We talk about a lot of resources, the WordPress admin interface, the future of WordPress, and evil web developers, and I share my teaching philosophy about explaining how WordPress works before jumping into the how-to.
Fun fact: This weekend, noted Disney aficionado Jason Tucker, Chris Lema and some other WPwatercooler alumni went to Disneyland’s legendary Club 33. And today was WPwatercooler’s 33rd episode! Coincidence??
Today I presented a talk at WordCamp Reno-Tahoe called “Make It Work: Building an Awesome WordPress Website for your Small Business”. I thought I had 35 minutes, but only had 30 … and finished in 29:30! Gotta make it work! 😀
There was a lot of great Twitter feedback from attendees (thank you!), but my favorite response EVER was in the form of a meme graphic, which is pretty much the greatest thing ever. Thank you Patricia Smith for this gem!!
SO AWESOME. Anyway, my slides are below … please feel free to hit me up if you have any questions or want to follow up!
Make It Work: Creating an Awesome WordPress Website for Your Small Businesswill provide an overview of how small business owners can easily create an effective and efficient WordPress website from the ground up, including setting up WordPress, choosing the best theme, using the right plug-ins and developing SEO-friendly content.
Most of the Watercooler crew headed to WordCamp Miami this week. Chris Lema, Suzette Franck and Steve Zenghut were all speaking, and Jason Tucker tagged along for fun. Having just gotten back from two weeks of Craftcation and music video shooting, I opted out, but was still able to patch in to chat via good ole’ Google Hangout.
This isn’t the most on-topic episode ever, but it certainly provides a behind-the-scenes look at both the WPwatercooler and the camaraderie you find at WordCamps everywhere.
Sure the watercooler just *happened* to fall on April Fools’ Day this year … but that has nothing to do with why this episode is all about Drupal! We discuss most everything we know about Drupal (read: not much!) for a full 30 minutes.
In the words of the estimable Steve Zenghut: “I’ve been bullshitting my whole life, what’s 30 more minutes?”
**Please note: this ENTIRE episode was improvised with about 5 minutes of show prep. SecondCity, here I come!
We talk about the upcoming WordCamp San Diego, including the brand new Business Development Day on Sunday. The brainchild of Chris Lema, the Business Development Day is being held on Sunday in lieu of the informal Dev Day that is usually help the day after WordCamp.
There are many ways to customize WordPress themes and, as with all web development, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Like I say about most website development … it depends!
The best approach is affected by a lot of factors, including the site’s scope, the development budget and the site’s overall objectives.
When I build custom sites for clients, I always start with an empty or starter theme (usually Starkers). For my SBDC clients, I primarily stick to doing light customization in a child theme, usually twentytwelve.
Check out what the rest of the WPwatercooler crew has to say about it:
For the last five months, every Monday at 11am PST has found me in front of a computer, chatting about WordPress for a 30-minute, live-streamed roundtable discussion called WPwatercooler. The show is the brainchild of Jason Tucker, who conceived of the idea as a way to blend his love of podcasting and WordPress with the energy and creativity of the OC WordPress Meetup group. Mix in professional enabler Chris Lema and BOOM! WHAMMO! Show.
The format is pretty simple: We use Google Hangouts to get up to 10 people in a group chat, and Jason streams it live on YouTube. He also archives it on the WPwatercooler YouTube channel, and sets it up as a podcast on iTunes and a few other channels.
We start off with a general topic, but like with any watercooler conversation, it veers off in directions we weren’t expecting, like in Episode 17, where less than a minute before broadcast, Steve Zenghut decided we should all play a secret word game, and the entire show suddenly had a very, well, odd vocabulary (mega bonus points to anyone who can find all the words we slipped in).
Today we filmed our 20th episode … and crossed the threshold of ONE MILLION views.
That’s pretty awesome. It’s also a little unnerving.
When Jason asked me to be on the show, I thought it sounded fun. I love my OCWP peeps and as a freelancer, the idea of some weekly camaraderie focused on WordPress sounded great. I had never done a group Hangout before, and in that first episode you can totally tell ::cringe::.
Now, five months later, I’m still perfecting my Hangout etiquette, but I’ve been on 17 of the 20 episodes, even patching in from Northern California, Austin TX, and Phoneix, AZ. We also did three remote broadcasts from WordCamp Phoenix, four if you count the Friday episode where we botched the sound and I forgot I was on a laptop and leaned in at a less-than-chaste angle. (Thankfully Jason took that episode offline.) And we’re working on doing more remote broadcasts from WordCamp Miami.
