WordCamp Raleigh 2013 – My Key Takeaways

In November, I went to what was quite possibly my favorite event of the year – WordCamp Raleigh!

Though the other conferences I attended in 2013 were wonderful, and I learned a lot, I felt really at home at this WordPress-based conference. The event was broken up into three tracks for Users, Power Users, and Developers. Since I’ve been blogging on WordPress for many years now and I have a tech background, almost all of the tracks were relevant to me. It was a great feeling!

WordCamp took place at NC State University…

… in the beautiful computer science buildings.

I found myself gravitating to the Power User tracks for the most part.

Oh and since I’m a bit of a locavore food blogger (over on my other blog), I was really excited to see Larry’s Beans as a conference refreshment option.

The first day was a little chilly, but we had lunch outside. There were long tables outside, which was really cool because it was great way to meet fellow conference attendees. There were some really cool, like-minded people there.

Lunch = BBQ

{Zac’s photo – used with permission}

While I was in the middle of the event, I found out a Team Treehouse instructor was in the house. Zac Gordon, the Treehouse WordPress instructor, was not only there, but giving out free shirts! I definitely wanted to introduce myself since I was one of few Treehouse students in attendance. The free shirt was pretty great, too.

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Happiness Bar

One of my favorite parts of the event was spending some QT at the Happiness Bar with two friendly Automatticians – Chase and Kevin. When I was able to find a break in between sessions, I stopped by to ask about back-up options for my food/lifestyle blog since it’s just so flippin big. I tried downloading some back-ups awhile back, but they kept timing out. They suggested looking into Vaultpress, which looks like a really solid option. Most hosting accounts also have good back-up options, but offerings vary from company to company and can be dependent upon your account level, etc.

One thing that I learned that was quite possibly one of the most useful tidbits of the weekend was how stable automatic updates typically are. I asked the Automatticians how often the automatic updates break something, and they said as long as you haven’t done too much with your core WordPress files, that the update works about 95% of the time. Say what?! Now, that’s a risk worth taking! And post-event update: Over Christmas vacation, I verified my hosting account had a recent back-up of my site and clicked the auto-update button. Things went perfectly, and I’m happy to say I’m currently rocking the most recent version of WordPress today, plus all my plugins are totally up-to-date, too. Booyah! And thank you, Chase and Kevin!

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My Key Takeaways

I really enjoyed all the presentations I attended, but a couple things really jumped out at me as being especially relevant for my needs. Since I’m just starting to look into the more technical side of WordPress, some of the tech talk was a little over my head for now.

• Gravity Forms is great for capturing custom data for clients/sites or for submitting information to third party services. The presenter, Will, suggested that if you have more than one site or do client work, it’s worth investing in the developer license.
• Vagrant is a great local development environment.
• Research Project Honey Pot for spam protection.
• The Advanced Custom Field (ACF) plugin can be used to create an interface for managing custom meta data. You can use ACF to build custom fields in WordPress. It’s great for making custom solutions for customers, and the plugin is well documented and supported.
• Google Hangouts are a great way to engage your blog audience and interact with readers in a new way. Our presenter, Jake of Dirigo Creative, actually did a live Google Hangout during our presentation! You can record the session and post it to YouTube to share after the event to create extra content.
• There are great plugins that add drag and drop design to any theme. These are great for non-tech blog users. Brett reviewed four: Page Layout Builder, Aqua Page Builder, Widgetized Pages, and Layout Engine. Post-event update: I used Page Layout Builder to make this Event page on my other blog.
• Robots are checkbox people. For keywords: 1) The keyword phrase must be in the headline – automatically H1 (you can format these as you post) 2) The keyword phrase must also be in at least one sub-head (sits above the paragraph – can’t just bold it – there’s a special designation in WP for sub-heads (heading 2) 3) You must use it in the body/copy – 1-4% (300 word story – 3 x keywords – 3% – 12%) – if <1% then they don’t think you’re talking about it and if >4% then they think you’re doing keyword stuffing – never exceed 4%.
• WordPress can be used to create multi-sites where there’s a network of sites under a single WordPress install. The most well-known example of this is WordPress.com. Melodie pointed out that though maintenance is consolidated with multi-sites, users on sub-sites cannot install themes or plugins.
• Look into SEO plugins: All-in-One and Yoast SEO. These plugins are powerful for general SEO and keyword analysis. You can (and should) also use one of these plugins to create a site map for your blog (for use by robots). Post-event update: I installed Yoast SEO and used it to create a site map, which I submitted to my Google Webmaster Tools.

• When using sliders, don’t put the call to action on the last page of the slider. Tom also suggested that you don’t make every call to action for a different thing. A good example is soliloquy where no matter what slide you’re on, it’s the same call to action. The more slides you see, more likely you’ll click on call to action.

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After WordCamp wrapped, I invited Chase, Kevin, and Zac to head out for a post-event lunch at a local restaurant, but Chase and Kevin had to hit the road to head home – each had many hours of travel ahead of them. Luckily, Zac was up for eats so we hit up David’s Dumpling and Noodle Bar. The food was great, and it was really interesting chatting with Zac about blogging, yoga, and Treehouse!

Big thank you to the WordCamp Raleigh organizers – I had a great time!

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Post-Event

I read the book preview inside my goodie bag for The Year Without Pants on a whim and found the writing and story really engaging. I’ve since purchased the book and am 2/3 through. This book is especially interesting for someone like me who works in a completely different, more traditional environment. Looking forward to reading the last third! Is Automattic the future of work? From what I’ve read so far, I hope so!

I briefly considered creating a multi-site for animal rescues. I still want to come up with a solution similar to what I pitched at my first Charlotte Startup Weekend. But, I don’t think I have the skills or time to do something like this…yet. If anyone reading does, please feel free to steal my idea. Save the puppies (and cats, horses, and other animas in need)!

I’ve already looked up all the other WordCamps around, and there are two I could easily reach by driving – Asheville and Atlanta. I’m just not sure if I have enough vacation days from work to go to them because unlike the Raleigh WordCamp, these fall on one business day. Doh! I’m strongly considering just going for the Saturday sessions if nothing else. I love WordCamps! Maybe one day, I’ll be able to present?

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Have you been to a WordCamp before? What was your favorite session? Did you attend more tracks for Users, Power Users, or Developers?