Professional WordPress coach and speaker Bob Dunn will be presenting on “Your WordPress Site as a Hub for Connections & Conversation.” We have almost 100 RSVPs already and are looking forward to a lively group to spur the conversation at the meetup.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

- Cal

View meetup details

Date: Thursday, July 7, 2011
Time: 6:30 PM
Location: TechStars Seattle, 511 Boren Ave N. Suite B Seattle, WA

New Admin UI

• Cleaner, crisper, admin bar
• Improved Views: Dashboard, Themes, Menus
• Fullscreen Writing Mode (Distraction Free)

New Default Theme

Twentyeleven

• two default color schemes
• layout options
• header options

Improved Upgrades

Upgrades will occur more quickly when you update versions of WordPress due to changes in how upgrades are done.

Health Check

WordPress 3.2 requires PHP 5.2.4 or newer and MySQL 5.0 or newer. You can install the Health Check plugin to see if your host meets the requirements.

Learn More

• WordPress 3.2 Beta 1
• What’s Coming in WordPress 3.2
• Sneak Peek of the In-Development WordPress 3.2 Dashboard
• WordPress 3.2 Project Schedule

Topic: Creating a WordPress E-Commerce Site

Come learn how to create an e-commerce website using WordPress.

This event is also a great opportunity to meet new people in the WordPress community. We regularly have 60+ people at the event including bloggers, developers, designers, marketers, SEOs, entrepreneurs, and more.

More details at Meetup.com.

Date: April 13, 2011
Time: 6:30pm
Location: TechStars, 511 Boren Ave N., Seattle, WA (we’re in the basement!)

Topic: Hardening WordPress: Securing your installation
Speaker: Andrew Villeneuve

WordPress is a popular choice not only as a blogging platform, but as a content management system. Although the WordPress developers work hard to patch exploits when they are discovered, users who self-host their own WordPress blogs are ultimately responsible for security

Unfortunately, not enough WordPress administrators take security seriously, and as a result, WP sites get needlessly compromised. “Hardening WordPress” will focus on securing an installation and protecting it from hackers. Topics covered will include upgrading, using HTTPS, setting permissions, making backups, best-in-class security plugins, and configuring .htaccess to build a strong firewall.

Speaker Bio: Andrew Villeneuve is an entrepreneur and activist who discovered WordPress while looking for the ideal blogging platform in 2006. A lifelong Washingtonian, he is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute (a political strategy center working to raise America’s quality of life through innovative research and imaginative advocacy), as well as a columnist for Reporter Newspapers. He became a security evangelist after being repeatedly called on to assist friends in un-hacking their WordPress sites, which had been disfigured and/or compromised.

Other Events This Month
WordCamp Seattle 2011 is happening on Saturday, April 16, 2011 at the University of Washington. WordCamp Seattle is a one-day conference about WordPress – the world’s most popular content management system, blogging platform, and website creation tool.

Check out the agenda and register for the event now.

Click here to view the embedded video.

View Jason Schuller’s presentation from the February meetup in the video below. He discusses why he loves WordPress, why he launched Press75.com, how he makes money using WordPress, and what he’s working on next.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Seattle WordPress Meetup for March is once again occurring at TechStars.

Date: Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Time: 6:30 PM
Location: TechStars / Founder’s Co-op

Address:
511 Boren Ave N.
Suite B
Seattle, WA 98109

Join our meetup group and add the Seattle WordPress Meetup to your calendar.

Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Time: 6:30 PM
Location: TechStars / Founder’s Co-op

Address:
511 Boren Ave N.
Suite B
Seattle, WA 98109

Join our meetup group and add the Seattle WordPress Meetup to your calendar.

The first Seattle WordPress Meetup of 2011 was our biggest meetup to date, with over 80 RSVP’s, and over 50+ actually showing up. (*For reviews of past events, scroll to bottom of article and check out some of the other “Related Posts”). In an attempt to create a history of meetups, I’ve done my best to take minutes at these events. January 2011 Meetup notes, agenda & details below:

6:30 – Introductions:
Quick intro the meetup concept and overall agenda.

6:35 – WordPress News:
3.0.4 was pushed off around XMas. There was a security bug they caught and fixed…but if you haven’t updated, you’re still at risk. What’s the risk? We don’t know…but update! But it was important enough for Matt to announce it. Version 3.1 is rolling along, at release candidate 2 which means it’s good enough for developers to play with it. The core team has been doing a lot of work on that. One of the bigger updates is the hyperlink form will now have a list of all the pages to choose from. Check out WPBeginner.com for the complete list.

6:40 – WordCamp Updates:
Set for April 16th, 2011, you can find updated WordCamp information on WordCampSeattle.org. Tickets aren’t quite ready, but should be out within the month. Keynote speakers, breakout sessions and more are in the works now. If you have suggestions and want to help out, please contact Calvin or Josh via the WordCampSeattle website. Estimated ticket price, somewhere in the range of $35-$40 an hour for an all day conference. That’s pretty good for an all day, and we’re shooting for excellent speakers and presentations.

6:45 – Presentation 1: Plugin Show & Tell – Contact Forms Plugins For WordPress
Merrill Mayer presented on Contact Form 7, though we arrived at the conclusion that it wasn’t ideal for beginners that aren’t tech savvy and is unable to import into a database.

Bob Dunn introduced Gravity Forms ($39). While he uses Contact Form 7 quite a bit, once he switched to Gravity Forms, he was hooked. It handles contact forms, surveys and more. When designing, beware that it pulls in the theme’s CSS, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you want to customize the CSS, there’s a field directly within the forms to edit that. As a perk, when you buy the license, you get a lot of strong documentation, video’s, support and more to help out. For you geeks out there, you can enable conditional logic (ie. click one box and the other boxes will change depending on your selection). And I quote Bob directly, “yea…it’s pretty sweet!”

7:10 – Break, Networking…& PIZZA sponsored by Page.ly

7:30 – Presentation 2: SEO for WordPress
Justin Briggs and Geoff Kenyon, SEO Consultants at Distilled, presented on a heavier look at SEO for WordPress. Because the presentation was long and too interesting to divert my attention to typing, they will provide the presentation and notes on the distilled site. Tune in to Geoff’s Twitter Account for the update – @GeoffKenyon. Still unhappy with lack of info? Make sure to come next time For now, if you have SEO related questions, feel free to contact Justin & Geoff. UPDATE: Link for their presentation/resources here: http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/wordpress-seo-presentation-seattle-meetup/

8:00 – Two Tracks – Advanced/Dev Track & Beginner/User/Designer Track.
We split up to discuss best ways to meet the interests of our members. Individual tracks formed to discuss and plan future topics for their respective group meetings. You can participate in whichever one you prefer. Go to one one month and the other the next. It’s up to you! We plan on making this a regular thing.

8:30 – Conclusion/Announcements
In an effort to support the Seattle WordPress Job Market, First Time Online built out the new Seattle WordPress Job Board. The goal is to increase the amount of jobs posted. First Time Online already takes jobs and spreads them out to the local developer market, and this is an effort to invite clients to contact developers and bypass the middle man.

8:45 – Close Doors!