Speaker: Jodie Miners, Building a Web Presence for your Community Group, for Free

26th September 2011 by thenbrent • Comments Off on Speaker: Jodie Miners, Building a Web Presence for your Community Group, for Free
Jodie Miners Avatar

Jodie Miners

In this day and age, every community group, sporting team or not-for-profit group needs their own web presence. That’s why we’re excited to have Jodie Miners presenting at WordCamp Gold Coast on building a web presence for your community group using WordPress.com and other free tools.

Jodie’s presentation will focus on free or very low cost tools that your group can use to to get online and get organised.

She’ll focus on using WordPress.com for building out a simple website and then look at other free tools you can integrate with your site to make a fully online community. This will include apps to manage your:

  • Emails
  • Documents
  • Events
  • Forms
  • Email Marketing, and much more.

We asked Jodie a little more about her experience in building online presence of community groups and how she found her way to WordPress.

At WordCamp Gold Coast, you’ll show us how Community Groups can use WordPress.com and other free web tools to build their web presence. What are some community groups you’ve helped get online with WordPress?
Continue reading Speaker: Jodie Miners, Building a Web Presence for your Community Group, for Free →

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Speaker: John O’Nolan

23rd September 2011 by Sennza Pty Ltd • 3 Comments
John O'Nolan

John O'Nolan

We are very excited to announce our next speaker, John O’Nolan who is joining us all the way from the United Kingdom. John is an interactive designer who works with companies all over the world, from Microsoft to Virgin Atlantic Airways. John is a WordPress Core UI group contributor, was heavily involved in the WordPress 3.0 and 3.1 release cycles, and is coming over to speak at WordCamp Gold Coast all the way from sunny (*cough*) shores of the UK.

John is also providing us with a T-Shirt Design by the end of the month which we’ll also be using for inspiration for our official logo for the event! 🙂

Australia is a long way from home for you, what are you most looking forward to doing or seeing when you arrive in Australia?

Continue reading Speaker: John O’Nolan →

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Sponsor: BackupBuddy

22nd September 2011 by Sennza Pty Ltd • Comments Off on Sponsor: BackupBuddy

BackupBuddyGood news everyone! We’re very glad to announce another wonderful sponsor for WordCamp Gold Coast 2011! Introducing BackupBuddy! Now, if you’re not familiar with BackupBuddy then let me say this: You’re doin’ it wrong!

BackupBuddy allows you to backup, migrate, and restore your entire single or Multisite WordPress install including the widgets, themes and plugins. To keep your backups safe, BackupBuddy supports sending your backups offsite to Amazon S3, Rackspace Cloud, Dropbox, FTP, and email. Quickly and easily restore your site on the same server or migrate to a new server with a different domain and database. The process is easy, fast, and reliable.

Continue reading Sponsor: BackupBuddy →

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Speaker: Japh Thomson, Code Quality Standards And Best Practices

21st September 2011 by thenbrent • 3 Comments
Japh Thomson

Japh Thomson

Japh is a freelance developer with over 12 years experience and a client list that includes the likes of Virgin Atlantic. So when Japh presents on code quality at WordCamp Gold Coast, you can be confident he knows what he’s talking about.

Japh’s presentation will discuss various coding standards, best practices, and resources to help improve your code. Japh aims to make this an interactive session by getting discussion going on how we can help each other maintain a high level of quality in our plugin and theme code in general.

His presentation will cover:

  • Being aware of, and adhering to coding standards
  • Knowing best practices for various tasks, such as use of Custom Post Types (CPT), extra database tables, saving options and some of the WordPress APIs (i.e. Settings API, HTTP API, Database APIs, etc)
  • Feeling responsible for your code
  • Getting help and peer review
  • Don’t cut corners on time if you know it will impact on your Quality of Service (Qos).

We asked Japh a few questions to get the low down on his history with WordPress, WordCamp and coding standards.

You’ve been developing on WordPress for years – which is your personal favourite WordPress site you’ve developed and why? Continue reading Speaker: Japh Thomson, Code Quality Standards And Best Practices →

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Sponsor: Video User Manuals

17th September 2011 by Sennza Pty Ltd • Comments Off on Sponsor: Video User Manuals

Video User ManualsOnce again we’re very excited to announce our second Short Boarder sponsor! Say hello and thanks to Video User Manuals!

Video User Manuals is a WordPress plugin development company. Most notably, their free White Label CMS plugin has been downloaded over 34,000 times from the WordPress plugin directory and allows developers to completely rebrand and customise the admin dashboard for their clients.

They also make the WordPress Manual Plugin which features over 35 video tutorials and an 85 page written manuals that clients can access right from the dashboard. This saves WordPress developers hours in training time and makes WordPress an even more awesome experience for the end user.

In one sentence, Video User Manuals helps WordPress developers train their clients how to use WordPress so they can get on with building more websites.

If you want to join the awesome line-up of WordCamp Gold Coast sponsors, apply now!

