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:
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???
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