WordCamp 2008

Future of Education and WordPress
slides found at: www.tinyurl.com/5ho3u
tinyurl.com/6b32wx

• Edublogs Magazine – blogs for educators
• WP MultiUser – setup blogs for students at colleges
  
• HomeSchool Journal dot net
  
• Discussing the benefits of using WordPress as a blogging system and communicating with the community
  
• Knowledge Tree
• Comment Press – allows users to comment on all parts of your post
• SocialActions.com
  

WordPress & Microformats: Past, Present, Future
by tantek celik
http://www.tantek.com/

• hcard adds company information to your address book
• firefox plugin Operator 0.9.3
  • reveals all of the microformat information that is displayed on the page
• Google maps adds hcard information to all of their maps results
• BarCamp, subscribe to hcalendar microformat (*.ics format)
• xfn – xhtml friends network
  • xfn 1.1 support added in 2004
• semantic publishing
  • start typing and it predicts what you’re looking for
• BuddyPress
  • Facebook in a box
• GetSatisfaction to syndicate your own profile
  • Goes out to your web site / flickr account and is able to pull in your profile
• DiSo (search google project for information on)
  

Secure Coding with WordPress
By Mark Jaquith

XSS

• Anything that isn’t hardcoded is suspect
• User entered information, not hardcoded
• wp_specialchars() – wrap that around echo $title
• when in html attribute use
  • attribute_escape($title);
• when using href situation
  • clean_url($url);
  • sanitize_url($url);
• escaping javascript situations
  • js_escape()

Cross Site R Forgery

• Doesn’t steal your cookies, but could result in someone making you delete your post
• Authorization v. Intention
  • Tricking your user into doing something that he/she is authorized for
    
  • Validate that you’re in a secure area before doing something
• Nonces (Number used once)
• Validates that you’re in the vault
• Specific to the user and within the time frame that you’re meaning to do it in.
• wp_nonce_field(plugin name-action_object) – front side
  
• check_admin_referer(plugin name-action_object) – back end
• Still need to: current_user_can()

Privilege Escalation

• to limit current_user_can(‘capability’)

Challenges to security

• very soon there will be the ability to update wordpress from within wordpress.
• Inconsistent naming system for security functions
• Security sediment – layer of security that isn’t up to date

Education

• Will post slides to: markjaquith.com/wordpress
• Don’t use roles within the wordpress for authorizing against

Instead use the capabilities (manage-options, edit-post)


Open Source Business Models
by Stephen O’Grady
from RedMonk
http://redmonk.com/public/wordcamp.pdf

• software companies make money via the services they provide around the software, not from the licensing of the software.

SEO Mistakes Most Bloggers Make
by Stephan Spencer
Founder & President, Netconcepts
Find presentation at: http://www.netconcepts.com/learn/seo-mistakes.ppt

• Permalink should rel=nofollow
• No stability in keyword focus on category and tag pages
  • hey, this page is all about blue widgets, etc.
• Shorter urls, not too many hyphens
• RSS is a great channel into Google Blog search (optimize for each category)
  • tag conjunction pages – creates pages where tags are combined (seo / articles = new page seo articles)
• blink – by malcom gladwell
  
  • gut instinct really works
• SEO Title Tag
• Related Posts
• According to eye tracking studies, people click on shorter urls
• rel=nofollow all your links as part of your page sculpting
  

Switching to WordPress Painlessly
by Lloyd Budd (lloyd@automattic.com)




450 WordPress Power Tips (aka 260 ways to break WordPress)
by Lorelle VanFossen

• Firefox Greasemonkey scripts for WordPress
• Reply to From admin panel wordpress plugin by
  
• Absolute Comment WordPress Plugin
  • Engtech – Internet Duct Tape Marketing
• Google Reader Preview Enhanced userscripts.org/scripts/show/9455
  • Woopra WordPress Plugin
  • Beta Guest Code: u0uxj6
    

Hassle-free Upgrades
by Sam Bauers

• Subversion – installer takes some knowledge, however is the easiest to run
  
• in the root directory (folders)
  
  • wordpress
  • wordpress-content
  • wp-config
• Benefits, it has a “clean” wordpress install
  • Assumptions
    • Installing root directory
    • domain is example.com
    • /var/www/root/
• define(‘WP_content_dir’,abspath())

