Okay, so look... we're not TOTALLY in the dark about what we've asked of you here. It's Boston. In January. On a Saturday..... We know a few of you might be a little cranky, and well... we couldn't have that. So in the vein of everything else we've done ...
[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="370" caption="mmmm. chowder"][/caption]
Over at #wcbos, we had a few guiding principles: we wanted to ensure that we were
Giving our attendees a uniquely Bostonian experience
Utilizing local vendors as much as possible
Considering every single aspect, no matter how small, to make it as kick ass as possible.
Now, usually ...
You can't swing a cat in the NorthEast without hitting a printer (though, as a friend points out, you really shouldn't swing cats). So what sets Moo apart?
Everything.
Moo has made it easy and inexpensive for non designers to get professional looking cards that are slick, sleek and friendly. ...
See it in Hi Def
A number of you have asked us about updating your ticket detail, and we at #wcbos are all about empowerment. Plus, we want some details from you. So, please log back in, let us know about things like your shirt size, make sure the name and ...
First, watch the video and the rest will make sense… What really happened on January 23rd with the mics, the audio, the live streaming and the display issues? And what do you think should be needed next year? Find out how we frantically rushed to get everything in order so that you can get these videos as fast as we could!
I just got the videos from Microsoft and the reason it took so long was the conversion. However, I need to make an additional conversion from Microsoft’s video format to Quicktime for additional editing. Because of this, the quality is severely compromised so while the video might not be the best, you should be able to follow along with SlideShare. If the slides aren’t up for the corresponding videos, please badger the speaker for them!
It took me just over a week to edit videos and once I have the other videos converted (1 week), it should take me an additional week to have them uploaded to Blip. Give another week or 2 for them to be uploaded to WordPress.tv which already has some of our videos up there.
Keep in mind that our turn around time for videos has been the fastest of all WordCamps and we hope to make it even faster next year. So bear with the current 1 man team and keep checking back here for other updates!
I recently had the privilege of giving my WordPress Security presentation at WordCamp Boston a few weeks ago. My presentation covered a lot of great WordPress Security tips, so I wanted to share with everyone the easiest security tips they could implement on any WordPress website. Below is that list!
1. Don’t use the admin account – The default user account that is created with every installation of WordPress is the admin account. Unfortunately the entire world knows this, including hackers, and can easily launch a dictionary attack on your website to try and guess your password. If a hacker already knows your username that’s half the battle. It’s highly recommended to delete or change the admin account username. To remove the admin account follow these steps:
Create a new WordPress user account. Make the username very unique
Assign account to the Administrator role
Log out of WordPress and back in with the newly created account
Delete the admin account
2. Use Secret Keys – A secret key is a hashing salt that is used against your password to make it even stronger. Secret keys are set in your wp-config.php file. Simply visit https://api.wordpress.org/secret-key/1.1 to have a set of randomly generated secret keys created for you. Copy the 4 secret keys to your wp-config.php file and save. You can add/change these keys at any time, the only thing that will happen is all current WordPress cookies will be invalidated and your users will have to log in again.
3. htaccess lockdown – Using a .htaccess file you can lockdown your wp-admin directory by IP address. This means only IP addresses you specify can access your admin dashboard URLs. This makes it impossible for anyone else to try and hack your WordPress backend. To do this simply create a file called .htaccess and add the following code to your file, replacing xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx with your IP address:
AuthUserFile /dev/null
AuthGroupFile /dev/null
AuthName "Access Control"
AuthType Basic
order deny,allow
deny from all
#IP address to Whitelist
allow from xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
4. Force SSL login and admin access – SSL (https) is a method of encrypting data that is transmitted from a website. To easily enable (and enforce) WordPress administration over SSL, there are two constants that need to be set in wp-config.php. Be sure that SSL is setup properly on your server before enabling this feature.
define('FORCE_SSL_LOGIN', true);
define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);
5. Install WordPress Security Plugins – Installing the below recommended plugins will help keep your website secure from hackers and exploits.
WP Security Scan – scans your folder/file permissions and verifies they are correct. Also displays other security related advice based on your configuration
Though it may seem an afterthought to a technology conference, having 500 really smart people in one space is too good an opportunity to pass up. Rather than have a charity sit someplace with a table (totally ineffective) we wanted to give everyone an easy and completely not annoying way to contribute.
Prior to the event, we asked anyone who had extra tix to WordCamp to sell them for a donation to Red Cross. In some cases, people asked for $30, and in some cases $150. We also placed 2 VIP packages up on ebay. In total, we estimate we raised almost $750 for Red Cross that way.