Did I say unnerving? How about unlikely?
Six months ago if you had put “being on a YouTube show”on a list of 1,000 things and asked me to choose 500 I thought I might possibly be doing in six months, it wouldn’t have made the cut. It wasn’t anywhere near my radar.
Of course, like a lot of unlikely occurrences, it actually makes perfect sense. In high school, I helped put together the daily news broadcast. In the late 90s’ tech bubble I worked at a start-up called CyberRadioTV, a far-before-its-time Internet television/radio station, where I produced three hour-long webcasts on sports and politics, as well as the live DJ shows on the weekends. And in the past few years I’ve collaborated with various folks to produce a few promotional videos and a music video or two for my sister’s band. Despite my penchant for print, it seems broadcast has always been hanging around.
The difference now is that I’m in front of the camera instead of behind it. And my … well, let’s call it quirkiness, is now not only recorded for all posterity, but people are actually watching it. A lot of people. Given the innocuous way the show started, it didn’t even occur to me to consider the possibility that people would watch it, which is probably the reason I agreed to be on it in the first place.
One million views is a pretty exciting milestone for any online endeavor.
Jason and Chris have done an incredible job of taking a solid concept, executing it quickly, and following through. All feelings about said quirkiness notwithstanding, it’s been great fun, and more than a little inspiring, to watch it grow. I am delighted to be a part of WPwatercooler and I am excited to see where it goes!
So cheers to you Jason, Chris, and my various WPwatercooler cohorts. Congratulations on a million views and here’s to a million more!
Photo credit: Photo by Nils Rinaldi | Some rights reserved
The ASBDC
(America’s Small Business Development Center Network) conference in New Orleans was really great! I put together a curriculum about basic web development called “I Need A Website,” answering specific questions that I know SBDC consultants get and addressing specific SBDC concerns, such as liability and meeting limitations.The entire second half of the presentation was a primer in how to get a WordPress site up and running in a short amount of time.
I presented for about three hours to about 40 folks and felt really great about it, especially since a lot of the audience came up to me after the session to tell me how much they had gotten out of it. Nevertheless, I was thoroughly delighted to get the results of the session evaluations emailed to me a few hours later!
I sometimes miss the finality (validation?) of a getting a grade, so to me this was like getting an A+. Side note: I do talk fast, but this was an especially info-packed session! Perhaps next year I can do a full day.
Aside from the conference, I really enjoyed exploring New Orleans … it’s full of awesome small businesses!
I also had a really interesting conversation with a representative from the SBA about Walmart, in which I made a case for small business vis-a-vis Walmart that I was rather surprised I needed to make. But that’s a whole different post.
Recently I received an email from an SBDC consultant who had not attended my workshop, but heard about it from a colleague who did. He is working with a small business in a rural area that doesn’t have a website and is slowly losing business. He wrote to ask if he could check out my slides in the hope that it would help his client create a website. I don’t feel my presentation slides are especially helpful without my narration. But I really want to help this small business! So I’m going to do a few write-ups in order to hopefully help my fellow consultant to help this small business. And in the hopes that it will help some other small businesses, I will post the writeups here, along with the worksheets I created. Stay tuned!
First, I get to go to New Orleans, LA, to speak at my very first National Conference! I’m conducting a three-hour presentation on web site development for small businesses at the ASBDC Annual Conference!
Incidentally, I had thought ASBDC stood for Association of Small Business Development Centers … however it is apparently an acronym that culled from part of the phrase “Representing America’s Small Business Development Centers.” Or something. I’m still not quite clear.
Wherever its name comes from, the ASBDC serves as the national conference for all of the Small Business Development Centers in the United States. I’m stoked to be going, let alone presenting!
Then, I’m flying straight from New Orleans back to L.A. to give another presentation at WordCampLA!
This will be my third WordCamp ever and my second speaking at one. (My first was WordCamp Phoenix, then I spoke at WordCampOC back in June. Both were awesome!) I am completely hooked on WordCamp. I think it is a reflection of my affection for WordPress itself. Truthfully, it’s nice being in a roomful of people who also think WordPress is fun and powerful and useful as … well, just really useful.
The best part about both of these conferences? Not only do I get to present, but I get to learn! A LOT!* Oh la la indeed!
*I realize that sounds uber-cheesy. But I don’t care. It’s true!
Woot, 
There are many ways to customize WordPress themes and, as with all web development, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Like I say about most website development … it depends!
