WordCamp New York City 2009

This is what the WordCamp NYC name badges will look like. What they’ll have:

• Your name in large enough letters for people to read surreptitiously if they’ve forgotten your name in the 10 minutes you’ve been chatting in the hall.
• Your gravatar so people can recognize you from your online identity (let’s face it, some people are better with pictures than words).
• Your company, if you included one when you registered.
• Your blog/site URL.
• Your Twitter ID so people can follow you right away when they meet you.
• How long you’ve been using WordPress.
• Which track you’re attending.

So as you can see, if you don’t have a gravatar, your name badge will not be very pretty, because it will have a default “mystery man” icon, and if any of the fields are too long, they’ll print on top of each other.

Please take a minute to go to the attendees page and find your name. If you don’t have a picture, please go to Gravatar and upload a photo to associate with the email address you used to register. Look at the company name printed below your name. If it is more than one line and wraps, it will do that on your name badge, too. To be safe, your company name should be 25 characters or less. If you need to shorten yours, send your updates to jane at wordcamp dot org. People whose company names are too long may find they’ve been abbreviated to fit. If you didn’t provide a company name, URL or twitter ID when you registered, that space will be blank on your badge, and you can write in whatever you like.

Are you psyched?! Three more days!

John Bintz

After hundreds, if not thousands, of times when my code has failed for any number of reasons, the first question that now comes out of my mouth before I sit down and craft a new block of code is:

Can I Prove That This Works?

If a user comes to me and says, “Your code is failing!” how can I prove that no, it’s not the code I wrote, it’s how it interacts with this other part, or that it’s user error, or that it’s some other reason? How can I quickly find the place to look for problems by ruling out chunks of code that I know are working? How do I know that, when I get something working, it will stay working?

When we all started programming, we proved that our code worked by writing the output to a console, to a browser, to some location where we had to visually verify that our inputs produced sane outputs. While this technique certainly does work, it doesn’t scale well at all. How do you prove that the core of your four thousand line plugin stays working, month after month, after you add new features, fix bugs, and re-factor code?

Lucky for us, we have the tools nowadays to be able to prove that our code does just what we intended it to do. WordPress is built upon PHP, and in PHP, we have multiple testing frameworks to choose from. These frameworks bring to us the ability to perform automated tests on our code, making sure it doesn’t break after we add new things, allowing us to re-factor safely, and letting us say, “The problem’s not here, because the tests just passed.”

The trick is that, like any other habit, the idea of writing tests takes time to really sink in. When you start, you’ll find that, to make your code testable, you’ll have to completely rethink your approach to programming. You’ll become acutely aware of the problems of global variables. You’ll have to learn to write smaller functions and methods that do one — and only one — thing, since anything more becomes too hard to test. You’ll have to learn when a thing is a unit, a discrete component that does one thing, and when a thing becomes an integration, where you string a bunch of units together to make your code masterpiece work.

My session, Yes, Your Code Will Change, will walk you through what it’s like to unit test code that’s destined to be run on WordPress. It’s an introduction to the ideas of unit & regression testing, why these types of test are beneficial to you, and what it’s like to go through a simple testing situation by showing how you can use PHPUnit and MockPress to prove that your code works, even when — especially when — it has to change. If you write anything even remotely complex for WordPress, this is the session for you. Hope to see you there!

John Hawkins

It has been more than 25 years since the last time I was in New York City. I can’t think of a better reason to go back than to be part of WordCamp! This will be my 9th (and final) WordCamp in 2009, and I can’t think of a better place to finish off the year!

I’m really excited to be speaking about building your first plugin. Plugin development is something I got into as a way to cut down on the amount of time it took me to perform different tasks on

In my session I will cover how to create a plugin, how to add an options page, how to modify a page or post using shortcodes and how to add an admin dashboard widget. (Not bad for 30 minutes, huh?)