The State of the Word
by Matt Mullenweg
m@mullenweg.com

• Submit / vote on ideas at wordpress.org/extend/ideas
• 11 releases last year
  • Committed to 3 major releases a year
• 80 – 130 people who contribute code into the wiki
  • Before being placed into the core, the code is reviewed for security, etc.
• 6.5 billion pageviews last year on WordPress.com
  • 160 million uniques in one month
• WordPress Zeitgeist
  • 2.6 million WordPress.org
    • of these 1,777,222 are secure blogs (v2.5.1 or higher)
  • 2/3rds of all blogs are PHP5
• Top 10 Plugins
  • cforms
  • wp polls
  • wpupgrade
  • wp-cache
  • wp-db-backup
  • stats
  • nextgen-gallery
  • google sitemap generator
    
  • all in one seo pack
  • akismet
• Starting to watch the plugin statistics to better watch when plugins should be inserted into the core code.
• In 2009, watch for:
  
  • Better Upgrades
    • Community
    • Web Hosts
    • In-Core
      • Coming soon.
  • Security
  • More feature releases instead of security releases
  • Multi-Modal blogging models
  • BackPress, BuddyPress
  • Crazyhorse
  • Year of themes
  • ProLog – an internal Twitter

Getting paid for your WordPress skills
Tips for getting started:

• Hang out your shingle, look professional
• Be clear about what services you offer
• Avoid tire kickers
  • Someone who wastes your time by checking your references, etc.
  • Qualify your users first
    
• Think about geography
  

• wp-jobs, wp-pro mailing list
• SEO, referrals, designed by credit link
• free themes and plugins

Automattic list

A Conversation with Om Malik
The Commidization of News
Headline, twitter style message, a link
gigaomdaily.com

GigaLogue
* inspired by prologue
* Twitter, RSS and Email aggregation
* Groups and Communities (notes from twitter, videos from Vodpod)
* dev.gigaom.com


Riding the Crazyhorse
by Jane Wells & Liz Danzico (User Experience Directors)

The Paradox of the Active User
User Focused Personas

• Solo blogger
• Multiple User
• Admin

Kicking Ass and Creating Passionate Users
by Kathy Sierra

What is more important (the company kicks ass… the product kicks ass…)
Secret answer ‘c’: I kick ass as a result of….!!!
What did (do) you want to be really, really good at?
If someone could tell you, I can make you really good at that…
Being better is better. it allows you too look at things differently
He who gets through the suck threshold quicker, makes more passionate users
They’ll become passionate become they become really good at what the tool allows them to do. Not that they’re great at the tool.
What do you help your users kick ass at?

• How can we help the users be better at [x]?
• Serendipity
  • Psychic Shuffle
  • Add randomness
• The Dog Ears Design Principle
  • Test your stuff for “aliveness”. Find the spark
    
  • Fluidity
• ?
  
• T-Shirt First Development
  • What does being your user SAY about a person?
• Easter Eggs and Other Treats
  • Head first design patterns
  • FedEx logo
• Tools for enthusiasm
  • Video: Twitter in Plain English (common craft)
    
  • Help users defend this “totally lame waste of time”
• You are a…
  • How are you making your users feel? Stressed (Fight / flight)
    
  • stresseraser.com
• Give them super powers
  • “Users must do something cool within 30 minutes” Electric Rain
    
• Make them smarter
  • Stand Up on one foot to get smarter (lol)
  • Matt Webb???
• The secret to passionate users
• Speed their knowledge aquisition
  • learn to do knowledge aquisition and (find patterns, patterns, patterns)
  • Bruce Wilcox
  • Give them kicking ass patterns
• Make your product docs reflect your users feelings
  • How it is written, and how they actually feel
• Help with reinvestment of mental resources into new problems
  • Experts keep taking on new things and push through the edge
  • Hero’s journey
• Do not insist on “inclusivity” in your communities
  
  • push the experts over to another areas from beginners
    • They can use their jargon and come to conclusions quicker
      
• Practice seductive opacity
  • Have something that can be delivered
• Inspire first person language