I know I have complained in the past that conferences often leave me disappointed. WordCamp Boston was without a doubt one of the better conferences I have been to. I spent a lot of time in the development and design tracks, learning a HELL of a lot of information. Here are some of my favorite presentations from WordCamp Boston.
JQuery in WP Presented by Jim Doran
His Blog- His Twitter- His Presentation Slides (.pdf download)
Session description: Using jQuery in your WordPress Theme. jQuery is a lightweight JavaScript framework that’s extremely popular with Web designers and developers. This session presents an overview of jQuery and how to start using it. I’ll walk through a case study that uses jQuery with a new, homemade WP theme and demonstrate layout techniques, animation effects, DOM manipulation and AJAX/JSON. This session will show beginners how to start using jQuery and how to begin making WordPress themes.
What I learned: I have taken and use some jQuery bits and pieces in the past but didn’t have a full understand of what it can do or the community behind it. This presentation broke down some jQuery, explained how it worked, and gave examples of how the presenter has deployed it.
The Future is Now: WP Themes With HTML 5 by Rob Larsen
His Blog- His Twitter- His Presentation Slides (.ppt download)
Session Description: Excited about HTML5? Wish you could start using the new semantic elements right now? You can. In this presentation Rob Larsen will show you how to create cross-browser, HTML5 enhanced WordPress themes using nothing more than a little extra JavaScript, basic WordPress knowledge and some knowledge of the new elements.
What I learned: You can start programming for HTML5 now and some of the major changes to it. Really interesting and a lot of great examples, specifically a recoded default WordPress theme done in HTML5 with the code in the slide show.
Get Thee Behind Me: Making BuddyPress Do Thy Bidding by Boone Gorges
Session Description: With BuddyPress, you can build your own social network on top of WordPress in just a few minutes. But every community is unique (freakish?) in its own ways, and BuddyPress’s default setup won’t work for everyone. Sometimes you want more than the standard BuddyPress, sometimes you want less, and sometimes you want something that doesn’t look social networkish at all. In this session I’ll talk about the structure of BuddyPress and how the parts work together. Then I’ll demonstrate a few examples of how you can use plugins, config files, and child themes to make BuddyPress work for your unique and freakish purposes.
What I learned: First of all Boone was just a fun speaker to watch: good-natured, good-humored, and really knowledgeable. I am really pumped about deploying BuddyPress to a single WordPress install and this made me feel a lot more comfortable with deployment as well as answering some questions I had about theming. I was so inspired I started an install and cloning a site for a friend the day after WordCamp.
Here are my favorite two Ignite Sessions:
Brad Williams – Top WordPress Plugins You’ve Never Heard Of
Session Description: Learn about the most amazing unheard of plugins that exist! Presentation will include 20 of the best plugins you’ve never heard of.
Michael Susz – Short Codes: Pain Free Magic
Session Description: Many people i meet are unaware that they can mix output from php functions into editable content in WordPress; from simple things like displaying the current date, to retrieving & formatting data and flowing it into a page. my talk will introduce people to short codes, explain how powerful they are, and how they can be customized with attributes.