OKC WordPress User’s Group Meeting – Oct 2009

By Wesley Fryer On October 26, 2009 · · Add Comment

These are my notes from the Oklahoma City WordPress User’s Group Meeting on 26 October 2009. MY THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS, EVERYTHING ELSE IS NOTES TAKEN DURING THE SESSION.

In attendance tonight.

David North (user group organizer)

Burt Bones
burtbone.com
– builds WordPress sites for other people

Chris Jean
– chrisjean.com
– does coding for iThemes (not design)

Adam White White
– Works at Mainstreet Open, builds WordPress sites

JC Riley
– primarily does search engine marketing
– afhmarketing.com
– jcriley.com
– started to learn WordPress 4-5 months ago when I needed to get websites up quickly for clients

Tim Priebie
– owns T&S Web Design
– we install WordPress on about 95% to 100% of our new clients
– great at having employees do lots with WordPress
– would like employees to think I’m up to spee

Shawn Sanders
– T&S Web designer
– computer science major here at OC
– in an internship now
– skills: Google and using WordPress Codex

Adam
– does lots of works with designers who aren’t into coding

Danny Smith
– most of career in Unix system management
– have setup some blogs internally, intranet-only

Lynn Dye
– extremevirtualsupport.com
– blog there too, every week for 2.5 years
– use WordPress for

Noah Penley
– like taking things apart, figuring out how things tick
– want people I work with to have confidence in

Tom Macavoy
– finance and real estate person
– had heard about WordPress from a California

Cory Miller
– iThemes

Remember to set your WordPress blog to be ready for Daylight Savings Time: Nov 1, 2009!

I shared a presentation about PodPress and podcasting for tonight’s session, but unfortunately I forgot to record it! I used the links from my “WordPress Saves Lives – Learn How” workshop to share the links I discussed. I also referenced my recent post, “How I create and publish podcasts.” This workshop wiki link is also available (as of tonight) from my Contxts business card.

Now hearing from Adam White. Adam is nxil on Twitter, and his website is www.nxil.com
– Adam’s topic is using WordPress for integration in creating Facebook Apps
– several years ago he wanted to setup a team blog, and started Fickled News

use “registration plus WordPress plugin” to use a registration code for your website

TDO mini forms plugin: lets you setup forms that go into your site as an unpublished post
– Adam uses this for Facebook integration
– can also let people submit images for a post
– part of the TDO mini form plugin is the “form hacker” area
– example Adam uses

Join the developer community on facebook.com, you get access to the Facebook API
– you get to find out the facebook ID number of a user
– can then take that information

TDO lets you have an automated email

Facebook applications can run any “canvas” which in this case is a PHP page from WordPress
– www.fickled.com/facebook/
– I use a hidden field in the form that passes me their Facebook ID
– have created code so people’s Facebook profile page can display

Next app Adam wants to write: a print-screen button that shows you what others can tell about you on Facebook

Developing within an application like Facebook is SO powerful because people have a perception of trust once they are inside facebook, they don’t realize how much information is transparent to others when they are in the application and what info others can pull about them

THIS IS A GREAT IDEA TO UTILIZE FACEBOOK TO HELP MAKE IT EASIER FOR FOLKS TO SUBMIT CONTENT. MUCH EASIER THAN HAVING PEOPLE SETUP THEIR OWN LOGIN AUTHENTICATION

Adam’s company, Mainstreet, is doing custom Facebook pages for organizations and businesses
– can build nice, dynamic pages on your Facebook page

Once you get more than 10 people using a Facebook app, you can add it from the Facebook app directory
– had figured out earlier that you could use iFrame tags to embed content from other sites

Now hearing third presentation of the night: Terrel Sanders discussing “Using WordPress as a CMS. Review of totallyher.com”
– Adam Smith is actually sharing this preso also since he did most of the coding on this project
– had past experiences creating their own CMS in the past
– created this site to see about using WordPress as a real content management system

WordPress does not organize category data well
– it can list categories, but doesn’t always know the parent category and the available sub-categories

our experiences creating this site gave us confidence that WordPress is FAR more than “just” a blogging engine
– lots of effects on this site are triggered from a design standpoint with different defined WordPress categories

UNFORTUNATELY I HAD TO LEAVE EARLY TO PICK UP MY SON FROM SCOUTS! GREAT PRESOS BY ADAM! 🙂

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