Almost 80 of you chose to take us up on our free parking for 2 cans of food swap. The back of the 4runner filled quickly and MANY thanks to our two volunteers Tonie Del Castillo and Romeo Del Castillo (whom we affectionately referred to as the “eskimos”) who stood out in the freezing cold for two hours.
I really wanted to integrate Red Cross into our event, but in a way that didn’t feel oppressive. Brian Gardner had the idea for WPCares for a while, but the Haiti crisis was what caused him to spring it into action. Within a day, he had a number of matching donors from across the WP community, and the Massachusetts Bay had agreed to send one of its IT volunteers to spend the entire day talking to attendees about volunteering.
cc WordCampBoston
After lunch, Whole Foods had enough leftover lunch for 75 people. Claire from Prospect Street Whole Foods sprung into action and found a place to donate the food to, as our vollies broke the bags down. They also took all our canned goods. Way to go, Whole Foods!
At the end of the day, thrilled with how many donations we had thus far,
cc WordCampBoston
we grabbed our leftover T’s, hoodies and scarves and threw them up for sale in the kitchen. The hoodies sold out immediately. We raised $450 in just WordCamp swag.
At the end of the day, WordCamp Boston raised about $6200 in funds for Red Cross. Collected almost 150 cans of food. Launched WPCares.org and got first mention of the WordPress Foundation. 12 attendees signed up for volunteer training with Red Cross and the social media mentions radiated across the twitterverse. We hope WordCamp Boston serves as a model for how to seamlessly integrate charity into your next tech event.
One of the questions we hear over and over on twitter from attendees regard plugins. And, we heard your complaints about not getting enough info in the all-too-brief plugin session. Not wanting to screw you over, we asked WordCamp Boston speakers to help us build an essential plugin list. Help us by adding YOUR thoughts too!
Jeff Chandler:
After The Deadline – Contextual spelling, style, and grammar check for WordPress. Write better and spend less time editing.
Contact Form 7 – Just another contact form plugin. Simple but flexible. - http://contactform7.com/
Exclude Pages from Navigation – Provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. IMPORTANT NOTE: This will remove the pages from any “consumer” side page listings, which may not be limited to your page navigation listings.
Highlight Author Comments- Automatically applies a distinctive style to comments by the post’s author.
Subscribe To Comments- Allows readers to receive notifications of new comments that are posted to an entry
Thumbnail Viewer – Thumbnail Viewer is a simple plugin for showing larger images of your thumbnails. It’s very similar to Lightbox, only much smaller. Add the rel=”thumbnail” attribute to any link tag to activate the thumbnail viewer. It’s based the wp-lightbox plugin and on the Image Thumbnail Viewer from Dynamic Drive. -
Widget Logic – Control widgets with WP’s conditional tags is_home etc
WP Ajax Edit Comments – The most powerful comment-editing solution for WordPress. Users can edit their own comments for a limited time, while admins can edit all comments.
Yet Another Related Posts Plugin – Returns a list of related entries based on a unique algorithm for display on your blog and RSS feeds. A templating feature allows customization of the display
Casie Gilette:
All in One SEO Pack- The All in One SEO Plugin takes care of a number of important SEO related tasks – Custom Title Tags & Meta Descriptions, Duplicate Content prevention, Custom Page Titles
WP DB Backup – automatically schedule exports of your data. extra tip: shoot it to a backpage page instead of your email account so you don’t have to deal with it until you need it.
After The Deadline – Goooooooo Raffi! You could just stop ditching school and learn to spell, or use AtD. Making the average idiot look as intelligent as the next guy.
Gravity Forms – I used to be about Cforms. Never again. GF is BEYOND awesome.
TwitMe – Skip “Share It”. This posts your latest to twitter for you and lets others twit and FB it as well. Cause really, where the hell else are they posting it to? DIGG? puh-leeze.
Next Gen Gallery – Not saying it always works perfectly, but its my fav. of the galleries. Get that smooth lightbox effect. Note: will not include itself in DB Backup.
Category Posts Widget- What’s the point of WP if you can’t move posts where you want ‘em? CPW allows you to making it the perfect CMS tool.
Reveal IDs for WP Admin – Once you go to pretty permalinks, it can be a bitch to figure out the cat,post or page ID neccesary for certain tools (like FCG, above). This reveals all the IDs from the admin.
Arkayne Related Posts – Yet Another Related Posts on steroids, and allows you to link to other blogs (just like twitter,etc). And we all know links=SEO. That said, you gotta pay for it when its over 30 posts or something a month, and that sucks. So, if you’re an uber-active blogger, go with YARPP.
Mailchimp/Constant Contact/Vertical Response/CampaignMonitor signup badges. Every email marketing SaaS has one (I’m digging Mailchimp these days for its sweet price). make sure you’re using it.
