July 28th, 2010
As I mentioned in my previous post I’m thinking of starting a meetup group for all things WordPress in the Sussex and Surrey areas.
I’m not sure of the exact format yet but I’m thinking if we start with small ambitions and try organise a monthly meetup for users and developers interested in WordPress and any of its sister projects.
I am thinking of organising something on a week night with the first meetup to happen in August and then try to arrange them to occur on a monthly basis.
So as I can get an idea of interested numbers and ideal locations please comment on this post if you would be interested in attending letting me know if there are any week nights you can’t do and with the area you would be travelling from so I can try to pick somewhere that is easily accessible to as many people as possible.
Once I’ve got a good idea of numbers and localities I will arrange the first meetup.
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July 19th, 2010
This past weekend was the 3rd WordCamp to be held in the UK and I had a great time both as a speaker and a participant. It is great to see how the event has grown over the past 2 years from a small affair with around 50 attendees up to one with around 150.
I am really impressed with the way in which a disparate group of people have pulled together with little central coordination and pulled together a great event. However I do think that we need to sit back and reflect on where we have come from where we are going and what is going to serve the community at large. The community of WordPress users and developers has grown at an astounding rate over the past few years and so has the number of WordCamps.
For me this years WordCamp had some great learning points for how we can do better – these come from things that have affected me directly and also feedback I have received from others.
- We need to get tickets on sale earlier – people like to organise their weekends and travel in advance
- We need to organise the schedule better – having focused tracks for different audiences with a list of topics and presenters available in advance so that people can plan their schedule and know what they are going to find out.
- We need to think about how we lay out the rooms – It was harder to get to know the other attendees this year because we were in front facing lecture theatre style layout rather than the Banquet/Cabaret style layout we’ve used in the past
- We need to think about naming – WordCamps are big and small and I think that the UK community has reached the tipping point where it could support more than one some years. We could do more to emphasise that by thinking about the name and maybe name the next one after the City/Town/Region that it is held in to make it really obvious that other UK based WordCamps would be great.
- I think we should try harder to organise some more regional groups to try an emulate the success that has been achieved in Manchester – I wonder how many people would be interested in a monthly WordPress Sussex meetup? Let me know!
- We need to think more about the social events – It was great to get to visit FAC251 but it really wasn’t the best venue for networking and talking to other WordPress users / developers – I would have much preferred a quieter venue where I could have actually talked to people and not felt like I was melting.
- We need to consider focussing on a single kick-ass day of major sessions and the leaving the second day for more informal networking and BarCamp style lightning talks – this is a format that quite a few other WordCamps around the world are using with great success and ensures that there is lots of time for the spontaneous connections to be made.
I know that some of these suggestions may seem controversial, and I’ve read about the wrap-up session that I missed, but we should remember that anyone in the community at large has the right to organise another WordCamp and if there are people in the UK that would like to organise other “competing” events I think we should try as hard as possible to support them in any way we can – we know how difficult it was to get the first event off the ground and have built an infrastructure of contacts and resources that they should be able to leverage to make it easier.
If you want to get involved in organising a WordCamp and want to find out more read on here and if you have any questions feel free to email me!
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July 3rd, 2010
Some of my favourite photos from today
Unfortunately, the one shot I got of Ken Block was just a blur! Hopefully I’ll get some more tomorrow.
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April 23rd, 2010
During last nights WordPress dev chat we got distracted by the Kitteh. Now we have a WordPress Kitteh meme – http://cheezburger.com/View/3444964352
My contribution:
Ok intarwebs, sawry, working on 3.0 now
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January 6th, 2010
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January 2nd, 2010
As a WordPress lead developer, every time I see someone recommending editing a core WordPress file, a little bit of me dies.
You should always avoid editing the core files and put your modifications into a plugin so as to ensure you have a smooth upgrade experience to a future WordPress version.
Therefore inspired by the following forum post here is how to change one of the translatable strings in WordPress without hacking a core file using the filters available in the translation functions:
<?php
/*
Plugin Name: PJW Translation Mangler
Plugin URI: http://blog.ftwr.co.uk/#
Description: Example of how to mangle translated strings.
Author: Peter Westwood
Version: 0.01
Author URI: http://blog.ftwr.co.uk/
*/
class PJW_Translation_Mangler {
/**
* Filter the translation string before it is displayed.
*
* @param $translation The current translation
* @param $text The text being translated
* @param $context The context for the translation
* @param $domain The domain for the translation
* @return string The translated / filtered text.
*/
function filter_gettext($translation, $text, $domain) {
$translations = &get_translations_for_domain( $domain );
if ( $text == 'View all posts filed under %s' ) {
return $translations->translate( 'See all articles filed under %s' );
}
return $translation;
}
}
add_filter('gettext', array('PJW_Translation_Mangler', 'filter_gettext'), 10, 4);
?>
The filter used in this example gettext is one of a set of filters in the translation functions in wp-includes/l10n.php which also include gettext_with_context, ngettext, and ngettext_with_context.
Posted in Development, Tutorials, WordPress | Read 9 Comments
December 18th, 2009
I can’t remember the last time we had snow in the UK this close to Christmas.
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A snowy garden
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A snowy garden
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November 3rd, 2009
Taken with a Canon EOS 300D + 70-200 f4L IS + 1.4x Extender
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