WordCamp Chicago Friday Pizza Party
WordCamp Chicago is this weekend and the entire WebDevStudios team will be attending!
Friday night (tonight) we are hosting an unofficial pizza party for anyone in the area at Lou Malnati’s in downtown Chicago. We will be at the 439 North Wells St. location.
The party will begin between 7-8pm, and I’ll be sure to post a tweet using the #wcchicago hash tag to let everyone know we have arrived. We’ll be buying a ton of pizza for everyone so come out and have a slice or ten!
We are looking forward to meeting all of the WordPress fanatics at WordCamp Chicago so make sure you track us down!
WordCamp Mid-Atlantic 2009 Recap
WebDevStudios (Brad, Scott, and Chris) had the pleasure of attending WordCamp Mid-Atlantic this past Saturday, May 16, 2009 in Baltimore, MD.
Aaron Brazell, Jimmy Gardner, and Alex Hillman organized an amazing event, which converged in the great central location of Baltimore.
Brad Williams gave his presentation, Advanced Thesis Techniques and Tricks, to a packed room full of WordPress Enthusiasts. After flying through his presentation he had a Thesis Q&A for about 30 minutes.
We met a lot of great people and made connections that will last for a long time to come. If you’ve never attended a WordCamp we highly recommend it!
Next up: WordCamp Chicago!
New WordPress Support Packages!
We are excited to announce the release of our new WordPress Support Packages!
Currently we offer three different support package levels: Standard, Gold, and Platinum.
Keeping your WordPress installation current is the single most effective way to keep your website secure and safe from vulnerabilities and hacks. Our support packages also offer plugin and themes upgrades, offsite backups, support ticket system (with unlimited tickets!), and even phone support.
Stop worrying about your website. Stay protected with updates, backups, and a support staff that truly understands WordPress and WordPress MU. Get signed up for a support package today!
Deadliest Catch Cornelia Marie Relaunches with WordPress
F/V Cornelia Marie, one of the fishing vessels featured on Discovery’s Deadliest Catch, was relaunched on Tuesday with a brand new WordPress powered website built by WebDevStudios.com!
We had a great time working with Morgan Howard to create the new CorneliaMarie.com website. The website was built using the popular WooTheme: Papercut. As with any website we build, we don’t just launch a premium theme, we customize that theme to make it unique to you and your brand.
The Cornelia Marie website also features Facebook Connect integration, allowings visitors to connect their Facebook account to CorneliaMarie.com. This pulls in the users profile image and information from Facebook and displays on comments and other various places on the website.
CorneliaMarie.com also utilizes the popular ad management plugin OIO Publisher. This gives them the ability to fully automate their website banner ad system, making it extremely easy for advertisers to upload banners, links, alt text, etc and even pay via PayPal. OIO Publisher also offers detailed stats for advertisers to see what they are paying for.
Deadliest Catch season 5 premiered last Tuesday and new episodes can be seen every Tuesday at 9pm EST. Be sure to catch Captain Phil and the entire Cornelia Marie crew in action, and also visit CorneliaMarie.com to join the fun!
How To: Display Error Messages in WordPress
One question we get a lot at WebDevStudios is what to do when you receive the dreaded WordPress White Screen of Death. WordPress by default hides all error messages from displaying. This is for security reasons as error messages can actually help hackers penetrate your website.
So how do you display error messages in WordPress? Easy! Just add the line of code below to the top of your .htaccess file in the root directory of your WordPress website.
php_flag display_errors on
That’s it! Error messages will now display across your entire WordPress website.
Another method used to display WordPress error messages is the WP_DEBUG flag:
define(’WP_DEBUG’, true);
Just drop that line of code in your wp-config.php file and errors will start displaying.
Remember to only use these techniques to help troubleshoot errors and remove it as soon as you are done.
New Jersey WordPress Meetup on April 1st
The next WordPress Meetup is scheduled for this coming Wednesday, April 1st at the WebDevStudios office in Belmar, New Jersey.
Topics scheduled for the Meetup include:
- Using WordPress as a CMS Tips and tricks to help tranform WordPress into a CMS
- WordPress 2.8 is coming! We’ll be discussing new features in 2.8 for developers, designers, and users.
- WordCamp Mid-Atlantic is on May 16th.
Information on the upcoming WordCamp in Baltimore.
You can view the official April Meetup page here:
http://www.meetup.com/The-New-Jersey-WordPress-Meetup-Group/calendar/9809084/
We are looking forward to another fun WordPress filled evening and hope to see everyone there!
