WordCamp Vancouver 2013
I’m super excited to be once again organizing the annual WordCamp in Vancouver. WordCamp Vancouver 2013 will be on Saturday August 17th 2013. Tickets are on sale and our schedule is posted.
The full day event will feature three tracks and will cover topics of interest for WordPress users, designers, and developers of all levels from beginners to experts, and all those in between.Expect plenty of exciting topics from industry experts.
We have an amazing roster of more than 20 speakers this year. So grab your tickets and stay tuned!
If you’d like to get updates as my team and I make them available, or if you want to be reminded as these dates approach, please subscribe in the sidebar at http://2013.vancouver.wordcamp.org.
Follow us on Twitter as well: @wordcampyvr (hastag: #wcyvr)
I hope to see some of you there!
WordCamp Winnipeg
I am giving a presentation at WordCamp Winnipeg today. The presentation is pretty similar to the one I gave at WordCamp Victoria back in January; with a few small adjustments.
I’m showing power users and novice developers how to get started with plugin development. I think a lot of people don’t realize how easy it is to get started with plugin development or just how small and simple can be. It doesn’t require 100s of lines of code…
Many WordPress tutorials out there talk about copy this or that to your functions.php file in your theme. However, it’s just as easy to create your own functionality plugin; which makes for easier to maintain code in the future that isn’t theme dependant. I begin this talk with the basics of what a plugin is and how it’s structured. I then explain the hooks (actions and filters API), followed by a very simplistic demo. I then give some pro tips and talk about some of the most commonly used WordPress APIs in plugins, as well as promote coding standards. A second more in-depth demo is then presented. Finally, I discuss security in plugins and share some resources for developers and users to further learn from.
Here are the slides from the presentation, which you can also get as a PDF.
WordCamp Victoria: Plugin Development 101
Today I’m giving a presentation at WordCamp Victoria 2013 where I’m showing power users and novice developers how to get started with plugin development. I think a lot of people don’t realize how easy it is to get started with plugin development or just how small and simple can be. It doesn’t require 100s of lines of code…
Many WordPress tutorials out there talk about copy this or that to your functions.php file in your theme. However, it’s just as easy to create your own functionality plugin; which makes for easier to maintain code in the future that isn’t theme dependant. I begin this talk with the basics of what a plugin is and how it’s structured. I then explain the hooks (actions and filters API), followed by a very simplistic demo. I then give some pro tips and talk about some of the most commonly used WordPress APIs in plugins, as well as promote coding standards. A second more in-depth demo is then presented. Finally, I discuss security in plugins and share some resources for developers and users to further learn from.
Here are the slides from the presentation:
Let me know if you have any questions, using the comments below. And if you’re at WordCamp Victoria while you view this, come say hi!
Proposed talk for WordCamp Victoria 2013
I am proposing a talk for WordCamp Victoria which is coming up in January 2013. The session I’d like to do is a bit more beginner than I’ve done in the past; but should fit in well with the WordPress community in Victoria. Below is my proposed session.
Plugin development 101. I’ll show beginning developers and power users how easy it is to get started with WordPress plugin development. Many WordPress tutorials out there talk about copy this or that to your functions.php file in your theme. However, it’s just as easy to create your own functionality plugin; which makes for easier to maintain code in the future that isn’t theme dependant. I’ll begin with the basics of what a plugin is and how it’s structured. I’ll explain the hooks (actions and filters API) and talk about some of the most commonly used WordPress APIs in plugins. Finally, I’ll share some resources for developers and users to further learn from. A very basic understanding of what PHP is and how it works is recommended for attendees of this session.
Let me know if you have any further ideas on what I could talk about in Victoria, or if you have any questions, using the comments below. I’m looking forward to the event!
WordCamp & BuddyCamp Vancouver 2012
I’m excited to be on of the co-organizers of two upcoming events this fall. WordCamp Vancouver will be on October 13th; immediately followed by BuddyCamp (an event all about BuddyPress) on October 14th, which will also have a hack day on October 15th.
We’re now looking for both speakers and sponsors for both events. On the sponsorship side, you can sponsor either or both events (we have special packages if you want to sponsor both). We’re also looking for in-kind sponsorships if you have something to offer that might be useful or needed for our attendees day-of.
If you’re interested in speaking or sponsoring either or both events, please get in touch via the respective sites, 2012.vancouver.wordcamp.org and 2012.vancouver.buddypress.org.
We’ll be opening up ticket sales up soon as well, so keep an eye out for those. I bet they’ll go quick as we’re planning a great event 🙂
WordCamp Montreal 2012
Today I’m giving a talk about how to become a better WordPress developer at WordCamp Montreal. It’s (hopefully) a resourceful talk for developers of all levels (form beginner to advanced devs). Here are the slides that go along with the presentation. Also available as a PDF and on slideshare.
Theme Weekend recap
This weekend was the first ever Vancouver WordPress Theme Weekend. I was happy and excited to be part of the organizing team along with Morten Rand-Hendriksen, Angela Chich and Pauline Lai. We had a total of 20 attendees, divided into 4 teams of 5.
