The East Bay WordPress Meetup Group

WordPress 3.2 is due out at the end of June. (We’re at RC 1 as I write this on June 20th.) Based on past performance, it ought to be ready about in time for WordCamp SF in August. As usual when there’s a new release of WordPress, we’ll walk through all the new features. A good session for those new to self-hosted WordPress, or to WordPress at all.

Most of what we’re promised in WordPress 3.2 isn’t flashy, but the admin interface is a bit different (I’ve looked at the beta) and the new Twenty Eleven default theme is both attractive and functional. It includes not only post formats but responsive design (it changes layout automatically for different kinds of screens), which is the hot new trend in web design. I may well be setting up some sites on the RC prior to launch, so hope to have a decent amount of experience by the time we get to this demo.

Oakland, CA 94612 – USA

Sunday, August 21 at 1:00 PM

Attending: 18

Fee: Price: USD 5.00 per person

Details: http://www.meetup.com/Eastbay-WordPress-Meetup/events/22910041/

The East Bay WordPress Meetup Group

I’ll be happy to discuss Event Espresso Lite and GigPress, and I know Anca uses Eventbrite. Anyone else have a favorite plugin to pitch? Some possibilities are Appointy, Events Manager Extended, WordTour, Booking Calendar, and Stout Google Calendar.  The recently updated Event Calendar/Scheduler looks pretty good but doesn’t work with multi-site. (I just use Tungle.me for one-on-one appointments, and it doesn’t have a WP plugin, just code you put into a text widget.)

E-mail sallie [at] eastbaywp [dot] com if you’d like to present on a particular plugin or other appointment/scheduling/event registration tool and how to use it with WordPress.

Oakland, CA 94612 – USA

Sunday, May 15 at 1:00 PM

Attending: 13

Details: http://www.meetup.com/Eastbay-WordPress-Meetup/events/16993338/

The East Bay WordPress Meetup Group

Lou Anne gave us an SEO presentation back in 2009. We all know Google keeps adjusting its algorithms, and WordPress keeps adding features, so it’s time to talk about this subject again. From permalinks to plugins, keyword research to categories, why not to overdo tags, and the built-in SEO features in some themes, Lou Anne will give you the lowdown. I’m waiting for her to set a date, since we obviously can’t have the meetup on a day when she’s not available.

Oakland, CA 94612 – USA

Sunday, June 19 at 1:00 PM

Attending: 24

Details: http://www.meetup.com/Eastbay-WordPress-Meetup/events/17434331/

The East Bay WordPress Meetup Group

Linda Shum and I collaborated on this–she created the design in Fireworks for her employer, but then had to leave town, so asked me to work on it while she was gone.

My job was to get as far as I could in turning the design into a Genesis child theme, preserving the design as exactly as possible, with certain functions. My focus was on the home page design (tabbed slider and many widgets with tricky shaded backgrounds; widgeted footer; secondary menus in header and footer areas).

Linda and I will walk you through her creation of the design, what I did to implement it, the mistakes we made, and how we ended up making it work. (For the record, I spent about 18 hours on it and it wasn’t finished yet by then, so this is not a small task.) Those of you with more experience can point out all the things we did wrong, and those with less experience can either decide this is more than you want to take on right now, or take notes and get ready to build your own.

The site in question is SparkPoint from United Way of the Bay Area–still on the dev server as I type this, with placeholder content in some of the widgets: http://dev.uwba.org/m….

I’m not going to set a date until I know when Linda is available–also, it would be good to be sure the site is 100% finished. But I think it makes a good case study because of its complexity. This is not the kind of design you could just run through PSD2CSS.

Oakland, CA 94612 – USA

Sunday, July 17 at 1:00 PM

Attending: 17

Details: http://www.meetup.com/Eastbay-WordPress-Meetup/events/17193201/