WordCamp Developers recap
Work paid for this and I figured it might be worthwhile, since I’m really looking for ways to optimize the WordPress multi-user commons platform that I’m presently working on. In general I’d say the day was a success, with some interesting sessions, a few tidbits picked up and connections made or reinforced. In particular, with the low price tag, good facilities, decent lunch and solid organization, it was pretty good value for the money. I’ll provide a quick review of the sessions and the overall takeaway I had from the day. It was a little lacking technically for my liking, but I also realize how hard it is to deliver 40 minute sessions to a crowd with wide-ranging skillsets and interests.
There were 12 sessions in all spread across two tracks, focused on user experience and development. What I found early on is that the sessions should have been more clearly named as to what they were going to cover. For example, HTML5 & CSS3 integration for WordPress at a WordPress conference should cover something about WordPress. Or, perhaps a session on Forum API integration with WordPress should do something with a forum on API, as opposed to primarily being about community development for a blog. I sort of expected that a session about making templates more unique wouldn’t be a generic session about thinking outside the box, even though that’s what it was. Using information architecture to build your WordPress site was only really apparently only an overview of information architecture. You get the idea.
HTML & CSS3 Integration for WordPress
This presentation by Ray Villalobos wasn’t a bad overview of the two technologies but had almost nothing to do with WordPress. In and of itself it was enjoyable enough because I’m really only playing with some of the drop shadow and rounded corner type goodness of CSS3 and pretty much no HTML5 yet. There was some good information on how you should think about using them, but much of it was simply good web dev advice and not always specific to these technologies. We did see a couple nifty tools for ensuring backward compatibility, speed and modernization of your site; Modernizr and head.js. Good library stuff for web sites, but unfortunately no tips or tricks specifically for integrating these technologies with WordPress templates, tags and themes. Better yet? Perhaps an overview of WordPress plugins that were using these technologies and the benefits or drawbacks involved.
Developing a Control Panel for Multiple Sites Using the Same WordPress Theme
Developing a Control Panel for Multiple Sites Using the Same WordPress Theme by Toby McKes was a look at a pretty useful theme management plugin, CheezCAP, built by the folks at Cheezburger Networks. Apparently they used to manage their themes in a similar way to how our commons platform has started out – a bunch of unique, hacked up themes with duplicate code all over the place. Unified themes are the answer. CheezCAP requires PHP knowledge to use, as you place a copy in each theme and set the options you want to enable in a config file, allowing you to overwrite many theme options from a single place, instead of individually editing other PHP files. It also uses the WP database so that you will still have the options if you uninstall/reinstall the theme. You can override standard theme options on a site-by-site basis very easily. It’s pretty slick looking, but I found it wouldn’t work for my needs very well, as the setup we’re building is heavily dependent on the ThemeHybrid framework and CheezCAP needs each site it manages to have full theme files, as you’re manipulating them directly when editing within CheezCAP’s panel. What I’d like to see here is one install for a full WordPress MU site network and greater compatibility with child themes.
Adrift in a Sea of Templates
Adrift in a sea of templates by Alex Nelson and Beau House was more unfortunately named than anything else. I wrongly assumed that this would cover unique use of templates, but alas, it was a session about design thinking outside the box. Not that there’s anything wrong with this, but as a WordPress admin/themer type guy this wasn’t particularly useful. The thing that really sunk this session for me, though, was a brutally dull speaking style and energy level. At the very least creatives need to be enthused about the design process and this never came across during the presentation.
