In my experience WordPress London always has a strong turn out, and not just from London residents either — I myself travel to the event as much as possible. The format is a talk and pub discussion, which always works well for WordPress meetups. This month’s event was held at Skills Matter, a great venue with rooms all set up for training. They provide drinks and there is free wifi – what more could you need!
Tony Scott – WordCamp UK coming up
First on the agenda was Tony Scott, making an information announcement about WordCamp UK which will take place on the 14th and 15th of July, in Edinburgh. You can find out more here. As a side note several members of the WP Realm team will be at this WordCamp and also presenting talks.
David Cox – Changing content layout with the post class in a Twenty Eleven Child Theme
Next up was David Cox from Digital Drops talking about Changing content layout with the post class in a Twenty Eleven child theme. David told us a bit about his approach to helping others, which is to take the support forum code snippets into child themes which he posts about and offers on his site. David focused on get_template_part and dived into his own customisations for floating images, ending in a magazine child theme format. There are code examples on his site or you can watch the talk..
Florian Penn – WP Search
Florian Penn was next in the line up and was talking about WordPress search. He started talking about the built in WordPress search and how to improve it and then went on to show useful search plugins. He then moved into Google custom search and ended up in the deep end of the search pool looking at advanced plugins and DIY code. It was a vast subject but tackled with many links to useful things. You can watch a video of Florian’s talk here.
Chris Adams – Workflow with WordPress
Last up was Chris Adams talking about Workflow with WordPress. Chris began with putting what he was talking about into context by showing a project he’d worked on that pushed WordPress to its limits and taught some lessons. He highlighted 3 stumbling points: Development, Deployment and Monitoring. Chris showed a wide range of tools during his talk and it was a really great list of resources for managing workflows; I’d encourage you to check out his video presentation.
To the pub!
As with all good WordPress meet ups there was a trip to the pub after which I was unable to attend as had to catch the train back but as always I am sure was a great place for further Q&A and WordPress talk.
Coming next month…
Next month’s WordPress London was announced to be a social event due to WordCamp UK and will take place just before the Olympics madness hits the UK. In August normal meet ups will resume. If you would like to find out more about the meetups you do so can here. You can also follow their Twitter account or the hashtag #wpldn.
Slides & Videos
Speakers usually upload their slides and give links on the Meetup page so it’s worth checking that out. There are also some past presentations from WordPress London to be found on the Skills Matter site.