The WordPress Providence Meetup will be on Tuesday, January 31st, 2012, at 6 pm, at McFadden’s Restaurant & Saloon. We’ll be in their private room; food and drinks will be served. Parking is free on and off street (starts at 5:30 pm).

Speaker

Aaron Ware of Linchpin will be talking about building themes for WordPress. Even if you are totally new to WordPress, this will be an exciting topic as we take a look at all the power WordPress keeps tucked under its hood.

Aaron has 10+ years experience creating highly interactive, feature rich, websites and online apps. He leads a highly talented team at Linchpin in developing unique user experiences and creative solutions that work.

• What is a theme and what can it do?
• What file does what?
• Who do I call when I break something?
• Where do I put this php snippet?
• What is the “?>” thing?
• How do I make a child theme?
• How do I add a widget area, menu, etc.?

Sponsor

This month’s meet-up will be sponsored by Linchpin - a full service creative agency with a slant towards web. They utilize a simple approach, focusing on solving problems and creating awesome user experiences. They are based in East Greenwich, Rhode Island and serve local, regional and national brands.

The WordPress Providence Meetup will be on Tuesday, December 13th, 2011, at 6 pm, at the Johnson and Wales University Academic Building (building 9) directly across from Hotel Providence on Matthewson Street.

Parking is free on street (starts at 5:30 pm). Additional Parking info coming soon.

We’re looking for 4-5 speakers to give quick 5-minutes talks. Like before, and unlike Providence’s Pecha-Kucha, there are no rules for your talk. Well, maybe one: it has to be related to WordPress in some way. You have the floor, a projector, a laptop hook up, and 5 minutes of the group’s time.

We’re already following up with a few speakers, but definitely still looking to fill slots – let us know if you would like to speak! Even if we run out of room, we’ll make sure you’re at the top of the list for our next round of lightning talks.

Keep an eye on this blog for a forthcoming list of lightning talks!

We are still finalizing a sponsor for this meetup; if you’re interested in a great sponsorship opportunity for only $99, let us know!

Doors open at 6 pm; we ask that you try to arrive by 6:30 pm for networking. The program starts promptly at 7 pm. The program includes introductions, several 5-minute lightning talks, and a chance to pick the brains of your fellow attendees.

We are looking for speakers and sponsors for both meetups.

Don’t worry we have back-ups in place, but if you have ideas for topics you would like to hear more about, want to volunteer to speak, or want to see your name in lights at the next meet-up, please let me know as soon as possible. You can comment on this post or use the contact form on the Sponsorship Page.

Details:
Tuesday, November 15th at 6PM
Mc Fadden’s, 52 Pine Street, Providence, RI 02903
Parking is free on and off street starting at 5:30

More details coming soon.

Event Details: Summer Picnic Meetup

Where: It will be hosted in the backyard of one of our new organizers, Jesse Friedman: 31 Howard Ave, Warwick RI 02889.

When: Wednesday, August 17th, 6 pm until we’re done!

What: Networking, an introduction to our new organizers, and classic picnic / BBQ food. No formal talks for our picnic!

The New Organizers

Taking the organizing seat will be Providence’s resident Automattician, John James Jacoby, along with past regulars Luke Gedeon (who’s joining my own company, 10up) and Jesse Friedman (of Neal Advertising). Luke is generously providing food, but can’t make the meetup. Jesse and John will be there in style!

Sponsor

Food and drinks for our BBQ is being sponsored by my own fairly young company, 10up LLC, a web development and strategy agency focused on great WordPress implementations. We serve clients of all shapes and sizes, from small and pop shops to major WordPress.com VIP clients like TechCrunch. Our philosophy is that content management should be more than easy – it should be fun! We’re big believers in giving back to the community, which is why we were proud to sponsor WordCamp Boston 2011 back in July, and we’re proud to sponsor the WordPress Providence Meetup! We’re always seeking new developer talent, so get in touch if you’re looking.

Look forward to seeing you there – let us know if you plan on coming in the comments! Hoping to have some posts from the new organizers up soon, too!

A summer WordPress Providence meet up isn’t all that’s on tap for July. Our neighboring New England city, Boston, is hosting their second annual WordCamp on July 23-24! WordCamp Boston is a 2 day WordPress event, with incredible sessions for developers, beginners, and strategists alike. At $40 per ticket, this conference is a steal.

Check out the schedule, where you’ll see WordPress Providence regulars like organizer Jake Goldman and resident Providence Automattician John James Jacoby on the roster. Planning on coming? Looking for a carpool buddy? Let us know in the comments!