HTML5 video for WordPress
Unfortunately both HTML5 video for WordPress by Steve Heffernan and Tackling Javascript for WordPress by Allen Pike were running at the same time and I would have liked to do both. I chose the video session, and as I said earlier it was really focused on code and implementation and did not belong in the UX track. This session was actually a logical follow-up to the HTML5 & CSS3 session, but wasn’t in the same track. This session covered everything from browser penetration, to which platforms used which standards (with only HTML5 support iOS is what’s making this most difficult), right down to how to choose solid fallback methods. Based on who’s supporting open and closed video formats, it’s hard not to think that Adobe, MS and Apple are in collusion to drive closed video standards. I really like Steve’s videojs.com HTML5 video player, which can be implemented on its own or as a plug-in for many common open source platforms. videojs takes care of the fallback options for you. The best session I attended by far and you can view Steve’s Slideshare presentation to the left. Based on Twitter feedback, it sounds like the Javascript session was just as well received.
Theme-building with Kommonwealth
Though not part of the advertised conference schedule, I attended one of the unconference sessions, Theme-building with Kommonwealth, by the CEO of Redwerks Frameworks. Kommonwealth is essentially a web-based, drag-n-drop IDE for building UI layouts, which then allows you to export the results in theme formats for WordPress, Drupal and other platforms. This program seems to have some promise, but the session was a major disappointment. If it works, the export tool is very nice, but that’s about it. The platform is in early beta and it shows. Some of it didn’t work during our session, and the development UI is nothing short of spartan and cumbersome, with virtually no solid visual design treatment. You can comment in the CSS but not name your own IDs for exporting in the theme zip package, and the generated IDs are long strings of ugly letters and numbers – totally unworkable in a complex theme structure and brutally ‘not’ semantic, the opposite of what your markup should be. By far, the most disappointing thing for me was that the CEO of the company, who was demonstrating the software, didn’t know what custom meta fields or custom post types were and how his software should make use of them if it’s building WordPress themes. Sorry, but that’s pretty much a total fail in my book.
Forum API Integration
Forum API integration by Brendan Sera-Shriar was subtitled, “building a community around your blog” and there’s no question that the focus was the latter. Another session that was clearly in the wrong track, it focused on the benefits of adding forums to a site to build traffic, loyalty and community. The benefit of community to a web site is primarily a user experience issue, more so with this session since there wasn’t a line of code or API actually explored in the session. Brendan’s energy made up for the session not really meeting my expectations regarding forum APIs, even if it did veer dangerously close to promoting his own tool, Vanilla Forums. His assertion that the only viable way to implement forums is to go with the cloud shows a real lack of understanding of the vagaries of the higher education sector, but it’s a weird business for most people to get their heads around, so I’ll let it go.
Recommendations for next year
On the whole, I did have a little epiphany of sorts around my commons project and the management of themes, BuddyPress and more. And, I think the concept is a good one and the day was well organized and provided decent value for the price. However, my big issue was that the tracks really weren’t distinct enough. The session on HTML5 video was great, but was all about CODECS, video formats, embed codes and the like, and didn’t belong in the user experience track.
While there’s obviously overlap between the front-end and back-end in WordPress, some level of skill in PHP, MySQL, CSS, HTML, Javascript, visual design and the like, is needed to fully design and develop for this platform. I’d say it would be pretty easy to have one front-end track that focuses mostly on theming – frameworks, parent/child themes, how to implement your design with the menu systems, plug-ins that help manage these things, etc. A back-end track could focus on plug-in development, BuddyPress, forums, core code, admin panel stuff like user management, making it work with LDAP, and so on. I think that’s what the UX and development track was trying to accomplish but there wasn’t enough delineation to make the differences distinct enough. Clear delineation would also make it easier to select sessions focused on audience interests.
I hope they take another stab at this and make a few tweaks. It could be a good, local, annual WordPress shindig.
May 6th, 2011 at 10:34 am
Thanks for the feedback and recap James! We’ll keep these points in mind if WordCamp: Developers happens next year.
May 30th, 2011 at 3:46 am
I am surely not too familiar with this topic but I do prefer to take a look at blogs for layout ideas and fascinating topics. You certainly described a subject that I mostly do not care quite a bit about and built it awfully fascinating. This is a good weblog that I will pay attention to. I by now bookmarked it for future reference. Lung Cancer Symptoms