In this episode, Marcus Couch and I are joined by Andrea Middleton who manages WordCamp Central. She tells us what it means to be a “dot organizer” within Automattic and what her day to day duties are managing WordCamp Central. We discuss whether the WordCamp Guidelines allow for differentiation between WordCamps. Middleton explains the various initiatives in place to help first-time organizers with planning their event. Last but not least, we talk about the importance of sponsorships and how they’ve enabled WordCamps to be affordable to the general public.
WordCamp Resource Material:
Stories Discussed:
BuddyPress 2.1 Patsy Released
iThemes Suffers Security Breach, Customers Urged To Reset Passwords
Netropolitan “Facebook for Rich People” is Powered by WordPress and BuddyPress
Plugins Picked By Marcus:
Admin Branding – Completely brand the admin dashboard and login screen through easy and straight forward controls. You can do advanced customizations and branding by adding your own CSS and JavaScript. Fits both regular users and developers.
CoursePress – CoursePress turns WordPress into a powerful online learning platform. Set up online courses by creating learning units with quiz elements, video, audio etc. You can also assess student work, sell your courses and much more.
Widget Menuizer – Widget Menuizer makes it possible to embed sidebars within your site’s menus. Anything you can do with a widget can now be done inside your menus. This makes the menu system much more powerful, as it allows for easy creation of sophisticated “mega dropdowns” and other menu fanciness without completely overhauling the menu management system into something unfamiliar.
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Listen To Episode #163:
[powerpress]
Jeff, they’re not paying for the technology of BuddyPress plus a theme… they’re paying for the community created by it. I mean, theoretically, if the site worked.