Jesse Friedman of  Neal Advertising and SWORD Studios kicks us off with HTML5 WordPress Theming. Jesse will quickly dive into the HTML5 specs so we can get a feel for how cutting edge and next generation WordPress themes should be structured.

Aaron Ware of Digital Octane takes us in a different direction with Flash and WordPress. Even as HTML5 and JavaScript become more of a viable alternative to Flash content, there are still scenarios where the client needs can outweigh web standards. Aaron will show us how we can still store data in our favorite CMS (for menus, pages, and post data) and then output that data in XML files so that it can be easily parsed and displayed with Flash, jQuery, or any other JavaScript framework.

Suzanne McDonald of Designated Editor will blitz through all things in content in 5 Content Essentials to Execute via WordPress. Whether you’re using WordPress for posts or pages, you need to consider everything from SEO to Social to Usability to Editorial Calendars.

John James Jacoby of Automattic rounds out the night with A Preview of WordPress 3.2. John will walk us through a rapid demo of the latest WordPress 3.2 previews, showing off exciting new features in the pipe line like “distraction free writing.”

We’re looking for 4-5 speakers to give quick 5-minutes talks. Like before, and unlike Providence’s Pecha-Kucha, there are no rules for your talk. Well, maybe one: it has to be related to WordPress in some way. You have the floor, a projector, a laptop hook up, and 5 minutes of the group’s time.

We’re already following up on a few inquiries, but definitely still looking to fill slots – let us know if you would like to speak! Even if we run out of room, we’ll make sure you’re at the top of the list for our next round of lightning talks.

Keep an eye on this blog for a forthcoming list of lightning talks!

We are still finalizing a sponsor for this meetup; if you’re interested in a great sponsorship opportunity for only $99, let us know!

Doors open at 6 pm; we ask that you try to arrive by 6:30 pm for networking. The program starts promptly at 7 pm. The program includes introductions, several 5-minute lightning talks, and a chance to pick the brains of your fellow attendees.

Even if you can’t make it, let us know you’re still interested by leaving a comment!

Back during our 3rd meetup, Providence’s MoFuse introduced us to their third party platform for mobilizing your website. Now we’re going to take a look at two other ways to mobilize your WordPress powered site.

After a quick discussion about choosing your mobile approach, we’ll have two short walkthroughs. Meetup organizer Drew Bennett will walk us through setting up the WPtouch plug-in, available in both free and premium/paid editions, demonstrating a simple and off the shelf way to mobilize your WordPress site. After Drew’s tutorial, we’ll walk through a more developer centric approach (speaker TBA), that involves a few simple custom lines of code in your header and a stylesheet built specifically for mobile. Whether you’re a simple WordPress blogger looking to nail the mobile audience, or a developer (WordPress user or not!) looking for some techniques to optimize your site for mobile, you’ll get something out of our March meetup!

This meet up is sponsored by BRIDGE Technical Solutions. BRIDGE Technical Solutions is a full-service Information Technology staffing firm with a fast growing information-centric security consulting practice. Headquartered in Rhode Island, BRIDGE has been proudly serving the Information Technology community in Rhode Island and Southeastern New England for more than a decade.

Doors open at 6 pm; we ask that you try to arrive no later than 6:30 pm for networking. The program starts promptly at 7 pm. The program includes introductions, about 40 minutes of presentation, and a chance to pick the brains of your fellow attendees. Even if you can’t stay for the presentation, stop by for networking and drinks!

Even if you can’t make it, let us know you’re still interested by leaving a comment!

UPDATE: Due to snow, the original date of February 1st has been moved to February 15th. There’s still time to RSVP if you couldn’t make the 1st!

OK, so not really a smackdown, more like a friendly discussion on the pros and cons of some popular content management systems. We’re joining forces with the Providence Drupal Meetup for both of our inaugural 2011 events to help you figure out which CMS makes sense for you:

• WordPress – Automattic’s John James Jacoby
• Drupal – Acquia’s Bryan House
• Joomla – Andrea Tarr, developer & Open Source Matters board member
• Expression Engine – Ruthie BenDor, developer & BostonEErs organizer
• TYPO3 – Advance Web Marketing’s Tony Lush

The panel will be moderated by Jeff Cram, of ISITE Design.

Not a coder? Don’t worry. The focus of the panel will be on choosing your CMS, not geeky (but cool) technical intricacies. Whether you’re a business decision maker trying to decide which way to go, a designer / aspiring CMS developer wondering which platform to dip your toe in, or just curious about the pros and cons of each system, this is the panel for you. But even if you’ve already chosen a side, and are knee deep in technical intricacies, show up: challenge our panelists’ advice, help out the newbies in the crowd, and show your support!

