For those not already aware, we now use meetup.com for publicising our events, so be sure to join our meetup.com group.

This blog is no longer used to announce our events.

We look forward to seeing you at our next event!

Below is a summary of the meetup:

Please, please, please…

• Tweet the meetings using #wpmelb
• Checkin on Foursquare or Meetup.com

WordPress News

• WordPress Melbourne is a year old. It’s grown from 5 people getting locked out of rooms RMIT to 40+ people each month at Openhub. Any suggestions for a new venue would be appreciated, WordPress Melbourne can’t grow any further without a new location.
• WooThemes have forked Jigoshop into WooCommerce.
• Plugins that haven’t been updated for two or more years will soon drop out of the WordPress.org plugin directory
• Yoast’s WordPress SEO plugin has moved out of beta, Version 1.0.1 is available in the WordPress.org plugin repository
• Videos from WordCamp San Francisco have been released
• WordPress 3.3 has improved performance around permalink structure

WordPress Job Opportunities

• Dillon is after front end contractors/freelancers.
• TedX Melbourne are looking for freelancers willing to do some probono WordPress work.

WordPress Events

• Software Freedom Day; Sept 17, 12-7pm; The Hub, Docklands; Free entry
• WordCamp Gold Coast; November 5 and 6; Bond University; $75

General questions

• Andrew is after events management registration and payment plugin. Anthony feels that there are no decent plugins available & up to date in the WP.org repository.
• Will the WP.com comments system be integrated in WP.org?
  This uses the IntenseDebate plugin, an automattic competitor to Disqus.
• Has anyone used SEO Scribe? No, many members recommended Yoast’s SEO plugin.

We then ate Pizza.

Talks

Anthony Cole – Themes

• What is a theme
• How themes are built
• Theme Features
• History of themes
• Child Themes

Dee Teal – Getting to grips with Genesis

• What: A theme framework
• Why: Faster than coding from scratch and is security tested
• How: Start with the basic setting within WordPress.

Below is a gallery photos taken at the WordPress Meetup with special thanks to Andrew Davis.

A Special thanks goes out to Peter Wilson (@pwcc) for writing this post!

Below is a summary of the meetup:

WordPress News

• WordPress 3.3 scope (November 15)
• Media Uploader rewritten
• Responsive admin/dashboard for large monitors and other devices
• Performance improvements (/%postname%/ permalinks)
• BuddyPress 1.5 betas
• TimThumb exploit
• WordCamp San Francisco on this weekend

WordPress Job Opportunities

Who has any WordPress job vacancies/opportunities?

• Aaron – Sitepoint are hiring a WordPress gun
• David – freelance ad-hoc WordPress developer (can work remotely). Government and small business eCommerce projects. @davemac
• Vernon – simple WordPress site. Good sports program.
• Vernon – social network (possibly BuddyPress) project.
• Cullen – troubleshooting end of WordPress project.

WordPress Job Seekers

Who is looking for work in the WordPress industry?

None.

BuddyPress Case Study – BuddyPress use in an English Language School – Vernon Fowler

Vernon’s excellent BuddyPress presentation is available here: BuddyPress case study

Head over to the event page on meetup.com to check out what we’re doing! And don’t forget to share us on Facebook and Twitter.

Numbers are limited, so be sure to RSVP to reserve your spot!

Below is a summary of the three new features for the meetup:

WordPress News

What’s new in the WordPress arena in the last month?

• WordPress 3.2 (and 3.2.1) releases
• WordPress 3.1.4 security fix release
• WordPress now responsible for over 50 million websites!
• WordPress 3.3 to be dropping IE7 support (according to Mark Jaquith)?
• WordPress 3.1 downloaded 15,000,000+ times in 4 months (approx. 1 per second!)
• BuddyPress 1.2.9
• New Amazon Web Services (AWS) User Group
• WordCamp Gold Coast – November 5-6 2011! Ticket sales open ($75)
• Help for WordCamp organisers at plan.wordcamp.org
• Web hosting company Distribute.IT hacked. Bought by NetRegistry

WordPress Job Opportunities

Job vacancies/opportunities in the WordPress industry:

• Aaron from Sitepoint seeking WordPress developer(s). Email aaron [at] sitepoint.com
• Visual producer in Fitzroy using WordPress. Looking for talented WP devs/designers. Email hi [at] hodyhong.com
• Lucille Richards
• Vernon maybe looking for BuddyPress devs
• Digital magazine on WordPress looking for 1-2 devs. Michelle. TheGlobalYogi.com

WordPress Job Seekers

Attendees looking for work in the WordPress industry:

• Andrew Davis – ad-hoc 1-1 WordPress training with non technical people. How to use WordPress

See Meetup.com for more information and to register.

