WP Realm

Making the Transition from HTML to WordPress. Where do you Begin?

30 August 2012 by Christine Rondeau

A few weeks ago at our local WordPress Meetup, we were having a round table discussion and someone asked

“How do I start? I currently have an HTML site and would like to convert it to WordPress, but I don’t know where to begin.”

That question took me a few years back when I was first dipped my toe into WordPress theming.

I had been designing websites for years, had just learned CSS and ditched my tables, I had a blog, but I was looking at my other pages and thought how do I integrate this other content with my WordPress site?

Thinking of Content Differently

When learning web design, you first learn that CSS allows you to separate presentation from content. WordPress takes that concept even further by separating the HTML from the content and storing all content in the database.

Once you’ve grasped that concept, you also need to know the difference between the various WordPress content types.

Posts – are displayed on your blog and appear in reverse chronological order, i.e. the latest posts are at the top. Your blog posts can be categorized in a series of ways and thus can be used for news, press releases, events, reviews, articles, whatever you wish.
Pages – on the other hand are for your static content. Contact information, about page, services, etc…
Comments – these can be turned on or off and are also stored in your database and associated with your blog posts.
Media – any document, file or photo that you upload in your WordPress site is uploaded in the uploads directory and it’s information is also stored in the database.
Links – Should you wish to use your blogroll, this other WordPress content type is there for you.

When you plan your WordPress site, the first thing you’ll want to do is simply upload your content. Create your pages, decide if you want a blog or not and make sure you’ve got everything in place.

[Read more…]

WordCamp Sevilla registration is open!

29 August 2012 by Zé Fontainhas

Go grab your tickets now as this is a very popular WordCamp with a traditionally strong program and speakers. Not to mention the tapas, of course 🙂 (Also, is that a dutch guy on the speakers’ list?)

Introducing the WP Realm Technical Writing Team

28 August 2012 by Siobhan McKeown

As a site about WordPress, you’d expect us to have just a little bit of technical content. After all, I heard a rumour that there are these things called PHP and MySQL that have something to do with WordPress, although I’m not sure what – something mystical and magical no doubt. To help out with writing regular content I’ve gathered a team of experts who’ll be writing regular posts about the technical aspects of WordPress; writing code, plugins and themes, contributing to core, getting the PHP right, playing with your database, and all that good stuff that technical folks who use WordPress like to do. Let’s meet them. [Read more…] about Introducing the WP Realm Technical Writing Team

Building a Better Support Team

22 August 2012 by Mason James

One of the more interesting tasks I’ve had this year is building a support team for WPMU DEV. At the beginning of 2011 we hired two support reps to work alongside myself, handling the various support inquiries that came through. We were growing and I needed the help!

DEV has always functioned from a place of the independent freelancer; you can work on your own time, at your own place, and to a large degree all by yourself. So we hired two incredibly gifted people, showed them the support forums and off we went.

Flash forward to the beginning of 2012 and we had lost both of them. While there are many reasons why a person would leave a company or be let go, I took a big part of the responsibility on myself: I now had an exactly 0% success rate in hiring. These guys were hand-picked by myself and James (CEO at WPMU DEV) and now we were back at square one. On starting again, I knew things had to be different.

In December of last year we hired one new rep, then in January another. This was followed by four others in March. Here’s a few of the things we did wrong the first time around and how we’ve changed things this time.

A chance to contribute ideas on theme compatibility and UI to BuddyPress

16 August 2012 by Tammie Lister

BuddyPress has come on in leaps and bounds with each release. Currently the 1.7 release is in planning and shaping up to be amazing. One of the main features is going to be theme compatibility. This is the perfect opportunity to ‘take stock’ of how things are currently done in BuddyPress front end and how perhaps alternatives could be Implemented. All in all, a great moment for non developers to get involved in the project. ∞

What Makes a Great WordPress Support Specialist?

15 August 2012 by Scott Basgaard

I thought it would be great to change gears a little and talk about us support specialists instead of our users. Here’s a little background about myself and what I think makes a great support specialist in the WordPress community.

Before I started working at WooThemes as a Support Ninja, I worked at WebDevStudios and joined the team as a lead developer for around three to four years. And just to be honest, I’m definitely no “Nacin” or “Jaquith” and would not consider myself to be an amazing developer at all. But, I was lucky enough to be a “Brad Williams“, CEO and Co-founder of WebDevStudios, Padawan/Jedi-apprentice who taught me everything about proper WordPress coding standards and, most importantly, how valuable it was to be involved with the WordPress Community.

When is a WordCamp a WP Camp?

10 August 2012 by Zé Fontainhas

The Potsdam (Germany) WordPress Meetup group has recently announced that it is putting together a WordPress-dedicated event called WP Camp, in Berlin, on the 13th of October.

For all purposes, and from the description, it sounds almost like a normal WordCamp. In their words:

A cross between the looseness of a Barcamp and the structure of a conference.

I, for one, applaud any initiative which tries to bring WordPress users, designers and developers together, no matter which format is chosen. Given the size of the community today and the rate at which it is growing, many more meetups, WordCamps, WP On Tours and other events are sorely needed as nothing replaces meeting people face to face to create ties. Case in point: WP Realm. It would probably have not happened had not its founding members met (and had drinks) at some point.

However…