Guest Post: Why WordPress Makes Mobile Easy

WPtouch Mobile

The following post comes from Dale Mugford of BraveNewCode, the company behind WPtouch Pro, a longtime supporter of Toronto’s WordPress community and sponsor of WordCamp Toronto 2013.

WordPress is hands-down the best publishing platform on the web for making mobile WordPress websites and publishing on the go easy. I wanted to share some of the tips and tricks I’ve learned after working over the past 5 years on WPtouch, a popular WordPress plugin solution for making your WordPress site mobile. I’ve really come to love how WordPress really makes adapting to the mobile revolution as simple as installing themes and plugins.

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Featured Speaker: Brian Rotsztein

Brian is an inbound marketer with 16 years of experience. He’s been using WordPress since version 1.6 (2005). His companies (RedstoneX.com and Uniseo.com) provide WordPress services (web and mobile design, marketing, programming, plugin development, etc.) and he likes to give back to the community. He has spoken at WordCamp Montreal (4 times!) and WordCamp Ottawa.

Presentation: Content Marketing with Guest Posts

My presentation is Content Marketing with Guest Posts. It will cover the basics of how to guest post on blogs and contribute to online magazines. This can be helpful for SEO, social media marketing, and personal branding. WordPress is a great platform to use for that purpose.

What do you want folks to learn from your presentation?

I’d like attendees to understand how WordPress can be used for promoting written content and amplifying reach in the “modern era” of online marketing. It’s a powerful tool to get more people to consume useful content. Bloggers and the business community can benefit from this presentation.

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Featured Speaker: Sean Nilsson

Sean is an online consultant with a focus on building WordPress websites. He also make online videos and records music under the name Sheltered in Sound. You can follow Sean on Twitter and visit Sean’s site, N Creative, at ncreative.ca

Presentation: Dr. WordPress or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Template

This presentation will discuss the development of a magazine site with over 4,000 posts actively updated daily by a large team of writers and editors.  We will discuss migrating a multisite install of a very old version of WordPress into a modern day single install.  Discuss providing a solution where the client can redesign page layouts in-house with no coding knowledge through the use of a premium theme and a multitude of plugins.

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Featured Speaker: Ben Fox

Ben has been building with WordPress for just over two years and in that time has merged his passion for education with a love of technology. In 2012 he co-founded of FlowPress, a WordPress focused development agency as well as WPUniversity.com, a site dedicated to enhancing WordPress learning and providing hints and tips for WordPress users. His current project is a WordPress plugin for the Sidekick platform that provides real-time, guided help and learning from right inside the WordPress dashboard.

Presentation: So You Want To Teach WordPress?

How and what to teach when training a non-technical person or beginner in WordPress.

Non-technical WordPress beginners aren’t like you and me. They didn’t look at the WordPress the first time and say “Wow COOL!” they said probably said something like “I don’t understand this” or “I’m not good at computers”.

During the presentation we’re going to talk about helping people get past that fear, how to engage in a meaningful and memorable way and how to prepare for class.

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Featured Speaker: Geoff Campbell

Geoff runs his web design and hosting business almost entirely on WordPress based websites and has been climbing up the WordPress ladder. He helped organize WordCamp Hamilton 2013 and after attending, he thought. “Geez, I should have done a presentation. ”

Since he thought he could come up with some helpful information. Geoff has done quite a bit of speaking, teaching and presenting before and he’s very comfortable in front of large groups.

Presentation: Plugin Safari

We’ll be hacking our way through the jungle of WordPress Plugins, looking for the gems.  I’ll be covering a variety of plugins and best practices as well as presenting a specially prepared rant for the folks at WP HQ.

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Sponsor Showcase: New Horizons Media

New Horizons MediaNew Horizons Media is a Toronto-based video production company that helps Canadian non-profits and small businesses get their message out with cost-effective, professional videos & content solutions.

We always say that if a picture is worth a thousand words, video delivers 25 of them per second!

Why are you sponsoring WordCamp Toronto?

We use WordPress for our website and we love it! There’s a great community in Toronto that uses WordPress and we want to support it.

What is your one tip for WordCamp attendees?

Use lots of video! WordPress and video are a match made in heaven :-)

A big thank-you to New Horizons Media for lending their video production expertise to WordCamp Toronto 2013.

Featured Speaker: Mark Kelnar

Mark came to WordPress as a developer and from a backend perspective around version 2.7. Initially to develop a few plugins for personal projects. After a few years of developing a sites for friends and diving in the WordPress community in Austin, WP Engine was born and he joined the project to take over platform and infrastructure development. This provided an opportunity to work with thousands of WordPress installations on a daily basis for a few years now.

Presentation: Adding Source Control To Your Code Life

Adding Source Control To Your Life is a discussion about using revision control in your plugin and theme development.

Editor’s Note: I think we typo’d Mark’s presentation title in the schedule… sorry Mark!

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Featured Speaker: Paul Bearne

Paul is a forward thinking developer, with over eight years experience in an international team.

He has in-depth knowledge of commercial & IT issues. Accustomed to delivering state of the art, Ajax based internet business applications for a diverse audience.

Delivering complete solutions, using WordPress as a CMS platform, that create an experience that delights and rewards the user whilst effectively meeting business needs.

Presentation: How to Set Up a Vagrant Development System

Vagrant is a tool to create and manage local virtual machines that provide local development web servers.

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Sponsor Showcase: WP Engine

WP EngineWP Engine is the one of the most mature premium managed hosting platforms for websites and apps built with WordPress. WP Engine powers tens of thousands of websites, delivering the fastest, most reliable, and most secure web experience. Businesses large and small have come to rely on WP Engine’s exceptional customer service team that specializes in solving problems ranging from troubleshooting plugins, making themes scalable, and mitigating site migration headaches.

The crew at WP Engine have been big supporters of WordCamp Toronto for the last couple of years, and we’re very happy to see team members Austin Gunter and Mark Kelnar both stepping up to present for 2013. (You can see the rest of their fabulous team right here.)

Check out WP Engine’s pricing plans to find the right fit for your needs. Every plan comes with a risk-free, 60-day money-back guarantee.

Why is WP Engine sponsoring WordCamp Toronto 2013?

WP Engine loves WordPress and loves what WordCamps do for the WordPress community. We enjoy the opportunity to not only support, but also contribute back by sponsoring, attending and speaking at WordCamps. WordCamp Toronto is definitely a mover and shaker in the WordPress community so we love getting the opportunity to be a part of WordCamp Toronto 2013.

What tip do you have for WordCampers in Toronto?

For security, keep your passwords super strong. Always keep WordPress up to date. Interact with the people in your local WordPress meetup, and use a quality managed WordPress hosting provider like WP Engine.