Category: Meetup

The September meetup was a great event, hosted at Deavor, curated by Athletics and co-sponsored by Athletics and WPEngine. With three great speakers, it was no wonder we had an attendance of around 60 or 70 Pressers!

• Jameson Proctor, Partner, Athletics
• Dale Liszka, Rockhouse Partners
• Mark Kelnar, Director of Engineering for WP Engine Labs

If you missed out, we are happy to say that the team at Deavor were able to record the speakers and are currently editing the video for the web. We will do a followup post when the videos are ready.

We want to take a minute and say thank you to the team at Athletics for putting on such a great night of speaking. They put a lot of effort into the meetup in a very short amount of time. In addition to curating the venue, the speakers and a sponsor, they also took the extra funding, matched it and gave it as a donation to the Nashville Software School (NSS). If you have not heard of the NSS, please check it out. They are a non-profit software school with great professors, focused classes and high success rate! The final total donated was $600, and we want to give a huge thanks to Athletics and WPEngine for that. Education is a key component to a healthy community!

We have high hopes that other businesses or individuals would be interested in curating WordPress meetups of their own. Whether large or small, community interaction is the primary reason we like to come together as a group! If you would like to know more please read up on how to schedule an event with the Nashville WordPress meetup on our how to page.

“I found the format of multiple speakers for different topics to be really great – I hope there are more of these in the future.” – Beth Downey

We had a pretty great turn out this month, and we owe it to our panel members. It has been exciting to see the community grow a little at a time, and I think meetups like this one have a way of confirming that to the community.

Below you will find an outline of the panel members, a link to their meetup account and the list of plugin they brought to share. I have also included a number of different plugins that were mentioned through out the talk. Let us know if there was something we missed I’m sure we can dig it up for you.

Panel Members Plugin Suggestions

Dale Liszka
http://www.meetup.com/NashvilleWordpress/members/3126734/

1. Quick Cache:
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/quick-cache/Speed up your site ~ BIG Time! – If you care about the speed of your site, Quick Cache is a plugin that you absolutely MUST have installed.
   • Requires: 3.2 or higher
   • Compatible up to: 3.3.2
   • Last Updated: 2011-12-4
2. Exploit Scanner:
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/exploit-scanner/Search the files and database of your WordPress install for signs that may indicate that it has fallen victim to malicious hackers.
   • Requires: 3.3 or higher
   • Compatible up to: 3.5.1
   • Last Updated: 2013-1-30
3. Facebook Comments:
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/facebook-comments-plugin/The Facebook Comments WordPress plugin makes it easier for you to setup, administer and customise Facebook comments from your WordPress site.
   • Requires: 2.7 or higher
   • Compatible up to: 3.5.1
   • Last Updated: 2013-1-12

MaAnna Stephenson
http://www.meetup.com/NashvilleWordpress/members/23700871/

1. BackupBuddy:
   http://ithemes.com/purchase/backupbuddy/Back up your entire WordPress installation. Widgets, themes, plugins, files and SQL database – the entire package! Just like your laptop or desktop computer, you should be doing regular backups of your website.
2. WishList Member:
   http://member.wishlistproducts.com/WishList Member™ is a powerful, yet easy to use membership solution that can turn any WordPress blog into a full-blown membership site.
3. TinyMCE Advanced:
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/tinymce-advanced/Enables the advanced features of TinyMCE, the WordPress WYSIWYG editor.
   • Requires: 3.5 or higher
   • Compatible up to: 3.5.1
   • Last Updated: 2012-12-13

