Lisa Sabin-Wilson

WordCamp Savannah – WordPress Q&A

Lisa — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:06:37 +0000

The only real exposure I’ve had to Savannah, Georgia is through my reading of John Berendt’s Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil many years ago. I’ve always wanted to visit Savannah and this coming weekend, I get my chance to do just that.

I am attending and presenting at WordCamp Savannah this weekend and am really looking forward to it. From what I understand, Savannah has a young WordPress community full of true beginners and people just getting started with WordPress. Jane Wells is doing a bang up job in organizing a local WordPress community there, and this is just the beginning. I’m thrilled to help!

I arrive in Savannah tomorrow, early afternoon, which leaves the rest of the afternoon and evening getting acquainted with Savannah. Any recommendations would be welcome! I’m staying right on the river – just 1/2 mile away from the venue, the SCAD River Club.

There is a session all day on Friday titled “Get Your WordPress Here!” that is meant for true beginners — we’re talking about people who have never installed WordPress before. They are tasked with bringing a laptop, some pre-prepared posts and content for some basic pages. The entire day will be a beginners Workshop for folks who are brand new to WordPress.

I’m following up with that group on Saturday at 11:45 am with my session titled “WordPress For Dummies: LIVE Q&A“. New users will spend the day Friday learning about getting started with WordPress, then attend my session on Saturday to follow-up with your burning questions. Keep in mind, my session is user-focused and is meant for beginners … so I will not be addressing or discussing questions related to advanced topics (WC Savannah has a developers track for the more geeky among us!).

I don’t have any slides prepared or any specific talk planned. What I do have planned is an informal chat where we will discuss the topics the audience wants to know about. I plan to do this by taking questions from the attendees about topics related to getting started with the WordPress platform. I will very much be winging it and am looking forward to meeting everyone who attends!

As a bonus – I will be giving away 10 copies of my latest book, WordPress For Dummies, 3rd Edition. This book is hot off the presses (released early August 2010) and is in keeping with the theme of my sessions, which is to help new users explore the WordPress platform and discover how they can use it to freely, and easily, publish content on the WWW. I will be on hand all weekend to sign your copy, if you’d like — and if we’re lucky, since Matt Mullenweg (Co-Founder of WordPress) will be in attendance – maybe we can get him to sign it too! Keep our fingers crossed!

WordCamp Savannah has an amazing line up of speakers ready to present on topics for users and developers, alike! I’m looking forward to a great weekend of learning, sharing and meeting new people. AND visiting Savannah for the first time … roaming around and getting to know the place a little!

If you’re planning on attending and will be there this weekend – please stop me and say hi!

© 2010 Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress For Dummies . | Permalink | 3 comments |
Read more in: savannah, WordCamp, WordPress

Lisa is the Owner and Creative Director of E.Webscapes Design Studio where she provides custom design solutions for WordPress users, worldwide. Browse Portfolio | Read the Design Blog | Place an order

Join Lisa's Newsletter today and receive FREE WordPress tips every day for 2 WEEKS - delivered to you daily. Members also receive FIRST notice of book news, appearances, specials on design and services - and more!

WordPress Web Design For Dummies

Lisa — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 00:39:27 +0000

Continuing along with my line of WordPress-themed books, I am currently working on adding a new title to my WordPress arsenal: WordPress Web Design For Dummies (published by Wiley Publishing: For Dummies division).

I would give a word of thanks and gratitude to Wiley Publishing, in particular my editor Amy Fandrei for their continued support, encouragement and faith in me as an author of their most popular series of books on the WordPress platform!

WordPress Web Design For Dummies will focus completely on designing web sites with WordPress. The book assumes you already have knowledge of how to use WordPress (ie: you have already read my other book, WordPress For Dummies) – and you want to learn more about designing web sites with WordPress.

This book is for:

Bloggers who want to spice up their existing WordPress blogs
Designers who want to delve into WordPress theme design practices
Anyone who wants to learn how to make child themes based on popular theme frameworks
Folks who would like to explore using WordPress as a CMS to create sites for
- E-Commerce to sell products and services
- Photo Galleries and Portfolios
- Social Communities using BuddyPress (extending on the information in my other book,BuddyPress For Dummies)
- Small and large business
- …and more!

I am currently in the process of writing this book (yes – in tandem with my other new book: WordPress All In One Desk Reference!) and have fast-tracked the writing process in hopes of getting it out on the shelves by early 2011!

I would like to hear from you!

As I am delving into the chapters over the next 2-3 months – I would love to hear from the WordPress designing public on what topics you would like to see covered in depth in a book like this? I cannot promise I will cover every single possible design topic known to man – - but as it relates to WordPress, would love to hear of any areas you would like to read and learn about and I will do my absolute best to make sure its covered.