Official Sponsor of WordCamp Chicago
WebDevStudios.com is an official sponsor of WordCamp Chicago!
The WDS team will also be attending the event and can’t wait to hang out with other WordPress fanatics in the windy city. WordCamp Chicago has an amazing lineup scheduled for the June 6th-7th event.
Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, will be giving the keynote: The State of the Word. Many other WordPress rockstars will be in attendance including Chris Pearson (Thesis), Brian Gardner (Revolution), Lisa Sabin-Wilson (WordPress for Dummies), Jeff Chandler (WP Weekly Podcast), and more!
If you are planning on going make sure to contact us so we can meet up at WordCamp Chicago!
Top 10 WordPress Plugins You’ve Probably Never Heard of – 2009 Edition
We have a nice stockpile of lesser known plugins that we use on websites we build. I wanted to share that list with you in the hopes these plugins will help you as much as they have us!
All of the below plugins have been tested compatible up to WordPress 2.7.1
10. SEO Slugs – The SEO Slugs plugin removes common words like “the, a, in, to” etc from the post slugs (permalinks) when you create a post or page. This helps search engine optimization by only using the keywords you care about in your URL.
9. Sidebar Login – Plugin allows the ability to easily add a sidebar login widget on your WordPress website. Once logged in the plugin will display a “Welcome” screen with admin links and a Logout button. Very nice touch on a user-focused site.
8. Top Level Categories – Plugin gives the ability to remove the category prefix in the URL to your category page. Instead of http://domain.com/category/web it would use http://domain.com/web Great for SEO and CMS like taxonomy by category.
7. Author Image – Allows your WordPress users to upload a custom avatar to use as their author image. Image can easily be used inside your WordPress themes to display post authors image next to content they have created.
6. Featured Content Gallery – Creates an automated, customizable rotating image gallery anywhere on your WordPress powered website. Most famously used in the Revolution themes. Flexible styling options let you set the size and color of the rotator.
5. WP Hide Dashboard – Hides the dashboard from users assigned to the Subscriber role on your WordPress powered site. Only options available is to edit profile so users can still edit their details/information.
4. Exclude Pages – Plugin adds a checkbox “include this page in menus”, checked by default. If field is unchecked the page will be hidden from your navigation menus.
3. Duplicate Sidebar Widgets – WordPress by default only lets you use a widget in one location on one sidebar. This plugin allows you to duplicate sidebar widgets across multiple sidebars. This is handy if you want to use the same widgets on different sidebars within your site.
2. Search Regex – Adds a powerful set of search and replace functions to WordPress. Easily find any value within your WordPress content and replace with a different value. Great for website migrations from different platforms. Also has the ability to use Regex patterns.
1. External Links – Forces all outbound links on your site to open in a new window. You can also add an external link icon and add rel=nofollow to all outbound links for SEO purposes.
Some of these plugins are more known than others, but they are all excellent plugins that make life easier on all of us! Enjoy!
WebDevStudios is Attending DrupalCon 2009!
Drupal Con is a bi-annual mass gathering of Drupal developers and enthusiasts. This year the event will take place March 4-7th in Washington DC.
The founders of WebDevStudios.com, Brad and Brian, will both be attending the developer conference this year. We are really looking forward to the event and can’t wait to meet other Drupal enthusiasts.
We love working with Drupal and utilizing it’s endlessly flexible open-source framework. Drupal is a powerhouse and if used correctly can build some amazing sites including E-Commerce and Social Networking websites.
With over 100 sessions on the schedule, DrupalCon 2009 is guaranteed to provide a wealth of knowledge and information. We pride ourselves on staying current with the platforms we specialize in. We are always looking to expand our knowledge and skill set and DrupalCon is the place to do it!
If you would like to meet up at the show please drop us a line or leave a comment on this post. See you at DrupalCon!
Official Sponsor of the WordPress Weekly Podcast
We are excited to announce that WebDevStudios.com is an official sponsor of the WordPress Weekly Podcast!
WordPress Weekly is the number one podcast dedicated entirely to WordPress. Hosted by Jeff Chandler and David Peralty, WP Weekly has become a “must listen” podcast since its launch in early 2008. (which I was a part of!)
With various guests including Matt Mullenweg, Alex King, and Lorelle Van Fossen, WordPress Weekly is listened to by WP enthusiasts all over the globe and it’s easy to see why.
WebDevStudios.com is proud to sponsor the open source efforts of the WP Weekly Podcast and community members like Jeff and David who help push this great platform to exciting new limits!