With panelists from companies like Automattic and Acquia on the roster, we’re anticipating a lot of interest, and space is limited at McFadden’s! We’ll let you know here and on Twitter if there’s still space the day of (for you last minute types), but if you want to be guaranteed a spot, register on Eventbrite!

The joint meet up will take place on February 15, 2011, at 6 pm, at McFadden’s Restaurant & Saloon. We’ll be in their private room; food and drinks will be served. Parking is free on and off street (starts at 5:30 pm). There will be free drinks for the first 20 attendees as well as free finger foods for all courtesy of our sponsors.

Because we we anticipate higher turn out for our joint meet up, we have two sponsors: Monotype and Oomph (formerly C. Murray Consulting).

Monotype is the easy way to add great looking fonts to your website with a few easy steps. Just choose your fonts from the widest selection of high quality fonts on the net, assign them to your text, and add a short script to your site! Monotype offers over 8,000 fonts, supports over 40 languages, and is the exclusive home of celebrated fonts like Helvetica and Univers. Sign up for free today!

Oomph – recently known as C. Murray Consulting – is a web strategy, development, and design firm located in Providence with an emphasis on open platforms like WordPress and Drupal. The difference between common and uncommon web experiences, Oomph serves clients around the world, from small Rhode Island start ups to international companies in the UK and Australia. If you still need help choosing your CMS, or have chosen your CMS and need some help, get in touch with Oomph today!

Doors open at 6 pm; we ask that you try to arrive by 6:30 pm for networking. The panel starts promptly at 7 pm. The moderator led panel debate will last for about 50 minutes, followed by plenty of time for questions and an open floor discussion.

Headlining the lightning talks  is new Providence resident John James Jacoby – one of the core developers of BuddyPress, the official social networking add-on for WordPress. John has spoken at WordCamps around the country and helped organize a WordCamp in his previous home town of Miami. He just moved to Providence at the beginning of November, and we’re thrilled to have him in our community and participating in our meet up. John will be presenting BuddyPress in 5 Minutes, a great introduction for those of you who have not yet checked out BuddyPress!

Coming in at the #2 slot is Bill Dennen, who has been a participant in our community since the first meet up. Bill is a Web Technologist and Sysadmin at Wheaton College. He has worked with web technologies since the days of NCSA Mosaic. Bill will be presenting Under the Hood: How Wheaton uses WordPress. Wheaton College, in nearby Norton, Massachusetts, has been migrating from a home-grown CMS to WordPress with Multisite. Even with thousands of pages spread across dozens of sub-sites, they have found that WordPress can handle just about anything. Bill will provide an overview of the project and talk about what is running behind the scenes, including a mix of off-the-shelf plugins and custom code.

In the #3 spot is Mike Marinelli, Co-Founder of The Healthy Design, a website creation and design and online marketing firm aimed at helping wellness professionals grow their business online. Mike will be presenting Clean Up Your Media Library and Increase Site Speed. All of your unused images and other media may be dramatically slowing your site down. Mike found a handy plugin that helps you clean out your media library called the Upload Janitor. This plugin allows you to reclaim disk space and clean up your uploads folder by deleting old uploads you are no longer linking to. Upload Janitor will even automatically make an archive of all files to be erased, including their original paths, so you can restore if necessary.

Lightning talk #4 is by regular meet up participant Jonathan Derosiers. Jonathan is the in house web developer for Slocum Design Studio in his home town of Dartmouth, MA. He enjoys taking on new challenges, and has developed everything from WordPress plugins to Twitter Applications. Jonathan will be presenting More is better….. Right? As a society this is drilled into our minds. And generally yes, more content is better. However in a time of infinite information, it is important not to overwhelm your users. Organization is key to a good user experience. Jonathan will go over the progression of new and old ways to do this, and how WordPress has made this much easier to do over the last few versions with new features such as custom post types.

Rounding out our holiday talks at slot #5 is J. Hogue, Creative Director for C. Murray Consulting and former owner of Highchair Designhaus. J. will present Innovative WordPress: Behind ThinkingArizona. J was the creative lead and project manager for ThinkingArizona.com, an innovative, WordPress-powered website edited and produced by the former editor of the Boston Globe. J. will give a quick tour of the website, and demonstrate how ThinkingArizona takes advantage of custom post types and custom taxonomies on the back end to create a well organized, easy to manage online magazine.