What do you think? What areas of WordPress web design would you like to read about??

© 2010 Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress For Dummies . | Permalink | 14 comments |
Read more in: CSS, Design, For Dummies, themes, Web Design, WordPress

Lisa is the Owner and Creative Director of E.Webscapes Design Studio where she provides custom design solutions for WordPress users, worldwide. Browse Portfolio | Read the Design Blog | Place an order

Join Lisa's Newsletter today and receive FREE WordPress tips every day for 2 WEEKS - delivered to you daily. Members also receive FIRST notice of book news, appearances, specials on design and services - and more!

Smashing Magazine: Women in Web Design

Lisa — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 23:44:29 +0000

I don’t think I mentioned the interview I did with Smashing Magazine for their Women in Web Design: Group Interview. They published it at the end of May of this year, and I’m listed there, with a group of 15 other female designers who are all making the web a pretty place to be! I’m super honored to be listed among that group of fine ladies — and have to say, a little tickled pink to have been asked since I’ve been a raving fan of Smashing Magazine for quite some time!

Here’s a listing ladies that I had the pleasure of sharing company with in the Smashing interview:

Rachel Andrew (edgeofmyseat.com | this is rachelandrew.co.uk | twitter)
F. Claire Baxter (Vanity Claire | twitter)
Jan Cavan (Dawghouse Design Studio | twitter)
Adelle Charles (Fuel Brand Inc | Adelle Charles | twitter)
Kristi Colvin (Fresh ID | kris colvin | twitter)
Molly E. Holzschlag (Molly.com | Twitter)
Eva-Lotta Lamm (Eva-Lotta Lamm | Twitter)
Gisele Jaquenod (Gisele Jaquenod & Birdie | Twitter)
Inayaili de León (Yaili | Web Designer Notebook | Twitter)
milo317 (3oneseven | Twitter)
Sarah Parmenter (You Know Who | the blog of Sarah Parmenter | Twitter)
Elena Scanteie (Design Disease | Twitter)
Grace Smith (Postscript5 | gracesmith.co.uk | Twitter)
Amber Weinberg (amberweinberg.com | Twitter)
Lynda Weinman (lynda.com | Twitter)
Lisa Sabin-Wilson (E.Webscapes | Just a girl | Twitter)

(They apparently saved the best for last, eh? heh.)

Click over and have a read! They didn’t post each interview in one big chunk – but rather, took snippets from all of our answers to their questions and presented them all together in sections… so in order to read my answers, you kinda have to read the whole thing.

Cool!

© 2010 Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress For Dummies . | Permalink | 22 comments |
Read more in: Design, females, Interviews, smashing magazine, Web Design, women

Lisa is the Owner and Creative Director of E.Webscapes Design Studio where she provides custom design solutions for WordPress users, worldwide. Browse Portfolio | Read the Design Blog | Place an order

Join Lisa's Newsletter today and receive FREE WordPress tips every day for 2 WEEKS - delivered to you daily. Members also receive FIRST notice of book news, appearances, specials on design and services - and more!

A bit of a redesign

Lisa — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 20:10:25 +0000

It’s been 2 years since I’ve touched the design on this site. I keep meaning to, and all that – but you know how it goes, right? Something about the Cobbler’s kids having no shoes….or something along those lines.

I’ve been re-designing this site since March 2010 — it’s gone through several different iterations .. all of them wanting to meet my goal of simple. Just. Simple. This is my personal site, and I want it to reflect me, personally – - but at the same time, I do a lot of blogging here about my books and my work – - so I couldn’t have shirtless photos of Johnny Depp in the header, if ya know what I mean?

I digress…….

So, this time around – I tried something a bit different from my norm. For the last 10 years, my focus in design has been in custom design and development – - which means I do everything, mostly, from scratch. When I set out to design a WordPress theme, the first tool I open is Notepad, because all the templates I do are written from scratch. I have never used frameworks in the sites I designed. Nothing against my fine friends who successfully market and sell theme frameworks – - but I have always found them to be somewhat limiting, to me. I understand that to a mass population of users, to whom theme frameworks are marketed, it works well. For a custom theme developer who likes to (and most often has to) muck around in the code bits and put her own little touches here and there – - sometimes, frameworks can be somewhat cumbersome.

I’m open-minded that my experience with this re-design may open my mind more to the concept and use of theme frameworks for WordPress and open to the idea of using them in certain cases in my own work with my clients, depending on the specs of the project. Sure would be nice to have some of the work done for me, no doubt! Having the WordPress features and functions already laid out in a nice, clean framework that would allow the designer to focus on what she likes doing is super cool…let me concentrate on graphics and CSS and I’m golden.

