envision it being a bit of a mini Bar Camp in that sense. No set presentation, simply being familiar with an area and fielding questions and having a laptop at hand to give examples.

For those who volunteer to lead a small group, I might suggest having a local WordPress installation (I suggest this as I’m not sure how well the wireless network at CDB’s will handle a lot of connections) or test install somewhere to use. If anyone needs any help with that, just let me know.

For those just getting started, or curious to learn more about a particular element of WordPress, don’t be afraid to ask the most basic questions. We all started somewhere. That’s what this is all about.

I also think this will be a good exercise in finding out what subjects people are most interested in, so we can plan future presentations to expound on these areas. But most of all, it should be about building a strong, supportive local community of WordPress users and developers.

Please use the comment section to make your suggestions or volunteer for leading a group. Don’t forget to RSVP for the Meetup, as space is limited. I have a feeling if this proves popular, it’s something that will be revisited in the future, so even if you don’t think you can make it, please throw out your questions for a topic you would like to see covered.

Flickr Image (CC) Randy Stewart, blog.stewtopia.com

Mark was also very generous and brought along 3 excellent WordPress books (WordPress Bible x 2 and Professional WordPress x 1) which he gave away.  He did this last month too, with a copy of the WordPress Bible.  I have both of these books and they are terrific.  He made several people very happy indeed.

I suggested we work to improve the theme for this blog, which I know needs lots of aesthetic help and can benefit as well from some feature enhancement and technical improvements.  I asked for volunteers who would be willing to work as a team to either create a new theme or modify the existing one (their choice) and several people expressed interest.  Jim Wordes has agreed to be the project manager.  If you have suggestions you can leave them as comments to this post.  If you’d like to work with Jim on this, or 1st group effort, you can leave him a message via our Meetup site once he creates his account.

Jim Wordes also volunteered to participate in our site review process.  He showed some Photoshop mock-ups of a site he’s working on for a client, advised us that he was looking for feedback on how best to structure the site and how to manage a rotating photos area that would link to various items the client had for sale.  Jim got lots of great feedback and has lots to ponder as he moves forward on his project.

Michael Bishop made a suggestion that we might look into doing Mentor/Student sessions.  Those looking for answers to problems would post comments to my next post (dedicated to this subject) on the topics they’re interested in learning about, and the more advanced and expert users could sign up to be the mentor on subjects they were knowledgeable about.  I love this idea, as did a number of members, so we decided to try it on for size next month.  More later.

All in all, I think it was our best meeting yet, though some thought the topic was a little over their heads.  That will occasionally happen, but newbies will grow to become more sophisticated users, and even if they don’t always understand everything about a presentation, it exposes them to things about WordPress they probably had no idea were even there, widening their horizons and prompting more investigation on their part.

Thanks Mark for the great presentation, Jim for your double volunteering, and Michael for the Mentor/Student idea.

Mark Jaquith

We’re very lucky this month to have Mark Jaquith give a presentation on Custom Post Types.  As one of the 5 Lead Developers of WordPress, Mark is one of the most knowledgeable people worldwide about WP, so if anyone can be called an expert, he can. In addition to his voluminous and steady contributions to the core product, Mark has 23 plugins in the WP plugin repository. He’s been a featured speaker at a number of WordCamp events, most recently at Savannah, GA where he spoke on July 13, 2010, about “Building Your First Plugin”.

Custom Post Types are a new way in WordPress to have a type of post which has standardized extra features when compared to regular posts.  A commonly used example is on a Real Estate site, where a custom post type for “Homes for Sale” would include a number of special fields, like number of bedrooms and bathrooms, square footage, price, etc.  Of course, you can do these things in a regular post, too, but if you have a Custom Post Type, there’ll be an option in the admin menu for it, and when you (or a less technical author on your blog) select to add a New House for Sale rather than New Post, all the special fields will be included, and the data can be entered easily by a non-technical user.

This is not one of the easier features of WordPress to implement, so this presentation will be a little more technical than others we’ve given.  But not to worry; if anyone can make this clear, it’s Mark.

If you’d like to know a little more about Mark, you can visit his WordPress Profile page, his blog: Mark on WordPress, or his WP Consultancy: Covered Web Services

Long Live Gravatars!

The biggest problem with avatars used to be that you had to upload one to every site where it would be needed, a royal PITA if you use the web very much. But you do want your avatar to appear in the many places you visit, so you will be remembered much more strongly and establish a better online identity. Plus, when others have avatars and you don’t, you look a little behind the times.

Gravatar, an enhancement to avatar, is a way to use one avatar in many places, without having to set them all up separately. The name means Globally Recognized AVATAR, and you can get a Gravatar at garvatar.com.

It’s easy to do. When you register you upload an image and associate it with an email address. Wherever you post a comment and use that email address, your Gravatar will automatically be used if that site supports them. You can have more than one email address and each one can have it’s own image or they can all share the same image, or any combination in between.

Gravatars are used on untold numbers of websites, and gravatar.com, as of the writing of this post, is serving up 29,015 per second. And that number understates the usage, because bigger sites are running plugins that let them cache the avatars used on their sites.

So go get yourself a Gravatar; it’s free, it’s easy, and it enhances your image.

I’d put up a poll, but the one I put up last week asking for feedback on presentation topics for meetings has generated only 3 votes, including mine, so I’ll just post about this and hope to get a conversation going in the comments that we can continue at the next meeting.  Some of these ideas are only half baked and some may be just plain dumb, but you can let us all know via the comments.  But don’t just comment about my few ideas, add a few of your own to the mix.  Yours may be just the one to raise our excitement and interest and kick the group up a notch.

Ideas I’ve had for the site include the following

• WordPress news
• Articles /tutorials on how to do things in WP
• Guest posts from other WP groups on things they’ve done
• Events calendar with RSVP and email management to help us leave Meetup
• Listing of members who consult or offer design/development services
• Jobs listing, where members can solicit bids from other members for work they have
• Videos of previous presentations (if someone wants to create them)
• Member reviews of books, videos, plugins, themes, hosting or anything else WP related

This next list is of things that are of a bigger scale, and involve things we might consider doing as a group. We’re not yet big enough to do some of them, but I believe we’ll be growing quickly, and an intent to be a serious organization that does interesting work, will help attract more people.

• We could help out one of our members to improve their site, conducting it as a tutorial the whole time. We could have several different members take on one or more different rolls (architect, designer, themer, security expert, SEO consultant, etc) and lead the project for a period of time to focus on their specialty.
• We could develop or enhance a site for a non-profit. Much like the one above for a member (which we might want to do first to get our feet wet) this would involve a small team of people working together to solve a client’s problems. Members who don’t feel they are skillful enough to participate as contributors could watch and learn, and perhaps buy lunch and refreshments. The Lee & Collier County WordPress Meetup Group is doing something like this.
• We could teach kids to use WP. I was actually approached on this one by Jorge Vera, technology support manager for Boys and Girls Clubs of Tampa Bay. He supports the PCs that the clubs make available to the kids, and thought it would be great if we could help these kids get on the web.
• Hold a contest, like a miniature version of Full Code Press, where teams compete to make the best site for a non-profit in one 24 hour period. We could do it internally, with 2 teams composed of our members, or form a team and challenge another WP user group.
• Hold a WordCamp

Again, feedback is actively being sought, so don’t hesitate to let us know what you think, and add to the list if you have ideas of your own (or like me, just borrowed from others).

Which topics would you like to see presentations on in the upcoming monthly meetings? In each poll, Vote for 5 of your favorites. Then, write in your suggestions for additional topics in the comments.

Long Presentations:

Short Presentations: