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WordCamp Nashville 2014 was nearly four months ago but the goodness hasn’t stopped.

We’ve been working with Clark Buckner of TechnologyAdvice to get podcast interviews from the event organized and published. They are assembled on SoundCloud for your listening pleasure.

Clark chatted with diverse members of the region’s WordPress and technology communities, including Randy Hicks, John Housholder, Mitch Canter, Jeremy Rivera Pamela Coyle, Cal Evans, Sue Anne Reed, Luke Stokes, James Ashenhurst, Paul Schatzkin and Bryan Huddleston (of the Nashville Technology Council).

Click here for the full list of recordings from the pop-up podcast booth at WordCamp Nashville 2014.

The tracks on SoundCloud are edited interviews. TechnologyAdvice.com donated time and equipment as an in-kind sponsor to set up the podcast booth at WordCamp Nashville 2014, record interviews and produce show notes.

Hearty thanks to the company and Clark for pulling it together.

As you can see we’ve made a major update to the look and feel of the wpnashville site. We went simple, clean and easy to update! The goal of the update was to simplify the site and open it up to be more of a utility to the community.

The Community portion of the site is where organizers of Meetups and WordCamps can publicly collaborate on current events and ideas for events. The goal is to keep group management and organizing open to the public. Anyone can subscribe to the community feed, follow the conversation and/or comment on the posts to give their feedback.

The idea is to follow the example of make.wordpress.org/community. As one of the leaders of the web WordPress is definitely doing something right and it’s our belief that community is the key.

Join the meetup group, come out to a meetup event and meet some new people from the area. If you have done all of that and you want more, take the plunge and become an organizer! Have a question or want to chat send us an email [email protected] or use the form on the Questions page.

The primary goal of this update was to give the site the ability to connect the community and not just publish too the community. First thing we did was update the install to WordPress Network installation in order to allow us to host different themes and plugin packages at different urls. The first of such tools is the community section.

The community site runs on the P2 Theme by Automattic. The goal is to offer a separate thread for organizers to communicate to the community with out mixing it in with the news and presentation posts.

We used the P2 Theme specifically because it has a handful of customizations that have been specifically designed to help interaction between authors. Here is a short list of p2 plugins that have been very helpful!

• markdown-for-p2
• p2-by-email
• p2-likes
• p2-new-post-categories
• p2-resolved-posts

• advanced-custom-fields
• akismet
• force-strong-passwords
• google-analyticator
• gravityforms
• jetpack
• limit-login-attempts
• mailchimp
• members
• re-send-welcome-email
• wordpress-backup-to-dropbox
• wordpress-importer
• wordpress-seo
• wp-db-backup
• wp-pagenavi
• wp-whos-online
• wpmandrill

If you have question or you find a bug please let us know!

We are excited to announce that the meetup group management has shifted! The group will now be more in line with the official WordPress Chapter. Since our meetup was started in 2010 before the WordPress Chapter program was created we’ve been doing it old school, but that is all changing and we hope that some of you will take advantage of this!

Any member of the meetup group may now suggest and/ or schedule an event through the WordPress meetup site. When a new event is suggested/ scheduled a message will be sent to all group members telling them of the new event and allowing them to join the event or not.

In the past, only group organizers could schedule events. This was limiting the group to a single event a month on a single day with a single topic. By opening the group and allowing any member to schedule an event we are hoping the availability of events will grow.

More organizers = more events on different days, times and topics! Everyone wins!

Example 1: Sally and Laura
Sally is a coder and Laura is an educator. They are both very enthusiastic and love to blog and they are both looking for a way to give back to their local community. Sally and Laura team up to offer monthly WordPress advice! They find a free venue and work together to set a time and date. Sally and Laura post a new event to the WordPress Nashville meetup group. Fifteen, twenty or thirty people show up and great conversation is had by all!

Example 2: Billy
Billy just launched his personal site and it was a success! Now he’s looking to do a site for his business, but doesn’t want it to look like a blog. He’s looking for some advice, but would rather talk to his peers in person. Billy posts a new event to the WordPress Nashville meetup group. Five or six people show up and great conversation is had by all!

Example 3: Jane
Jane has been building WordPress sites for two years. Like many developers, Jane is looking for peers to discuss some mind numbing code! Rather than post on a forum, she’s looking for ways to meet with people in person. Jane posts a new event to the WordPress Nashville meetup group. Five or six people show up and great conversation is had by all!

We hope that those of you who are excited about education and have a passion for community will jump on board! Scheduling an event does take a little work. However, to help expedite the process we created an FAQ that will hopefully guide you past some of the issue you might encounter.

Check out the FAQ here: http://www.meetup.com/NashvilleWordpress/about/

We will also be holding a meetup in August to discuss what this means for all the members of the group! RSVP here: http://www.meetup.com/NashvilleWordpress/events/194669582/

Speaker Dale Liszka took a developers view of the lead-up and release of WordPress’ Auto Update system. More importantly how to understand it, befriend it, and control it.

View presentation slides »

We would also like to thank our sponsor workIT Nashville for providing us the ability to offer our breakfast. We want to encourage you all to check them out as they continue to server the Nashville community.

Below is the slideshow from Kenneth presentation.

original post

On Monday, February 17, we’ll discuss the process of setting up an e-commerce system on WordPress, focusing on WooCommerce and FoxyShop + FoxyCart, from start to selling.

With so many options available for e-commerce, these tools simplify the process. Kenneth White of sprclldr will walk us through the process. He’ll cover:

• Data security, hosting and SSL
• Theming
• Virtual and variable products, subscriptions and donations
• Inventory management

Ecommerce options and set-up are frequent sources of questions at our monthly WordPress Nashville MeetUps and we want to focus on this single topic for one session.

WooCommerce is a go-to platform for many local WordPress developers and FoxyCart claims Nashville as one of its hometowns – one cofounder lives here. FoxyCart (FoxyShop is the WordPress plugin) is especially awesome because it features easy styling and allows for checkout of multiple product types, including subscriptions and donations, all during the same transaction.

WordPress Nashville kicks off 2014 on Monday, January 20, with an informal Question-and-Answer MeetUp featuring Nashville WordPress developers and users tackling whatever audience members throw at them.

Randy Hicks of WPEdu, Liz Fulghum of NoSleepForSheep, Ross Jones of 2 the Top Design, Judy Wilson of Site Shack Design, Noe Lopez of Ah So Designs and Pamela Coyle of Content that Connects will be among those answering questions. This MeetUp is appropriate for people with all levels of WordPress experience – beginners, intermediate users and developers.

Depending on interest and attendance, we can break the space into two sections with separate Q&A interactions for user and developers.

A Q&A is a great way to build the Greater Nashville WordPress community, meet new people and get a better understanding of who is doing what with WordPress. (The February MeetUp will focus on working with Woo Commerce).

RSVP through the WordPress Nashville MeetUp page.

Details:
1/20/2014 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Sprclldr, Ah So Designs and Nashville Geek
440 E Iris Dr, Nashville, TN