It just takes some getting used to, and I am not immune to change.

That being said, over that past several months, I’ve spent a bit of time with my friends over at iThemes who have a nifty framework for WordPress called Builder. After talking with them, I told them I’d try it out on my personal site for a number of reasons – - the biggest one being that I obviously do not have a lot of time to pay attention to the design on this site, because I’m busy writing books and designing other people’s web sites. I figured a theme framework may be just what I need to keep the maintenance here down to a low roar.

To a point, using a framework does keep the maintenance down a bit – since all the functions are already there for me, no need to re-invent the wheel. However, despite that; I still copied over almost all the core template files (index.php, single.php, archive.php, page.php, comments.php, etc, etc) to my child theme directory, so I could change them to my liking. And now, the framework is there to build on, if I choose to keep using it to design versions of this site in the future.

So, this site is now sporting the Builder framework with my new summer time design (before summer actually runs out on me!) – thanks to my friends at iThemes.

It’s not completely complete, yet – - there are some elements that I’d like to add both to the function of the site, and to the design elements (I need a bird in here somewhere…I love birds). But, for the most part – the site is finished, at least enough for me to happily display it here and let you look at it.

Also, since it’s been so long since I paid any attention to the code on this site – - there are several different features that are new here (but old to you WordPress users, since you’ve seen/been using them for some time). Things like threaded comments, featured images, etc — as such, I still have some tweaking I need to do on the backend to account for some of the missing items – - such as, I use a related posts feature at the end of every post that pulls in the featured image thumbnail… and yet, I don’t have featured images assigned to each post, yet….getting there though! (Click over to the front page of this site to see the featured image thumbnails in action.)

So, yea – - small bits like that need to be cleaned up, which I will do as I go along…so just pretend that you see the featured image thumbnails in areas where there aren’t any – - consider it an exercise in stretching your imagination!

It’s lighter, in design and color, than my previous design – - which is what I wanted. I have worked in my favorite color pink (no design on this site can be without pink!), and the color scheme is light and airy to wear like a sundress on a warm summer day.

Enough with the metaphors…..hope you like it!

© 2010 Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress For Dummies . | Permalink | 29 comments |
Read more in: builder, Design, ithemes, Pink, Redesign, WordPress

Lisa is the Owner and Creative Director of E.Webscapes Design Studio where she provides custom design solutions for WordPress users, worldwide. Browse Portfolio | Read the Design Blog | Place an order

Join Lisa's Newsletter today and receive FREE WordPress tips every day for 2 WEEKS - delivered to you daily. Members also receive FIRST notice of book news, appearances, specials on design and services - and more!

WordPress All In One Desk Reference

Lisa — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 19:14:51 +0000

I posted yesterday about an exciting announcement that I would be making on the WP Weekly radio show today. If you’d like, you can listen to the audio of the WP Weekly show and my appearance on it here: WP Weekly Radio Show – June 19, 2010

Now that the radio show is over and the announcement has gone public there, I feel good about announcing it here, as well.

As many of you may have guessed – it is another book project..with a little different twist to it this time, though!

A few months back, I was having a talk with my editor at Wiley Publishing, Amy Fandrei – mostly talking about what it would take for me to finish up writing the 3rd Edition of WordPress For Dummies and what was happening with the 3.0 development of WordPress, etc. That lead us into a talk about some more advanced topics surrounding WordPress – - more advanced than what my Dummies book covers. Let’s face it – a For Dummies book is meant to be for beginners and intermediate users, right? But what about a book that covers the WHOLE gammut? A reference book that is useful for a wide variety of users – -so that beginners can start with it, and as they continue to grow – can continue to use the resource to step into areas of WordPress that they may never have tried before.

This discussion lead to me signing the contract for a brand new WordPress related book under the Wiley Publishing roof. This new book is in the process of being written right now and it is slated to be a 940 page book (approximately) and it is called … The WordPress All In One Desk Reference. (I can’t even link it yet, because it’s so new that Amazon.com doesn’t even have a whiff of it yet!)