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Speaker: Bronson Quick, Supercharging WordPress with BuddyPress!

16th September 2011 by Sennza Pty Ltd • Comments Off on Speaker: Bronson Quick, Supercharging WordPress with BuddyPress!
Bronson Quick

Bronson Quick

Have you ever wanted to increase user interaction beyond the standard WordPress commenting and take your WordPress site to the next level?

You can do it using a plugin called BuddyPress!

BuddyPress can turn your WordPress site into a complete social network. BuddyPress comes with activity streams, forums, mentions (ala Twitter), friending and private messaging.  It can seem rather overwhelming, which is why Bronson is here to provide guidance on how to go about adding BuddyPress to your WordPress site.

At WordCamp Gold Coast, Bronson will be conducting a hands on workshop to explain:

  • BuddyPress features
  • How to to install BuddyPress (version 1.5)
  • The extra theme template files that BuddyPress creates that differ from WordPress
  • How to turn a WordPress theme into a BuddyPress theme using the BuddyPress Template Pack (This will be a live demo!)
  • How to enhance your BuddyPress site and increase user engagement with additional BuddyPress plugins such as Achievements for BuddyPress, Group Documents,  BuddyPress Like, Welcome Pack and BuddyPress Activity Plus.

Bronson knows what he’s talking about, having helped build one of, if not the first BuddyPress powered social networking site for Government in Australia – The Edge.

So come along to Bronson’s workshop to learn how to supercharge your WordPress site with BuddyPress.

You can follow Bronson on Twitter. You should also follow WordCamp Gold Coast on Twitter.

If you want to join the awesome line-up of WordCamp Gold Coast speakers, apply now!

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Sponsor: Jetpack

15th September 2011 by Sennza Pty Ltd • Comments Off on Sponsor: Jetpack

JetpackWe’re incredibly excited to announce our very first Short Boarder sponsor for WordCamp Gold Coast 2011! Say hello to Jetpack! Jetpack brings all the cloud power of WordPress.com to your self hosted WordPress site!

You can supercharge WordPress with tools that help you to blog better and faster — all by activating a single plugin! Jetpack is a suite of great add-ons that are fully supported by the team behind WordPress.com.

Want to know more about what Jackpack will do for your WordPress site? Continue reading Sponsor: Jetpack →

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Speaker: Stephen Cronin, WordPress in Government

9th September 2011 by thenbrent • Comments Off on Speaker: Stephen Cronin, WordPress in Government
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Stephen Cronin

Having provided custom WordPress solutions since 2007 and holding web management roles within Queensland Government for most of that time, Stephen Cronin knows the intricacies of the relationship between WordPress and Government. He has first hand experience with the challenges that hinder the adoption of WordPress by government within Australia.

That’s why we’re excited to have him present the Australian perspective of using WordPress in Government at WordCamp Gold Coast.

Stephen’s presentation will cover many issues, including:

  • the reasons WordPress often isn’t used for large government sites;
  • the content management systems that are commonly used within Government;
  • opportunities for WordPress in the government in the short term;
  • trends towards the greater use of WordPress; and
  • reasons why Government should embrace WordPress.

Stephen’s talk will be a must see for anyone working in or with government. I know I’ll be there!

You can follow Stephen on Twitter or learn more about him on More than Scratch the Surface. You should also follow WordCamp Gold Coast on Twitter.

If you want to join the awesome line-up of WordCamp Gold Coast speakers, apply now!

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Speaker: Will McNelis – 10 Essential WordPress Plugins

24th August 2011 by thenbrent • Comments Off on Speaker: Will McNelis – 10 Essential WordPress Plugins
Will McNelis

Will McNelis

Whether you’re new to WordPress or a seasoned blogger, you may at times feel overwhelmed when choosing from the 15,000 free plugins.

Never fear, Will McNelis is here to help.

Will has plenty of experience in selecting the essential plugins when setting up client sites through his company McNelis Media. At WordCamp Gold Coast, he’s going to share this experience and reveal the 10 Essential Plugins for your WordPress Site.

To get a teaser for his presentation, I asked Will about his favourite plugin and why he’s excited about WordCamp.

Your presentation is on 10 must have plugins, as a teaser, what’s your number 1 favourite plugin and why?

Continue reading Speaker: Will McNelis – 10 Essential WordPress Plugins →

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Sponsor: WooThemes

19th August 2011 by Sennza Pty Ltd • 2 Comments

WooThemesThe organisers of WordCamp Gold Coast 2011 are very pleased to announce our second sponsor, WooThemes! We contacted WooThemes and within hours Adii returned out email and quickly jumped on board to lend a hand for WordCamp Gold Coast 2011! 🙂

If you are using WordPress and you haven’t heard of WooThemes before then I’d be very suprised! But for those of you who don’t know the story of WooThemes then we’ll give you a little backstory.

Continue reading Sponsor: WooThemes →

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