Editor’s Note: To get a taste of John’s session, check out the video from his beginner plugin session at WordCamp Portland.

https://videopress.com/v/wp-content/plugins/video/flvplayer.swf?ver=1.10

Allan Cole

We’ve got about 11 days till WordCamp does NYC and I couldn’t be more excited! This will be my first time attending a WordCamp and it looks like tons of fun. It’ll also be my first time speaking publicly since college (YIKES) so I’m a little nervous as well but I’m sure I’ll enjoy myself regardless.

I’ll be speaking about Child Themes, which I’ve been using to develop both WordPress themes and full-blown websites for various clients and organizations. I first discovered child themes while following Ian at ThemeShaper.com and I’ve never looked back. As a mostly front-end and interaction designer, Child Themes really allow me to speed up my development time and make future-proof theme edits which are essential to any development strategy. My session will mainly cover three subjects: (1) What is a Child Theme?; (2) How to build a Child Theme; and (3) WordPress Theme Frameworks. If you are a front-end developer, a web designer, or a beginning theme developer who’s a bit more focused on design and user experience and not so interested in memorizing WordPress template tags and PHP, then you should definitely check out this session. If you do plan on attending, please download and install my Child Theme Boumatic, which I will be referring to throughout the session.

About 9-10 months ago I decided to develop almost exclusively using Child Themes. It makes development so much easier and cleaner. Hopefully, sometime in the near future Child Themes will become a part of the WP repository.

If you have any questions for me, just leave a comment.

Best,
Allan

Corey Eulas

I am now accepting websites to be reviewed on November 14 at 4:15pm during the Blogger Track. Submit your site for consideration by providing your URL in the comment section below.

Do you have a blog? Are you looking to increase your readership and overall internet presence? Do you want more people to go to your site and sign up for your newsletter, buy your product, or even just learn more about your marketing/personal branding message? Regardless of your exact intention, the information that will be supplied during this session will help your website succeed.

Whether you are looking to use your blog for monetary gain or just want to have a really awesome personal blog, these invaluable tips and tricks will help you bring your blog to the next level.

Are you:

• Frustrated that your traffic is decreasing (or just isn’t increasing)? I will discuss how to increase visibility with the search engines by looking at audience-submitted websites and showing real-life examples on how to “tweak” your site to become more search engine friendly.
• Unsure why your conversion rates are so low? I will discuss how to improve your website’s usability & call to action conversion rates using your sites as examples!
• Confused about how to analyze statistical data to improve SEO? I will discuss how to interpret and act on your already-tracked data to increase users, retention & overall traffic.
• Wondering which SEO tools and plugins to use? I will discuss the best ones using your submitted sites as examples.

I’ll be answering these questions and more.

I have a plethora of information to share and am excited to show you how to make your sites even better!

Submit your site in the comment section below to be reviewed at Wordcamp NYC 2009 by me. Though I will not be able to touch on all of the submitted sites I will be sure to relay common issues that I find.

When submitting please include your name, your site & your overall goal of the website (and/or company).

About Me: I have been involved in web development and internet marketing since late 1990s. I currently works at LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell as a Senior Search Engine Optimization Specialist and at Wine King as the Director of Search Marketing. I also run Ninety Seven Media, where I helps small to mid-sized businesses increase their internet visibility via SEO & SEM. When I’m not busy working I spend my free time with my fiancée Sandy and dog Coby at my home in New Jersey.

We’re shocked. Really, we thought people would be crawling out of the woodwork to have Matt Mullenweg, Mark Jaquith and Brian Gardner review their plugin and theme submissions. We thought people would be trying really hard to be in the top three to get a chance to present their work onstage in front of the entire WordCamp NYC audience. And we really thought people would enter b/c the winners will be announced on the WordPress.org development blog, which gets millions of views.

But there was only 1 theme submission and a couple of plugins. Come on, where’s your competitive spirit?

In the interest of making the theme/plugin judging portion of the Sunday program more interesting, we’re extending the deadline for submissions to November 11. You have three more days to finish a theme or plugin per the contest rules.