What’s SO exciting about the WordPress All In One Desk Reference is that is not just ME writing the book! This time around – it is a fully collaborative effort that involves a group of authors that I hand picked to help me write the text — as a reader of the book, you will benefit from the voice and experience of different WordPress experts from their specific area of expertise – and so far, we are all having a BLAST! Here are my partners in crime for the WordPress All In One Desk Reference book – and a little bit about what their role in the book is:

Lisa Sabin-Wilson (@LisaSabinWilson) – Author of WordPress For Dummies and BuddyPress For Dummies, owner and creative designer at E.Webscapes and co-owner of BA Hosting. Lisa is writing the text on the overall WordPress user experience from (soup to nuts) the mechanics of installing, configuring and using the software to publish a blog and/or web site on the internet.
Cory Miller (@CoryMiller303) – Owner and founder of iThemes Media, Plugin Buddy and WebDesign.com. Cory is authoring sections of the book on WordPress Themes from beginner level on through to Advanced theme design, theme admin options, theme functions and frameworks.
Michale Torbert (@MichaelTorbert) – Developer of the insanely popular WordPress All In One SEO plugin and owner of Semperfi Web Design. Michael is contributing TONS of information on WordPress plugins – - from the basic installation and use of plugins to taking you through steps on how to write your own WordPress plugins, including best practice and standards.
Andrea Rennick (@Andrea_R) – The WordPress community loves Andrea from their experience with her in the WP and WPMU support forums and from her site WPMUTutorials. Andrea is an expert in the area of WordPress MU and when 3.0 merged the MU code base, Andrea and her husband, Ron, were the immediate ‘go to’ people. Andrea is busily writing all of the chapters that cover the use of the WordPress Multi Site features – - she will take you through how to activate it, set it up and configure it — as well as taking you through the user experience, plugins and themes and troubleshooting references and real world expeirences to help you build and grow your own network.
Kevin Palmer (@KevinPalmer) – Owner of SocialMediaAnswers.com and an SEO and Social Media guru in his own right. Kevin is contributing a section of the book on how to use WordPress as a social media hub, gobs of informative and resourceful text and content on SEO practices, Analytics and reputation management. I’ve already read a few of his chapters – and did you know all of the above can be done directly from your WordPress Dashboard?? Good stuff!

There you have it! The WordPress All In One Desk Reference book is set to publish in early Spring 2011, brought to you by the aforementioned motley crew band of merry gentlemen, and ladies. We are all hard at work, collaborating on the book and working together to bring you a desk reference that will be a must have! We’re all excited about this project and can’t wait for you to read, learn and enjoy!

© 2010 Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress For Dummies . | Permalink | 31 comments |
Read more in: andrea rennick, book, Cory Miller, kevin palmer, michael torbert, Wiley Publishing, WordPress, wordpress all in one desk reference, wordpress book, wordpress resource, WPMU

Lisa is the Owner and Creative Director of E.Webscapes Design Studio where she provides custom design solutions for WordPress users, worldwide. Browse Portfolio | Read the Design Blog | Place an order

Join Lisa's Newsletter today and receive FREE WordPress tips every day for 2 WEEKS - delivered to you daily. Members also receive FIRST notice of book news, appearances, specials on design and services - and more!

WordPress For Dummies 3rd Edition available

Lisa — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 16:42:22 +0000

This week, we saw the release of the MUCH anticipated version 3.0 of WordPress. I’ve been following along with the 3.0 development since December, and it is a hawt release, to say the least! Matter of fact, this very site has been running 3.0 since December, starting with the very first Alpha and upgraded each day to the latest nightly build through all the Betas and Release Candidates and today, I’m happy to say, it is running the final release version of 3.0. I have to hand it to the development team – - all of the committers and contributors – this release is smokin’! Kudos devs!

(Been waiting, and waiting for this new release – - now I can finally redesign this site. It needs it BADLY!)

Aside from LOVE loving this release and all the great new features, I’ve had to keep a close eye on development in order to finish writing the THIRD edition of WordPress For Dummies! I finished it a few weeks ago and as you read this, it should be whizzing its way through final production . . . then print!

WordPress For Dummies, 3rd Edition (Wiley Pub.) is now available on Amazon.com for pre-order. This edition of the book was, almost, completely re-written and covers all the basics about the WordPress platform – including all the great new features that version 3.0 brings to its users, including how to set up and use the new Multi Site features so you can run more than one blog or web site on ONE installation of the WordPress software, how to use the custom menu feature to build and create your own custom navigation menus, a comprehensive look at the NEW default WordPress theme called Twenty Ten, using custom post types to create new ways to present different types of content – - as well as the rest of the information you’ve come to expect from WordPress For Dummies – - getting YOU up and running on your own WordPress powered web site … making it easy to understand so you can concentrate on the important stuff, like your content and your readers! Reserve your copy today to make sure you’re getting the most up-to-date information and resource that only a For Dummies book can give you.

While you’re at it, you may also want to nab a copy of my other book, BuddyPress For Dummies, which takes you through all of the information you need to know about setting up the suite of plugins for WordPress called BuddyPress. My book takes you through deciding if BuddyPress is right for you and your web site, how to install and set it up and how to use all it’s fantastic features that allow you to run a fully functional and full-featured social community on your own domain! Did you know that you can run BuddyPress on a regular installation of WordPress? It used to be that you were required to use the Multi User (now known as Multi Site) version of WordPress – - but you CAN set it up on your regular WordPress.org installation and, with 3.0, you don’t even have to use the Multi Site features. My book takes you through it – check it out! (don’t forget about my FREE BuddyPress Webinar on June 23rd that I announced last week!)

