January WordPress Meetup

The first meetup of 2017!

For our January meetup, we'll be doing our standard two-speaker set with time for networking before, between, and after. Talk descriptions and bios below!

Scaling Up WordPress on Amazon Web Services

Russell Heimlich (@kingkool68 (https://twitter.com/kingkool68))

Don’t you just hate it when a large traffic spike comes your way and your website goes down? Is your server set-up shakier than an all-night Red Bull + espresso bender at Starbucks? Is your web host holding you back from running your website of your dreams? Then setting up on top of Amazon’s cloud is definitely for you! There is a lot of information about how to set-up a server and running a basic WordPress site on Amazon Web Services. But there isn’t a lot of information on building a highly-available, scalable, enterprise-grade, infrastructure to power WordPress. This talk will cover the nuts and bolts of a highly-scalable cloud hosting set-up specifically for WordPress through my own experience re-architecting BillyPenn.com.

Topics include:

Is cloud hosting right for me?Identifying your website’s resource needs and budget for Amazon Web ServicesA tour of the many services offered by AWS, what they mean, and how they work together – Configuring servers using EasyEngineHow to handle uploaded media and multiple serversAutoscaling to handle fluctuating trafficCreating code deployment pipelines so you can push updates safely and reliablyHardening your set-up to through security best practices so you don’t get hacked. By the end of this talk, you will have a better understanding of the steps necessary for running a highly-available, scalable WordPress set-up that can handle any amount of traffic and work the way you want it to for a lot less money than conventional web hosting.

WordPress is for Blogs: CMS Diversity in Museums

Courtney O'Callaghan (@courtneydawn (https://twitter.com/courtneydawn))

As many museums move towards diverse open data policies, one would assume their choice of CMS would follow suit. One would be WRONG.

In this talk I will begin by reviewing the current state of technology in museums, with a focus on their usage of open source Content Management Systems (where Drupal reigns supreme and WordPress is only for blogging). I will discuss why the perceived lack of os software competition in this sector keeps museums trapped in systems they cannot afford to update. I will end by sharing ways the OS community can get involved in the would of Cultural Institutions.

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As always, food and drink will be sponsored by CHIEF (http://agencychief.com/).

We rely on accurate RSVP counts to estimate how much food and drink to purchase for the event. If you realize you can't make it, please update your RSVP as soon as possible.