Nathaniel Schweinberg
http://www.meetup.com/NashvilleWordpress/members/13496814/

1. Posts 2 Posts:
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/posts-to-posts/Efficient many-to-many connections between posts, pages, custom post types, users.
   • Requires: 3.5 or higher
   • Compatible up to: 3.5.1
   • Last Updated: 2013-2-17
2. Developer:
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/developer/A plugin, which helps WordPress developers develop.
   • Requires: 3.4 or higher
   • Compatible up to: 3.5.1
   • Last Updated: 2013-1-29
3. wpMandrill:
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wpmandrill/The wpMandrill plugin sends emails that are generated by WordPress through Mandrill, a transactional email service powered by MailChimp.
   • Requires: 3.0 or higher
   • Compatible up to: 3.4.2
   • Last Updated: 2013-2-13
4. Debug Bar Extender:
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/debug-bar-extender/screenshots/Extends the debug-bar plugin with additional tabs to measure runtimes between checkpoints and lookup variable content.
   • Requires: 3.1 or higher
   • Compatible up to: 3.2.1
   • Last Updated: 2011-9-2

Kenneth White
http://www.meetup.com/NashvilleWordpress/members/12522497/

1. Gravity Forms
   http://www.gravityforms.com/
2. WP Page Navi
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-pagenavi/Adds a more advanced paging navigation interface.
   • Requires: 3.2 or higher
   • Compatible up to: 3.4.2
   • Last Updated: 2012-8-24
3. CMS Page Tree View
   http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/cms-tree-page-view/Adds a tree view of all pages & custom posts. Get a great overview + options to drag & drop to reorder & option to add multiple pages.
   • Requires: 3.4 or higher
   • Compatible up to: 3.5.1
   • Last Updated: 2013-2-13

In Meetup Plugin Suggestions

• Geo My WP
  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/geo-my-wp/
• FoxyShop
  http://www.foxy-shop.com/
• WP Client
  http://wp-client.com/
• Custom Post Type UI
  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/custom-post-type-ui/
• Types – Custom Fields and Custom Post Types Management
  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/types/
• Option Tree
  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/option-tree/
• Options Framework
  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/options-framework/
• IPVenger
  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ipvenger/
• Wordfence Security
  http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordfence/

Hosting

• If you are concerned about site speed, security, or plugin compatibility, we recommend using WP Engine

Sandbox development environment

• Use a sub-domain
• Separate Database
• hide it from search – privacy options
• Local install: Mac MAMP, Window WAMP

Outside of WordPress

• Artistdata
  http://www.artistdata.com/us/

This month we are having a member come out and talk about his experience with moving from wordpress.com to a self hosted installation. If you’re not already a member of Nashville WordPress Meetup group then hit the link at the bottom of the post before you go!

1. A presentation on “WordPress.com to .org” – 20 minutes

   “I’m an online chemistry tutor and promote my service through blogging. After about a year of blogging I was starting to run into some of the limitations of a wordpress.com site and I needed to migrate to a wordpress.org platform. This was scary for me, as I’m not very computer savvy. In this talk I’ll briefly go over the story of how I hired a developer to build a new site for me and how having a wordpress.org platform is giving me opportunities to grow my business beyond services to products.”

   ~ James Ashenhurst of masterorganicchemistry.com

2. Presentation Q&ampA – 10 minutes

3. What’s everyone working on? – 10 minutes

   We’ll take a couple of volunteers and let them showcase their site.

4. WordPress business around town. – 10 minutes

   Wrap it up with a brief chat about the locally in the WordPress community and what is in store for 2012.

5. Questions and dismissal. – 5 minutes

Location Change
We have changed the location of this meetup to ESpaces.
This is NOT permanent, so please always be aware of the location for future meetups.

November’s Meetup Event

Join us for a special meeting of the Nashville WordPress Group meeting as we discuss WordPress SEO tactics that can help your website.

Join the group and come and learn! »

This is a joint meeting with the Nashville SEO Group run by Ross Jones of 2 the Top Design. Ross has been a professional SEO consultant since early 1997, 6 months before Google even registered their domain name.

Ross will give a short presentation on WordPress SEO and lead the discussion on topics such as:

• Why is WordPress Good for SEO?
• Easy Steps to Improve Your WordPress SEO
• How the Right Plugins Can Help Your SEO
• How the Wrong Plugins Can Hurt Your SEO