I also started a new e-mail newsletter that you may want to check out (click the link, or you can fill out the sign up form beneath this post, or over in my right sidebar). When you sign up for it, you will receive 2 weeks of free, daily WordPress tips written by me as a way of saying THANKS for reading! I also send out regular announcements on new projects, book releases, public/speaking appearances and different specials that I run for WordPress design and consulting over at my business web site, E.Webscapes. Give it a shot – sign up today – - get 2 weeks of free WordPress tips and let me know how you like them! My daily tips cover fun, practical and useful information on using WordPress.

What’s next now that WordPress For Dummies, 3rd Edition is finished?? If you know me well enough, you know that I always, always have a fun new project up my sleeve just WAITING for one project to complete so I can move on to the next one. I DO have something that has been in the works for several months that is just now getting rocking and rolling and I’m really excited to be able to announce it. BUT, I’m not announcing it today… in this post (sorry!).

There is a reason I’ve held on to the information this long and have recently been giving the ‘go ahead’ to announce it publicly. My good friend, Jeff Chandler, runs a pretty popular and highly trafficked, and very informative WordPress web site over at WP Tavern and he also does a weekly WordPress radio show on Saturdays at 2pm EST (Jeff also has an excellent forum on his site with an available VIP membership – - the forum is a very valuable source of information all about WordPress – check it out!)

At WordCamp Raleigh, I was teasing Jeff a bit with some minor details of this new project and he wanted me to tell him so bad – but I couldn’t, not at that time. But I did promise him that when I was able to announce it – I would do it, first, on his radio show. I keep my promises!

SO – tomorrow … Saturday, June 19, 2010 … at 2pm EST I will be on Jeff’s WordPress Weekly radio show – - along with 4 other people who are collaborating with me on this project, to announce my latest project coming down the pike that I think will be of great interest and benefit to the WordPress community. If I’ve piqued your interest – - drop by the show and join us! We’ll also be talking a bit about WordCamp Chicago – - a little WordPress weekend conference that I organized in Chicago, Illinois and was attended by 500 WordPress peeps! It was a great success – just haven’t had a chance (read: the time) to post about it – - but plan to soon, complete with LOTS of photos!

That is all.

© 2010 Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress For Dummies . | Permalink | 13 comments |
Read more in: buddypress, For Dummies, WordCamp, WordPress, Wordpress books, WP Weekly

Lisa is the Owner and Creative Director of E.Webscapes Design Studio where she provides custom design solutions for WordPress users, worldwide. Browse Portfolio | Read the Design Blog | Place an order

Join Lisa's Newsletter today and receive FREE WordPress tips every day for 2 WEEKS - delivered to you daily. Members also receive FIRST notice of book news, appearances, specials on design and services - and more!

My Free BuddyPress Webinar at WebDesign.Com

Lisa — Tue, 25 May 2010 18:24:51 +0000

I’m excited to announce that I am doing a free webinar presentation for my good friends at WebDesign.com on June 23rd at 1pm CST (Central Standard Time). The webinar is on the topic of using BuddyPress to create an online community on your WordPress powered site.

I speak on the topic of BuddyPress often, as a matter of fact, I just finished up a presentation at the WordCamp in Raleigh, North Carolina this past weekend and it’s great to see how excited people are about BuddyPress. It also amazes me how many people do not yet know what BuddyPress is – or how they can use it to add that layer of social networking to their WordPress site!

In my webinar, you will discover the following:

What BuddyPress is …. and what it isn’t
The features available within BuddyPress
How each of the features work to create a social network on your site
How different web sites are using BuddyPress today to power their own social community

Click here to sign up for my FREE BuddyPress Webinar on June 23rd at 1pm CST. It’s free. It will last about an hour and is being moderated/emcee’d by my pal Cory Miller of iThemes and WebDesign.com

In February of this year, I published BuddyPress For Dummies (Wiley Pub.), which makes a great companion to my other book, WordPress For Dummies.Wiley Publishing wanted to publish a book on BuddyPress because they acknowledge the emerging popularity of the BuddyPress suite of plugins and how it empowers WordPress users to take control over their own social networking content. The book is doing pretty well and is a nice way for people to get introduced to the BuddyPress software, how to install it on your WordPress site, how to set up and use its great social features and how to customize it for your own community. If you don’t have a copy, pick one up today!

