Wordcamp Sydney 2012 – #wcsyd

Wordcamp Sydney 2012 has been and gone – and what a weekend it was!  Firstly, kudos to Dee, Alison, Tracey and Pete for a fabulously run weekend. Having run events myself, I know just how much effort goes into getting it together and running smoothly and I’m in awe at the great job these guys did.

If you missed it, I wrote a ‘wrap up’ on the Saturday here : Wordcamp Sydney 2012 My Take Away Points, so I won’t rehash them again. Instead, I’ll share my take away’s from the Sunday – which seemed to focus on theming and content.

I have to say that Wordcamp Sydney 2012 was phenomenal value – when we compare the price of the tickets to what we received, there is absolutely no doubt – we received so much more than the price of the tickets indicated.

Securing WordPress

Vlad Lasky shared his experiences with securing and hardening WordPress – something that is very near and dear to my heart (my last trip in paid work was in IT Security).  Vlad shared:

• Initiate backups remotely – that way hackers can’t delete backup files before they transfer
• Rename the Admin user to something that is more difficult to guess.
• Use one of the Firewall plugins (Vlad suggested WP Firewall 2)
• Force SSL login for wp-admin
• Use a login lockdown plugin to foil brute force attacks

WordPress Child Themes

Chris Aprea shared his wisdom on Child Themes – why you should use them and how to implement them.  I loved Chris’s presentation – it hit the right level and provided a couple “isn’t that interesting” moments.

Chris shared one thing that obviously hit a chord with many developers in the room:

Don’t use !important in your base styles

It was widely agreed that you should provide styles that allow your developers to directly address those elements without overriding the styles with a hammer!

From the Client Perspective

This wasn’t the name of the presentation – but it was the part that resonated with me. Lachlan shared a development philosophy from the clients perspective… it was very enlightening.

Right Versus Pragmatic

Whilst there are “right things” to be done – these need to be balanced by the “pramatic”.  Lachlan shared a great example of  where the pragmatic approach wins out over the right approach.  Check his Wordcamp Sydney slides out here…

Lachlan also suggested that we develop for “Zero Support” – which I support wholeheartedly!  Lachlan also suggested we consider “What Would Core Do” … and follow Automattics lead.

Siloing for SEO

Stephen Cronin discussed the benefits of Siloing content for SEO…. and I discovered that I was doing a lot of it naturally.

Essentially, and this is a really shallow dip into what Stephen shared, siloing is about categorizing your information to make it easier to find.  Whilst this sounds like common sense – so many of us write content on our blogs and that content forms just one big amphorous mass… siloing is a means of organizing that content.

Stephen stated what many had said over the weekend:

But I build sites for people, not search engines

This is so powerful – it’s important to remember that ultimately – we want to engage with people and have people read (and take action) on our content — sometimes we need to sacrifice a little “SEO juice” to get the human perspective.

Stop Hacking WordPress…

I won’t cover my presentation – but you can review the slides on Slideshare: Wordcamp Sydney 2012 – Stop Hacking WordPress

Wordcamp Sydney: Was it worth it?

A big resound “YES” from both Morgan and I.  Not only were the presentations incredibly informative and interesting – connecting with  other WordPress lovers at Wordcamp Sydney was fantastic.  A big shout out to those who took time to connect with Morgan and draw him out of his shell – he had such a great time!

Wordcamp Sydney Bingo

A great way to involve your community is to get them to be photographers for the event.  One ‘challenge’ thrown out to participants was the Wordcamp Sydney 2012 Bingo — we have to take photographs of 12 different people (meeting various criteria) and post them to twitter.  The one ‘challenge’ I liked best was the “3 people who have never met”… I had trouble with this one – cause once I had met someone I felt like I had known them forever!

The Wordcamp Sydney 2012 Slides

Want to see the presentations from Wordcamp Sydney 2012?  You can view them all below:

[iframe https://www.slideshare.net/wordcampsyd/slideshelf 490 470]

Or, click view the Wordcamp Sydney 2012 slides by clicking here

Overall, Wordcamp Sydney was incredible value – and I was proud to have taken a Community Sponsorship.

The question is now open – can we be a Wordcamp Canberra happening???