Bret Phillips » wordpress

WordCamp For The Win – Savannah 2010

bretwp — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 10:14:09 +0000

Wordcamp Savannah 2010

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending WordCamp Savannah.

“WordCamps are low-key community conferences that celebrate all things WordPress and bring together local WordPress users, developers and fans.”

To read more about this particular WordCamp, visit WordCamp in Savannah GA.

Before I talk about the actual event itself, let me drop a little bit of background on my history with WordPress.

How Did I Find WordPress?

I’ve been working with web development as well as programming in different languages since I was a teen. There is just something about submitting and retrieving data using code and a database tickles my fancy.

For extra cash, as well as the stimulation of programming itself, I was developing websites for friends of mine. While doing this I was also creating my own Content Management System to enable my clients to log into their websites and make changes on their own.

Little did I know how important this kind of action would become in the next couple of years.

After having made it pretty far along with the CMS I stumbled upon a free piece of software called WordPress. As soon as I installed it and tried it out, I immediately knew I would never need to work on my own CMS again.

WordPress was not quite where it is today, but was leaps and bounds farther along than my solo CMS, as well had a large support environment online, and plenty of people focused on making it better and safer.

Since that day I have been programming less and hacking more. WordPress gives me a strong platform to grow on

Having been developing a CMS, the background functionality of WordPress enticed me.

Enter WordCamp Savannah 2010

Now that I have been using the software for a while and spreading goodwill about it, I decided to take the plunge and really see about getting involved in this community and attend my first WordCamp. I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

I enjoy putting on and hosting events myself, and something that I have noticed is when you bring together a large group of people, many times it is hard to maintain a certain vibe. There is a good chance for controversy and or ill will.

WordCamp Savannah smashed that idea.

Every single person that I met, and I talked to quite a few, was kind, generous, and generally just cool to be around. Maybe it has something to do with the vibe that can be found in Savannah, but I think this community feel stretches around the globe.

That vibe at WordCamp resonated throughout the entire event and alone would have made it worthwhile to be there.

Add in the fact that several of the core members of the WordPress team showed up to present and just hang out and share…

No egos to be found found here, just people sharing a similar interest and trying to build a great community. Everyone, regardless of title or experience or responsibility was down to earth.

As a developer I was able to really get my nerd on in the developer track and was stimulated and inspired.

The biggest thing that I noticed about this event was that everyone is giving. Giving of their time, their knowledge, whatever they have to give, they are giving it.

This also inspired me and has given me the desire to give back to this community as well.

I am not exactly sure how or when or where I will fall within this community in the future, for now I will continue to use and support it, especially locally here in Atlanta and Savannah.

Keep an eye out people, you will be seeing a lot more of me in the future

If you have any kind of online presence, a business site, a blog, anything…and you have not experience WordPress or WordCamp, I challenge you to check them out. I promise you will find something you like.

As an added bonus I wanted to share some links to some of the amazing people I met while there. All of these people are heavily involved in WordPress and know things that you can learn

Daryl Koopersmish – Developer
John James Jacoby – Developer
Ptah Dunbar – Developer
Mark Jaquith – Developer
Jane Wells UX designer + Amazing Coordinator
Sara Cannon – Designer
Andrew Nacin – Developer
http://ma.tt – Founder
Amanda Plum – PR
Nikolay – Translations
Otto – Developer
Chris Cree – New Media
Matt Thomas – Design/Development

Other WordCamp Savannah attendy reviews

WordPress Savannah 2010 – Steven Miller
New Tricks – Judi Knight
Just Ask Kim – Kimberly Castleberry

Official WordCamp Savannah Sites

WordCamp Savannah 2010
WordCamp Savannah TwitterWP MU – Slides From WordCamp Presentations
Foursquare Listing

Thanks for reading my WordCamp Savannah review! Tell your friends

Speaking: Connecting WordPress with the Business Community

bretwp — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 15:36:35 +0000

This evening I will be speaking for a WordPress meetup on Connecting WordPress with the Business Community.

You can find the Meetup information here:

http://www.meetup.com/wordpress-atlanta/calendar/13854311/

We will be discussion the following:

What is WordPress?

WP is a Content Management System.

Web Devils – Web Development, WordPress, SEO, and Social Media

bretwp — Mon, 10 May 2010 18:33:03 +0000

Good day fellow interneteurs! I am here to tell you about Web Devils, my newest venture.

As I am sure you have noticed, not much action has been happening here on bretphillips.com, there is a good reason for that I have been working hard at getting everything together for the launch of the Web Development company Web Devils.

For as long as I have been on the internet(well over half of my lifetime) I have been putting together websites. One of the first things I ever did was figure out how to get web hosting through my modem service provider and the URL was something like http://user.bellsouth.net/~username/bin/homepage/this/is/getting/rediculous.

My good friend and fellow Web Devils co founder Michael Ollinger has been right there with me doing the same thing. We’ve started several online communities, built countless personal websites, blogs, profiles, etc. And now are coming together to use our expertise and help Your Small Businesses web presence.

Web Devils specializes in using WordPress websites, Search Engine Optimization, and Social Media to generate leads for you.

Below is a short listing of the services we offer. For more information please visit http://webdevils.biz/services .

WordPress Development

- Thesis Theme Development
- Custom WordPress Themes
- WordPress Training

Social Media

- Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.
- Learn How To Use These Tools
- Increase Brand Awareness

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

- Keyword Research
- SEO Copy Writing
- SEO Lessons

Band / Artists Package

- Custom WordPress Website – Customer Myspace Layouts – SPECIAL PRICING(Contact us to find out more)

Contact me today here or via Web Devils and lets talk about your next Web Presence!

Testing, testing, can you hear me?

bretwp — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 18:07:15 +0000

Today I decided to spend a couple of minutes trying to tie together several of my e-applications, namely WordPress blog(this site), my Twitter account, and my Facebook. As well, I would like to tie them into my Blackberry for ultimate content flow.

My ultimate goal here is to be able to use them all seamlessly together, instead of trying to manage them all separately. Fortunately for me, many other people had this same idea, and some of those people were developers themselves. All I had to do was a quick Google search and click a few links.

Done and done.

What exactly did you do Bret?

What I’ve done is set up my Facebook account to accept my Twitter posts as status udates. This was real easy using the Facebook Twitter application found here: http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/

Next I’ve set up my WordPress to display my most recent Twitter posts using a friendly WordPress widget Twitter Tools, also very easy. Search it in your WordPress..

So now all I need to do is post to Twitter and that message shows up for anyone watching this site, but more importantly Facebook.

Next up was using Twitter from my Blackberry. Using http://m.twitter.com is actually really nice. It is fast and simple, but does not have too many options, and I like options. After consulting with The O, I downloaded Ubertwitter: http://www.ubertwitter.com/

UberTwitter streams your followed friends on your BB. It also allows you to post tweets of your own, and most of all, allows you to attach an image to those tweets. While this functionality is pretty limited at this time, it looks to be the only app out right now that has it, so I’ll take it.

What I would like to see is a way for me to upload pictures to my Facebook account from my Blackberry with an option to tweet. I already am able to send the pics directly to FB, add a comment to the pics, tag the pics, etc. The tweet could be the comment with a link back to the photo on FB. If there is already something like this please let me know