© 2010 Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress For Dummies . | Permalink | 12 comments |
Read more in: buddypress, WebDesign.com, Webinar, WordPress

Lisa is the Owner and Creative Director of E.Webscapes Design Studio where she provides custom design solutions for WordPress users, worldwide. Browse Portfolio | Read the Design Blog | Place an order

Join Lisa's Newsletter today and receive FREE WordPress tips every day for 2 WEEKS - delivered to you daily. Members also receive FIRST notice of book news, appearances, specials on design and services - and more!

Builder Bootcamp, PluginBuddy and my iThemes experience

Lisa — Sat, 08 May 2010 16:54:14 +0000

This month has been just a crazy month of travel for me. One of the really nice results of publishing several books over the past 3 years is that I do get asked to speak a lot at different types of industry events from WordCamps to social media and internet marketing events. I really love to do it, as I really enjoy connecting with people who read my books, and who are interested in the same things I am. This past month, I was in Austin, Texas; Vancouver, British Columbia, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma and San Francisco, California. I enjoy, and am grateful, for the opportunities to connect with people from all over who are passionate about publishing, marketing, WordPress and social media.

I haven’t blogged a lot about my travel experiences – and I do intend to. It’s been a crazy month, so hence the lack of posts here. However, I do want to tell you about my experience in Oklahoma with the crew from iThemes, including some of the exciting stuff that they have going on over there, and why you should pay attention. The folks from iThemes are putting out some amazing products that I want to bring to your attention here. Aside from their iThemes offerings of premium WordPress themes, they started up their PluginBuddy site a few months ago and made available some killer plugins that you should be using – - some of them are free, some of them are not, but all around, they are invaluable and fill a big void, as far as I’m concerned:

Backup Buddy – I downloaded this particular plugin on the very day they released it and love it! Now, I recommend it to everyone I know because I’ve found it to be an invaluable tool for the work I do. It’s called Backup Buddy and it gives you the ability to fully backup your WordPress blog easily. This isn’t like exporting your posts and content via the WordPress exporter – - this plugin backs up EVERYTHING – - your content, themes, plugins, settings, options – everything! It also has a built in importer option that gives you the ability to import backups to restore your WordPress powered site in a flash. From a developer and designer standpoint, this has made my life SO much easier. I often create ‘sandbox’ or ‘test bed’ development sites while working on my client projects. With Backup Buddy – I can now get my sandbox development site set up just right with the necessary themes, plugins and options settings – - then I create a backup copy of it using BackUp Buddy .. and then import it into a new installation of WordPress (using the Backup Buddy import script) and I’m done. I don’t have to sit there and activate themes, plugins and then go through and set the plugin options and theme settings all over again, because the plugin takes care of all of that for me. It also has an option to schedule regular backups of your site, automatically. A description from their own web site:

BackupBuddy is an all-in-one solution for backups, restoration, and migration. The single backup file created by the plugin can be used with the importer script to quickly and easily restore your site on the same server or even migrate to a new host with different settings. Whether you’re an end user or a developer, this plugin is sure to bring you peace of mind and added safety in the event of data loss. Our goal is to keep the backup, restoration, and migration processes easy, fast, and reliable.

Pluginbuddy Mobile – This fantastic plugin creates a really nice iPhone version of your site for mobile browsers. It has a built-in style manager that gives you the ability to create and customize a mobile version of your site that displays beautifully in several different mobile browser systems, such as : Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Android Device, Palm Device, Blackberry Device, Windows CE Device, Mobile IE, Sony Playstation Portable, Sony Playstation 3, Nintendo Wii and Nintendo DS. Whew!

The team at Pluginbuddy, headed up by developer Dustin Bolton, have really worked hard on this one. It’s a really simple and easy way to make sure your web site renders well on mobile devices – I’m working with it currently on several client sites and it’s easy to use and an excellent mobile browsing plugin solution for WordPress.

iThemes Pluginbuddy has a few other plugins that you may also be interested in checking out:

So, speaking of the iThemes team – I had a really great time at their Builder Bootcamp weekend in Oklahoma and want to send out a big thanks to Cory Miller, Jen Miller and the rest of the iThemes team for inviting me down to their event. There were roughly 70-75 people in attendence, all of them passionate WordPress users, and all of them part of the iThemes community. Many were from the Oklahoma City general area – but there were a handful that flew in hundreds of miles away to spend the weekend with the iThemes crew to learn more about WordPress and how they can use the iThemes offerings to build their web sites with WordPress. Great stuff!

I had the opportunity to share experiences with the iThemes community in Oklahoma City in April, 2010

To kick off the event, I spoke on my own experiences with WordPress, spoke a little about opportunities that WordPress offers its users and spoke a little about BuddyPress. This was a crowd that was really engaged, passionate and curious about how they can leverage the publishing power of WordPress. Lots of great questions and feedback and I had a super time.

