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
 As a sidenote, I want to add that these are all great measures that should be combined with hardening your Server platform and implementing best practice security measures on your PC and local network.

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

Wordcamp Sydney: 3 people who have never met beforeA 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???

 

About the Author Charly Dwyer

Charly has more than 30 years experience in the IT industry ranging from hands-on technical, to high-level business management, Charly has installed and configured computing equipment and has managed business contracts in excess of $25 million dollars.

As a result, Charly identifies the best way to integrate solutions and technologies for the most cost effective way to achieve a businesses outcome.

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