On Saturday morning, we divided up the teams and then brainstormed some ideas. The teams had just under an hour to decide on theme ideas. Each team ended up picking a niche they wanted to gear their themes towards. The four niches were: recipes, restaurants, fine art artists and film festivals. It then took most of day 1 for ideas, wireframes and designs to get fully fleshed out. Coding began at the end of day 1 for most teams.
Working on UI and designs
Throughout day 1 we gave themers several opportunities to present their progress, and ask questions & feedback from other attendees. On day 2, we minimized interruptions and let everyone work hard on their themes… writing html, css and php.
Working hard on building a theme
In addition to the organizers, we had 3 floaters, Christine Rondeau, Catherine Winters and Andrew Ozz who helped teams with any questions or issues they encountered; mainly technical questions but essentially anything that came up.
On saturday morning, I gave a quick Github 101 presentation. The presentation was well received but unfortunately the whole concept of version control was over the head of most attendees who were either advanced users or novice developers. Everyone was eager to learn but in the end encouraging everyone to use Github was more of a hassle than it was worth. We ended up dropping the idea and everyone was free to work with the files whatever which way they pleased.
Github 101 presentation
Overall, the weekend was a success. None of the teams 100% completed their theme but they did get very close. After all, most people wouldn’t be able to build a fully-fledged theme in 2 days, yet they did get a whole lot done in just about 15 hours of work. Regardless, everyone learned something and more importantly, we, as the Vancouver WordPress community got together, got to know each other better and collaborated together. That’s an experience that I think truly represents what WordPress is about and I hope to see more WordPress local groups organize and encourage this kind of hackaton-style activities.
I’d like to give huge thanks to the WordPress foundation for helping us with costs (mainly feeding everyone both days), the Network Hub for giving us the space (and giving us beer at the end of day 2!) and the Pink & Yellow NFP Society for helping organize and take care of the finances for the event.
You can find the finalized code for the themes on Github, more photos (all photos by Morten) from the event on Flickr, and tweets from the event at #ThemeWeekend.
WordCamp San Diego 2012
I’m happy & proud to get the opportunity to speak at WordCamp San Diego on March 24th 2012. The event sold out in a mere 12 hours, so I can’t even tell you to come check it out, unless you already have a ticket! But, the weekend should be a huge blast 🙂
The talk I am giving is about using the version control system Git; best practices, case studies and various workflows when using it with WordPress. In the spirit of open-source and of git, I am doing a bit of an experiment with it. The whole talk is getting prepared on GitHub. That means both the outline and the slides are available there as I prepare them. The idea is that you (everyone/anyone) will collaborate by asking questions you want answered ahead of time, bringing suggestions, corrections and amendments along the way.
Here’s how you can collaborate:
- Take a look at the github repository
- Take a look at the
work-in-progresscompleted slides — these were continuously updated/rebuilt each time I updated them, and since they are just an HTML page, you can revisit them anytime you want. - Open an issue on github for any issues, questions, comments, recommendations, etc…
- Specifically, I want to know what kind of experience you’ve had with Git (versioning plugins, themes, private client sites, working with core, etc.), what challenges you’ve faced (and how did you overcome them), what workflows do you have, what questions using git do you have, etc.
- Fork the repository and submit a pull request if you want a specific change incorporated
- If you’re uncomfortable using git/github, feel free to comment on this post or send me an email at info@jkudish.com (or via the contact form on this site) instead
That’s the idea, no idea if it will work or not. I think the presentation can be that much better with some feedback from the community, but if not, I promise not to disappoint you (too much) either way.
Let me know your thoughts!
WordCamp Victoria
UPDATE: The talk wasn’t accepted by the organizers of the event.
I’m proposing a talk for WordCamp Victoria 2012, “Bending WordPress to your exact needs” is what we’ll call it for now. In the spirit of open source, I’d like to leave the topic somewhat up to you, the attendees (or members of the WordPress community as a whole – even if you’re not attending).
I’m leaning towards a catch-all topic of “how to make all areas of your website editable”. I build all my sites with the end-goal of my clients being able to manage all aspects of their website, not just blog posts and pages. I’d love to show you how I do that. This talk could lean one of many ways. I could talk about widgets, custom content types (I don’t like calling them custom post types), custom taxonomies, option pages, security concerns and clients, making the admin more user-friendly, etc… This is where you come in, just let me know what topics you think I should cover.
So, please pitch in. Comment below if you have any suggestions for topics/areas I should incorporate (even if isn’t anything I’ve mentioned above), or email me directly at info@jkudish.com.
What qualifies me to talk:
I’m a PHP & WordPress developer. As an independent freelancer, I use and live WordPress daily for 99% of my client work. I am an active member of the open-source WordPress community. I participate in the WordPress forums, the WordPress trac, and build free plugins. I talked at WordCamp Montreal in summer 2011, and led a round-table discussion at WordCamp Portland in fall 2011. I’m looking forward to sharing with you at WordCamp Victoria. Read up about what I do with WordPress »
Joey Kudish 