Hosted by meetup member Dave Doolin

WordPress.

The very sound 'WordPress' evokes passion far beyond those two simple syllables.

It started so simple, didn't it?

From Blogger, or perhaps WordPress.com, you suddenly find yourself in charge of A Blog. A WordPress blog. You can feel the power at your fingertips.

Now, you find having one WordPress website is like having just one tattoo. Who does that?

Nobody has just one tattoo.

And you find that you 'need' to 'fix' something really tiny - really important - but you don't know how to do it.

Sunday January 23, 2011 is your day. We're going to make stuff. We're going to break stuff.

We're going to rip into WordPress and poke around in it's gory entrails with the sharp end of a text editor. There's no real mystery in WordPress. Some juju, definitely some juju, but it's all there for perusal.

When we're done, we're going to be covered with messy bits of HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, maybe even a little Javascript. And it will feel good. You may not understand it all (who does?), but you will *never* feel intimidated by WordPress ever again.

Here's the scoop (subject to change by instructor whim or popular demand):

1. Your WordPress development environment.

Fundamentally, notepad and ftp will get it done, but there's far more efficient tools:
* The Aptana Studio IDE
* Setting up localhost
* Using Subversion and Git

2. The structure of a WordPress plugin.

Did you know you can write a WordPress plugin in 1 line of code? It's true. And you're gonna do it! No mystery. Once that's out of the way, we'll build a couple more plugins from some snap-together, pre-written pieces.

3. Open: propose something cool.

== What you need to bring ==

A # 1. burnin' burnin' drive for learnin'

2. Computer (of course)

3. As much of a WP development environment as you can get installed. If you're on Snow Leopard or better, this is as easy as starting Apache, configuring to load the php module, turning on mysql, or just installing MAMP. If you're on Windows, install a LAMP stack.

4. Any editor will do, Aptana Studio 3 has a nice mix of power with ease of use.

WARNING: WordPress is a gateway drug to programming. Proceed with extreme caution!
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Hacking will go on as long as people can stand it, and folks may go out to dinner afterward.