First and foremost, I want to thank everyone who donated to the American Red Cross through all of the different ways that there were to give at this event: online, through WPCares, the t-shirt sales, ticket sales, or just cash donations.
Your donations will go a long way towards helping provide for the emergency needs of the Haitian people. Financial donations enable the Red Cross to get critically needed items safely to the people who need it most, while remaining flexible to changing situations.
As of Sunday, the donation links on this website will stop working. Donations can still be made at Boston Red Cross or through WPCares at http://www.wpcares.org.
Donations are not the only way that you can help. The Red Cross is always looking for volunteers. Volunteers comprise 96% of the American Red Cross staff, at all levels of the organization. The Red Cross has volunteers through all of its departments, not just in disaster services. Even within disaster services, not all jobs mean that you have to pull yourself out of bed at 3 in the morning to go to a fire. It is my personal belief that everyone can find a position in the American Red Cross that fits what they want to be doing and the time that they have to give. I am proud to be part of that 96%. Go to http://www.redcross.org and enter in your zip code to find your local chapter.
I met many wonderful people at Wordcamp Boston 2010, and I hope that I will see many of you again, volunteering with the American Red Cross – and, perhaps, at the next #bestwordcampever!
Did you miss some of the lightning fast talks during Ignite Wordcamp Boston amidst the laughing, tweeting, and massive download of information to your already exhausted, over-simulated, and possibly over-caffeinated brain?
Never fear, you can still take advantage of these words of wisdom, and relive the laughs and insights, thanks to the handy-dandy Flip Mino HD. These videos are listed in the order the talks were presented, please let me know I missed anything. Thanks to Boston for your hospitality, see you all again soon!
Chris Beaman – WordPress as a CMS Solution for Local Service Providers
As the followup to the #bestwordcampever continues, we’ve updated the Program and Ignite WordCamp pages with links to SlideShare and SpeakerRate. Now, if you missed a session or couldn’t take notes with enough fury, you’ve got access to the slides behind our speakers’ presentations. With SpeakerRate, you can let both our speakers and organizers know what you thought of the presenters and their topics. Your feedback is essential to ensuring the success of future WordCamps in Boston and also helps other WordCamp organizers plan their events.
The biggest question we’ve seen concerns video of the sessions. We did record every session, including Ignite WordCamp, and Kurt is furiously preparing the videos for WordPress.tv. It’s going to take a while though, simply because we had so many sessions and he’s just one person. There is also a delay in receiving some of the videos shot by Microsoft. So, check back here over the next few weeks as we update the appropriate pages with links to the recordings.
If you’re a speaker whose slides we haven’t linked to on SlideShare, leave us a comment, send an email, or tweet us @wordcampboston and we’ll update our pages.
Relive the live blog all over again, catch the flickr stream. Many thanks to Jeremy Krantz for constantly running around and giving everyone at home a view into WordCamp Boston.
Remember, we are still accepting matching donations for Red Cross – We’ve already raised $3000 (as of 8am Sunday) via the site and WPCares.org, another $750 in donated ticket sales, and $415 in tshirt and hoodie sales. If you’d heard Brian Gardner’s speech about why he put this together, you’d hit the donate button. Help us make an impact.
Another AMAZING thank you to our blue hoodied volunteer core who made it all happen. If you’re still in Boston, I’ll (Amanda) be hosting them from 12-2pm today in the Marriott lobby, answering questions about WordPress they have (they didn’t get to attend sessions). Come be a genius yourself for an hour.
To everyone who attended, we truly hope you enjoyed yourself as your tweets, emails and comments would suggest. We would love for you to continue to watch the blog this week as we wrap up #wcbos with YET EVEN MORE giveaways, and ask you for feedback and ideas as… yes, we begin to plan next years #bestwordcampever.
Meanwhile, we’re curious: which speakers hit it out of the park?
As we’re all rolling out of bed this morning recovering from a relatively full night of post camp partying (fizzypop, anyone?), those of us not rushing to the airport will be gathering today for the first #WPchicks brunch.
Though not an official WordCamp event, the concept we had was that post event, it would be nice to have a relaxed, chill brunch amongst the women. After all, #wcbos had an exceptionally high attendance by women.
If you’ve signed up for the brunch, great, if not, feel free to show up (assuming of course, you’re a chick.), the room holds about 50 and there will be yet even more swag there. Marriott, 2nd floor restaurant.
We’ll be liveblogging the entire conference here. This is how you can follow ALL the surprises we have planned. We didn’t forget about those of you who couldn’t com: there will be surprises for you, too!
Are you driving in? Parking at the NERD Center is FREE if you bring 2 cans of foodfor the first 100 arrivals.
You can still grab a ticket on ebay! Our auctions end later today.
Are you on foursquare.com yet?? Did we mention rewards??
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