May Meetup (Love Shortcodes More, Creating Contributors, and Favorite Plugins)

Agenda

6:30 Pizza
6:45-7:15 Session 1: Love Shortcode More
7:15-7:20 Break
7:20-7:50 Session 2: Creating Contributors
7:50-8:00 Break
8:00-8:30 Session 3: Favorite Plugins

Love shortcodes more

• A quick review of what shortcodes are, how to use them and what they can do for your blog.
• How to write your own shortcodes - worked examples.
• Wrapping up with a look at some theme specific shortcodes and shortcodes of popular plugins.

Max McConnell is a WordPress coach at Prompt Ed (http://www.prompt-ed.com/) (@prompted_wp (https://twitter.com/@prompted_wp)) running one-to-one training and in-person coaching courses. Max is an experienced programmer working with PHP in Wordpress and Magento and with JavaScript, HTML5 & CSS3. Degree educated in mathematics and physics Max has worked in nanotechnology, business and marketing.

Creating Contributors: once you build it, will they come?

WordPress is a great platform for small businesses and non-profit organizations that want to build communities. But sometimes getting a site up and running is the easy part; recruiting content creators is a different kind of challenge. Invitations, roles, choice of theme and post styles all make a difference. If site designers want to hand off site operation to competent contributors, they must think ahead, ask the right questions and be prepared to coach and train writers. Four brief case studies (an alumni organization, an association chapter, a town committee and a small business) will be presented.

Jennie Morris (http://www.linkedin.com/in/jenmorris/), is a writer/editor and digital media generalist. She finds herself doing a lot communications strategy consulting these days, which is a long way from the laser lightshow business she started many years ago.

A few of my favorite plugins

Everyone's got his or her favorite set. I'll show you some of mine, with some details on special settings and tips on how to improve your workflow. During "Pizza Time" at the meetup, we'll have a whiteboard up for you to list your favorites.

Brian K. Johnson, a.k.a. BKJ Productions LLC, has been around the Boston area since 1991, providing a wide range of interactive/digital presentation services from CD-ROM development to websites. Currently we manage about fifty WordPress installations, as well as a dozen or so in various other formats. We've built a few plugins for inhouse use (but sadly, have not yet managed to put anything back out into the Plugins area at WordPress. Soon, we hope.)