While there, iThemes did some give-aways of my BuddyPress For Dummies book to the people who attended Builder Bootcamp. I was pleasantly surprised at how many of the attendees brought their copy of WordPress For Dummies for me to sign for them – that was a bonus! Many of them even made the trek across the street to the local Barnes and Nobel to purchase a copy of WordPress For Dummies so I could sign it – - that was fun! I ended up signing about 50 books that weekend – - so I had the chance to brush up on my autographing skills!

The rest of the weekend saw iThemes team members like Matt Danner, Chris Jean, Cory Miller and Benjamin Bradley (of the iThemes WebDesign.com division) speaking on various topics such as design, plugins, marketing and promotions – along with a really helpful Q&A session with their community at the end.

I learned about their Builder theme, which is a WordPress theme framework that enables you to create several different types of layouts with just one theme. Chris Jean is the brains and developer behind the Builder framework and they’ve built a really cool community of users who are using the Builder framework to create dynamic WordPress sites. Check it out if you have some time – it might just fit into what you’re trying to do with WordPress, with 9 different child themes to choose from (and more coming), a built in style manager and a dedicated SEO plugin – - and the support team at iThemes is second to none – - this is really a super group of folks.

I also enjoyed the opportunity to meet members of the iThemes community, like Lynn Dye (pictured with me on the left) — who, by the way, expressed an interest in interviewing me for her own blog while I was in Oklahoma – - she published her experiences at Builder Bootcamp, as well as the interview she did with me on her blog.

I had the chance to sit and talk one-on-one with iThemes founder, Cory Miller, about what they’ve been up to and what the future holds for the iThemes brand – it was an enjoyable and enlightening weekend and very much worth the time spent in Oklahoma City. Cory, and his wife Jen, are super nice people – aside from being wholly impressed with what they’ve built…I just flat out like them. I’m looking forward to seeing them again at WordCamp Raleigh and talking with them more about some exciting future collaborations.

Some upcoming events that I’ll be attending in the next month:

WordCamp Raleigh – May 21-23
WordCamp Chicago – June 5-6

© 2010 Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress For Dummies . | Permalink | 8 comments |
Read more in: backup buddy, buddypress, builder bootcamp, Cory Miller, ithemes, oklahoma city, pluginbuddy, WordPress, WordPress Plugins

Lisa is the Owner and Creative Director of E.Webscapes Design Studio where she provides custom design solutions for WordPress users, worldwide. Browse Portfolio | Read the Design Blog | Place an order

Join Lisa's Newsletter today and receive FREE WordPress tips every day for 2 WEEKS - delivered to you daily. Members also receive FIRST notice of book news, appearances, specials on design and services - and more!

iThemes Builder Bootcamp April 23-24th

Lisa — Fri, 02 Apr 2010 20:22:07 +0000

Oklahoma City, anyone? I’ve never been there before – but I will be this month to join the fabulous team from iThemes for their Builder BootCamp.

iThemes creates premium WordPress themes, plugins and they host ‘BootCamps’ for their clients, and anyone else who wants to learn about how they can use the iThemes Builder WordPress theme framework to make awesome web sites.

But, let me backup a little bit here. . .

I had mentioned my trip to Austin for the SXSW Interactive conference that I attended in March. If you EVER get the chance to go, I highly recommend it. Each and every single time I attend SXSW, the networking and opportunities that you can find there are amazing! While there this year, I had the fortunate opportunity to spend some quality time with the great folks over at iThemes: Cory Miller, Matt, Danner, James Dalman and Brad Ulrich. These are a great group of guys and their passion for designing great web sites and giving users the tools to enable them to do it is contagious!

Check out the video interview I did with Cory Miller – it was a lot of fun!

So, I met up with them – had dinner with them and enjoyed a lot of shop talk. The end result ended up being a very gracious invitation to have me join them for their upcoming Builder Bootcamp in Oklahoma City April 23-24th, 2010. I couldn’t turn it down — so I’m very happy to announce that I will be joining their Builder Bootcamp, giving a little talk to their group about why using WordPress is such an awesome idea because it’s such a fantastic content management system.

We will also be giving away signed copies of my book WordPress For Dummies while I’m there and I’m really looking forward to meeting everyone who is attending. Here are a few of the great topics they will be covering during their 2-day event:

The keys and benefits to using WordPress as a CMS
How to install and optimize WordPress for search engine optimization and every day use
The best tools to use for WordPress and Builder web design
How to backup, restore and secure your WordPress sites
What WordPress theme files do and how Builder works
Graphic design tips and tricks to personalize your WP sites
Tips for customizing Builder with Child Themes and CSS through Style Manager
How to make your website a marketing hub for your clients and yourself

Tickets are still available – however, there are only 20 seats left, so if you are in the OKC area and are able to make it – go on over and register today (tell them I sent you over, that will make me feel all warm and fuzzy!)

