Posted under: Blog

August 13th, 2011

Word Camp SF 2011 Takeaways

This year I finally got to attend my first Word Camp, and right here in my backyard: San Francisco!  It was great to get out and mingle with so many people that are as enthusiastic about this CMS as I am.  I think one of the most interesting questions I heard asked today was one asked to the Core Developer team, that went something like this: “Why is it that you’re so committed to developing for WordPress, and not one of the other various platforms out there?” 

There were a few answers from the panel, but the common theme was that it was the community that really spoke to them.  True enough; I’ve always found the community to be fantastic, so it was awesome to see and interact in meat space for once.

Here are some personal takeaways from today’s WordCamp, that I hope to expand on later:

  1. Learned about Post Formats with get_post_format(), and heard some interesting things you can do with get_template_part().
  2. Realized I should be marking up content in better ways, such as with <article> and <figure> tags.
  3. Was kind of blown away when Ian Stewart said that the_content() is King.  If you stuff a lot of data into custom meta boxes and custom fields and your user then switches to another theme that doesn’t support those features, the content will appear “gone” to them.
  4. Before implementing a custom post type, first think about using a post format.
  5. Learned that I should read the WordPress Philosophy page, and understand the heuristics that Daryl Koopersmith spoke about in his talk: Decisions, Not Options.
  6. Picked up a thing or two about securing widgets: iframes, Needham–Schroeder protocol, and xPostMessage for secure frame communication.
  7. Received some advice about releasing themes into the wild, and that the WordPress Theme Review page and Coding Standards page are good references.
  8. Realized that I should be more involved in the WordPress forum, and should make it a goal to contribute to WordPress
  9. Found a few new blogs I should be following: wpcandy.com and ma.tt
  10. Learned that I should be attending the weekly IRC Dev meetups, should be paying attention to the WordPress Dev blog: wpdevel.wordpress.com and should be following WordPress bugs at core.trac.wordpress.org
  11. Remembered that I should learn more about media queries and responsive web design.
  12. Confirmed that Chris Coyier of CSS-tricks is amazing, hilarious, now lives in the bay area, and that I want to be his friend.

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