Have the mad coding skills, but no ideas? Fine, here are a few ideas you are free to borrow:
Theme Ideas

• Travelogue theme. Use custom fields for things like where you stayed, who you met, where you ate, photo galleries, etc.
• Resume theme. Create a nice resume theme that fits an overview on one page and links to different templates for personal profile, educational experience, specific job descriptions, portfolio.
• BuddyPress theme for a regular membership-based group site. Make it look like a regular web site, not like a social network, while still making it clear that the members of the group can use use these features to communicate with each other. Examples: a church site with blogs for various interest groups, a company employee site, an alumni network, a neighborhood site, a babysitting club.
• Videoblog theme. Display one video per day with author intro post and video transcript, with separate directory section to browse all videos by date, title, tag, category, etc.
• Gallery theme. Work some magic for displaying groups of photos or images.

Plugin Ideas

• Update the QuickPress module on dashboard to be configurable so user can choose which elements to include (title, post, tag, category, media files, sticky post status, etc.)
• Change the way the results are displayed when searching for plugins from the admin, so that the name of the plugin does not link to an external site, but instead brings in the information about that plugin from the repo.
• Create a customizable twitter widget that can display @name and #topic updates mingled in one thread.
• Anything you can think of around comments, stats, etc.

Okay, so, creative juices flowing? If we don’t get at least 3 eligible entries for themes and 3 for plugins, we’ll pick the top 2 themes and top 2 plugins for judging instead.

Get cracking, only 3 days left to enter!

With WordCamp NYC 2009 only a week away, it’s time to round up the WordPress geniuses.

Since the genius bar at WordCamp San Francisco was such a great success the past 2 years, we have decided to bring the show on the road! This year, WordPress geniuses will be available at WordCamp NYC from 9 AM – 5 PM on Saturday. Thanks to the generosity of Baruch College, we should have a great space this year for question answering. The idea behind the genius bar is a place where you can come to ask your toughest (or easy) questions to members of the WordPress community and get great answers. Whether you are having a problem with your WordPress theme or want to know the best place to find a new one, have a question about a plugin or two, or just want to know the best way to get started with WordPress – we are there to help! This year, I would like to put a special emphasis on WordPress upgrades.

Do you have a WordPress blog not running 2.8.5 and need help upgrading?

Come to the genius bar and let us help you! We will show you the best way to backup your blog, upload your files, and install the latest and greatest version of WordPress. If your blog is running a version older than 2.0 you get bonus points!

* If you do want us to help you upgrade your blog, you will need to know the username and password to access your hosting account via FTP, SFTP, control panel, or whatever you use to edit your website files, so please bring that information with you.

Providing all of this help isn’t easy, so we are putting out a call for volunteers! If you would like to help WordCampers with their WordPress blogs and are attending WordCamp NYC, please consider volunteering an hour or two to work at the genius bar. We already have a great group of folks who have volunteered, but are in need of more. If you are interested in volunteering at the genius bar, please contact me and let me know what time slot you are interested in, and I will put together a schedule later in the week.

Again, the genius bar will be open from 9AM to 5PM on Saturday only, but I’m sure there will be people around on Sunday as well to answer questions in an informal, ad-hoc manner.

Noel Jackson

Want to build a theme that acts more like a web application? Need to analyze image width, height, and color? On Saturday, I’ll be talking about advanced theme building techniques. Using the popular P2 and the about-to-be-released Duotone as case studies, I’ll take you through the code and explain how these ideas flourished into something tangible. Your mind will be flooded with talk of ajax, filters, actions, and color analysis. It’s going to be a blast!

However, if you’re one that just wants to get that content published, you’ll be pleased to know that I’m also going to have a separate session in the Blogger track about blogging with media. Images, video, sound – I’m going to cover it all. We’ll browse through my favorite media-centric themes, plugins, and you’ll get a quick tour of Duotone. By the end you’ll know all their is about getting that rich media onto your site.

This is going to be an amazing WordCamp. It will be a pleasure to meet all of you and share a little bit of my world with you.

