It began with a quick road trip from Greensboro to Raleigh, NC. It was pretty straight forward until the road construction that funneled the four lane highway traffic into one lane of nobody’s-going-anywhere-fast. Fortunately the solution oriented team that we are checked the GPS, ignored the directions, and made our way around the mess to arrive spot on time to register, get coffee and get seated for the welcome.
After that it was one information packed presentation after another with three tracks: Users Track, Power Users Track, and Developers Track. The User Track was ideal for those familiar with WordPress, and looking to get more use out of it for their own site. Though some things were touched on for application to businesses, much of the user track was for the novice. It is important to note that by novice, I mean someone who has actually seen a WordPress dashboard and poked around with the settings already. There was no WordPress 101: Setting Up Your Site or So You Want to Start a Blog presentation. If that is the kind of thing you are looking for check with your local community college or perhaps a web meet up group in your area.
As expected the Power Users Track was for the intermediate crowd with information to get things working on your site with speed and oomph. One of the more interesting presentations for the geeks that we are here at WebRealSimple was entitled Surviving the Zombie Apocalypse using Custom Post Types and Taxonomies by Brad Williams. A zombie analogy can make even the most technical explanation far more interesting, and quite easy to understand. Our content manager also enjoyed the Comment Moderation 201 by Patrick O’Keefe because should you decide to allow comments, maintaining the integrity of your community is important.
The Developers Track covered issues that would make most people’s heads explode, but made perfect sense to our developer. With presentations like All Your Bugs are Belong to Us: Debugging and filing bug reports for WordPress by Aaron Jorbin there was plenty of information to assimilate. (And there was no end to the geek humor, as you can imagine.)
WordCamp Raleigh 2011 was packed with awesome speakers who really knew their stuff, and thanks to all of them, we here at WebRealSimple came away with some new tips, tricks, and knowledge for WordPress and more. WordCamp Raleigh 2010 was interesting, 2011 was better, now we can’t wait for next year.