See Meetup.com for more information and to register.

The following topics will be discussed:

Peter Wilson – Hosting Client Websites on a WordPress Multisite Network
Peter Wilson will be showing us how to use WordPress Multisite to host your client websites.

This reduces maintenance time because upgrading all of your client sites becomes almost as easy as upgrading it for one.

WordPress multisite was a popular topic at our March meetup, so come along and learn all about WordPress Multisite.

WordPress Q and A
The usual question and answer session where people can ask any WordPress-related questions.

We’ll then be visiting a local pub for some casual drinks and chit-chat.

When?

Wednesday 11 May 2011 at Openhub with a 6:30pm start.

Where?

Openhub
Level 1, 243 Collins St
(Manchester Lane)
Melbourne CBD

Manchester Lane is off Collins St in between Swanston St and Elizabeth St.

Hungry?

Our sponsor, Envato has graciously offered to provide free pizza for this meetup!

Important

Please note that this meetup has limited numbers, and you must RSVP (using the button below) if you wish to attend:

Looking forward to seeing you there

As much as I hate to say it, I’m a bit of a night person – and I usually spend my nights hacking away at WordPress. It can get quite boring, you know. Boring and lonely! Plus, I want to contribute to WordPress in a way that’s more beneficial than just developing sites around it.

So, I’ve come up with this idea for a WordPress hack night. We’re holding it on the 14th of May from 6PM to 11PM at OpenHub (Manchester Ln, Melbourne Central). The goal of the WordPress hack night is to do the following:

• Attract Melburnians far and wide who don’t normally come to the Weekly WordPress meetups to come hang out with us and hack some code
• Engage the local WordPress community to a greater extent
• Finally execute my idea of World Domination, erhm, WordPress Cupcakes.
• Get people from down under involved with the WordPress core contribution process and building WordPress businesses

My personal goal is to actually contribute a patch to core by the end of the night and get at least two or three others having done the same. We’ll also be able to test WordPress 3.2 with your plugins and themes and debug any issues anyone who’s testing it is having.

What separates this from the regular meetups is the way we’re approaching things. The WordPress meetup has always been quite casual and has always been something for networking and general goss. It doesn’t appeal to everyone, and we understand that not everyone wants to listen to me rant on about Post Formats (or enjoy the free pizza provided by Envato, but why not? )

The unique selling point of the WordPress hack night is the idea that you come to learn and share. You don’t need to sit in on the presentations – we’ll most likely pour those into the board room with a more intimate setting. If you’ve got a WordPress dev question, chances are someone can answer it.

We’ve got a few planned presentations for the night, but they’ll all be ignite-style combined with something of a workshop component if they apply.

• Doing cool stuff with WordPress (Anthony Cole)
• APIs and how they’re awesome
• How to contribute to core (Dion Hulse)

After the event is over, we’ll most likely head to a local bar and partake in the normal bar-hopping – hopefully no one buys a battle axe this time around!

Keen on coming? Please spread the word about this totally awesomsauce event on twitter – and don’t forget to register. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone there!

* For now, I’m just chipping some of my own cash in because it’s not that big of a deal, but if you’re interested in helping out, please do get in touch!

The following topics will be discussed:

Andrew Davis – Rothfield Legal Case Study
Andrew will be presenting a case study on the Rothfield Legal website that he developed.

It is as an example of the sort of website that is possible to build without doing any PHP programming. i.e. what you can do with WordPress, HTML, CSS and plugins.

Anthony Cole – WordPress 3.1 Post Formats
Post formats are awesome, but WTF are they? Anthony is going to give an introductory talk to post formats and start off with a few case studies of themes that use post formats.

He’ll also give a brief example of how to use Post Formats if you’re a theme developer and talk about a few potential future use cases for the awesomeness that is the post format.

WordPress Q and A
The usual question and answer session where people can ask any WordPress-releated questions.

We’ll then be visiting a local pub for some casual drinks and chit-chat.

When?

Wednesday 13 April 2011 at Openhub with a 6:30pm start.

Where?

Openhub
Level 1, 243 Collins St
(Manchester Lane)
Melbourne CBD

Manchester Lane is off Collins St in between Swanston St and Elizabeth St.

Hungry?

Our sponsor, Envato has graciously offered to provide free pizza for this meetup!

Important

Please note that this meetup has limited numbers, and you must register (using the button below) if you wish to attend:

Looking forward to seeing you there