As an aside – - I have some announcements coming over the next month (or so) about some exciting collaborations I am doing with the WebDesign.com team – headed up by iThemes founder, Cory Miller and WebDesign.com’s Vice-President, James Dalman. Exciting stuff coming in the near future, and I will announce as soon as I am able!

In the meantime, if you are able and/or interested in making it to Oklahoma City for the iThemes Builder Bootcamp and would like more information – drop me a comment in this post, and I’ll get you the info you need!

Big thanks to Cory Miller and the iThemes team for including me in their weekend of Bootcamp fun – I’m really looking forward to it!

© 2010 Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress For Dummies . | Permalink | 15 comments |
Read more in: builder bootcamp, Design, ithemes, oklahoma city, themes, WordPress

Lisa is the Owner and Creative Director of E.Webscapes Design Studio where she provides custom design solutions for WordPress users, worldwide. Browse Portfolio | Read the Design Blog | Place an order

Join Lisa's Newsletter today and receive FREE WordPress tips every day for 2 WEEKS - delivered to you daily. Members also receive FIRST notice of book news, appearances, specials on design and services - and more!

WordPress, BuddyPress and Social Media at F5Expo

Lisa — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 16:38:47 +0000

It has been a LONG LONG time since I have been to Vancouver. I visited once and climbed all the way to the top of Grouse Mountain and had a blast! When the organizers of the F5Expo event contacted me to see if I had any interest in speaking and participating in their conference, I jumped at the chance to visit Vancouver again. Despite the fact that it is an incredible distance away from Wisconsin – I couldn’t bring myself to say no.

I am doing several things at the F5Expo - it’s really exciting! The event is on April 7th 2010 and is being held at the Vancouver Convention Center.

First, I am speaking on a panel called The Metrics of Social Media – my co-panelists include:

Alfredo Tan – Senior Director of Sales, Facebook
Darren Barefoot – Author: Friends with Benefits
Kris Krug – President, Bryght

What a line up! I am excited to be a part of the panel talking about how to effectively market your business using social communities like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Youtube, and Squidoo. What do I bring to the table on this panel? Why WordPress and BuddyPress, of course! This panel also explores the possibility of hosting your OWN social community on your own domain and why that may be, in some cases, a better plan and using the other networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter as a second layer of your marketing strategy. (teaser: it’s all about who owns your content, your traffic and your community)

Second – I’m running TWO workshops at F5Expo:

WordPress For Dummies - How some of today’s leading companies are using WordPress. Attending this workshop does not infer that you are a ‘Dummy’ by any stretch of the imagination! Instead, it is meant to explore the ease in which individuals and small business are able to host a dynamic, interactive and useful web site of their own for the very low cost of free. Together, we will have a look at how some of today’s leading companies are using WordPress to runs sites that range from basic blogs to fully integrated web sites with portfolios, galleries, e-commerce and more!
Building Your Community with BuddyPress – Helping you determine if BuddyPress is right for your site. This workshop introduces you to the features available, aimed toward helping you make the decision if BuddyPress is right for your site, and has features that you would like to add to enhance and grow a social community on your own domain.

BIG thanks to the crew over at PEER1 Hosting for sponsoring both of my workshops at F5Expo. I’m very excited to be working with Peer1 again. My good friend, Rajan Sodhi from PEER1 and ServerBeach will be there – and having just come off a fabulous trip to Austin for the SXSW Interactive festival where I had the opportunity to spend some time catching up with the whole ServerBeach SanAntonio crew – I’m excited to hook up with their Vancouver crew to round out the month!

If I am lucky – I may even get the opportunity to meet Malcom Gladwell, the author of Tipping Point, Blink, Outliers, & What the Dog Saw. Malcom is keynoting the event – definitely something to look forward to!

If you are in Vancouver, and/or attending F5Expo – drop me a line! I’m there from April 6-8th – and who knows, maybe I’ll even climb the mountain again while I’m there!

© 2010 Lisa Sabin-Wilson, author of WordPress For Dummies . | Permalink | 14 comments |
Read more in: buddypress, f5expo, Social Media, WordPress

Lisa is the Owner and Creative Director of E.Webscapes Design Studio where she provides custom design solutions for WordPress users, worldwide. Browse Portfolio | Read the Design Blog | Place an order

Join Lisa's Newsletter today and receive FREE WordPress tips every day for 2 WEEKS - delivered to you daily. Members also receive FIRST notice of book news, appearances, specials on design and services - and more!