Steve McNally

With TrueSlant.com, we set out to build a new newsroom.

Our team brings a mix of newspaper, magazine, television and book publishing to the table in addition to collective decades of online experience. A shared driver in building True/Slant is our wish to bring some of the best-practices learned working in those media to the immediacy and community of blogging.

The Editorial team recruits Contributors with a vision of the news – a Slant.  These credible and knowledgeable Contributors – hundreds of journalists, authors, professionals and academics with topic-specific expertise – blog under their own names, are working to build their own brands, and are trusted to make their own editorial decisions. Editors then curate the stream of stories coming through: slotting them in where they fit best, featuring the larger trends, and promoting stories across and outside of TrueSlant.com. Our Founder & CEO Lewis DVorkin calls this “Editing Talent” rather than Content.

Building on WordPress MU gave us simple, powerful tools for Contributors; extending MU helps us provide frictionless publishing and promotion across a network of quality content, helps community members find what’s relevant, helps our Contributors build audience, and helps our Editors create a lively site with minimal effort.

We’ll cover the enhancements and curation tools that help keep TrueSlant.com a vibrant, growing network with a limited editorial staff. We’ll discuss the thinking and technology behind the Content Management methodologies and tools in use.  We’ll walk through the ways Editors manage content flow to create the home page, Topics, and promotional opportunities throughout and the site.

You may remember that a while back we were very excited to have secured the donated services of a CART provider to enable a deaf attendee to experience WordCamp NYC in person. Sadly, that donation fell through and we had to start our search again. I’m very happy to announce that we’ve got a new plan in place now, and that a new sponsor will be picking up the costs: Microsoft to the rescue again!

When we were unable to find another CART provider to donate services to the event as a sponsor, we decided the best course of action would be to simply hire a local provider and find a sponsor to cover the costs (around $1600). As Microsoft had already decided to become a sponsor of WordCamp NYC, it made sense to work with them around sponsoring accessibility, especially given their own extensive work in this area. Their position:

Accessibility makes it easier for anyone to see, hear, and use a computer, and to personalize their computer to meet their own needs and preferences. For many people with impairments, accessibility is what makes computer use possible. At Microsoft, our mission is to enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential. We consider our mission statement a promise to our customers. We deliver on that promise by striving to create technology that is accessible to everyone—regardless of age or ability. Microsoft leads the industry in accessibility innovation and in building products that are safer and easier to use.

When people think of disabilities or accessibility, it usually summons images of wheelchairs or references to screen readers. However, there are a number of disabilities that require accommodation to ensure accessibility, including hearing disabilities. According to the National Center for Health Statistics of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, approximately 34 million Americans have a significant hearing loss; of these almost six million are profoundly deaf (current U.S. population is estimated at 304,059,724, so that’s about eleven percent with significant hearing loss, and just under two percent with profound deafness). Within the web community, the numbers are a bit higher, possibly owing to how much computers have helped the deaf to communicate with the broader population. According to Microsoft’s Accessibility division, among adult computer users in the United States:

• 1 in 4 has a vision difficulty
• 1 in 4 has a dexterity difficulty
• 1 in 5 has a hearing difficulty

Hearing difficulties can range from slight hearing loss to total deafness. We have only one deaf attendee in need of assistive technology services at our WordCamp, but clearly hearing disabilities need to be considered, especially with the proliferation of video and audio content on the web (to be accessible, information must be delivered visually as well, such as with transcripts).

Please join me in thanking Microsoft for their commitment to accessibility and for sponsoring assistive services for WordCamp NYC. Thanks, Microsoft!

Footnote: Yes, we will have a deaf attendee who will be accompanied to sessions by a transcriptionist. Because the live  transcription process requires special equipment, I’d like to make certain that our deaf attendee and her transcribers can get a seat in each session attended. So if you see two women looking around a crowded room holding computers and trying to find a seat, please consider offering yours if you’re able to stand or cop a squat on the floor. Thanks!