WordPress Security by Carole Bonds

In all likelihood, you set up your web site and started blogging our building pages without giving a second thought to making sure your web site was secure and without a plan in place for making regular backups so you could restore the site if anything happened. But any seasoned web developer can tell you that the chances of something going wrong and files and work being lost are nearly 100%.

No software is immune to security problems and security can be an even bigger problem when the application is a popular open source one like WordPress. Believe it or not, many people think their chances of a hacker accessing their web site and causing havoc is slim to none. The bad news is, it happens more often than you think. In this presentation, Carole Bonds will show tricks and tips for Beginners to Advanced WordPress users on how to limit access to hackers, how to make regular backups, and how to restore the site from backup in the event that a hacker gets access.

WordPress Security Presentation

Carole Bonds

Carole Bonds is the “WordPress Guru” at AgentEvolution.com with the responsibility of backing up, restoring, migrating and securing all AgentEvolution client sites. Carole developed an interest in WordPress and made the decision to change her career to work exclusively with WordPress 3 years ago after 15 years building websites as a hobby.

Stuff you need to know

Parking is in a lot just off of Hayden Ave, just west of National Blvd. Parking is free after 6pm, so just grab a ticket and park where you’d like.

Lots of grateful thanks to our sponsor, MediaTemple who not only provided us with an awesome meeting space, but will also be providing pizza and drinks! Thanks to their generous support, this meetup is FREE for all to attend.

In this workshop, we’ll cover the basics of themes and child themes – how they work, which files are used when, how to figure out template tags, and how to create your own child theme.

Keep in mind that the building blocks of the web are HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You’ll need at least a basic understanding of those building blocks to make minor modifications to themes and a thorough understanding of those building blocks to build your own theme or make extensive modifications.

Your organizer, Natalie MacLees, will be presenting.

Hope to see you there!

Cost is $5.00 per person. RSVP to save your seat.

If you have a WordPress site or are thinking about building one, no doubt you’ve got piles of questions:

• What’s the best plugin for…?
• How do I…?
• How come my site won’t…?
• What’s the best way to…?
• Where can I find someone to help me…?
• Should I…?
• What if I want to…?
• Do I need to hire someone to…?

Get the answers to all your questions at our WordPress Expert Panel. Bring any and all of your WordPress questions to be answered by a diverse panel of experts in many different areas of WordPress, design, SEO, user experience, plugins, usability, and more. It’s like our own mini-WordCamp!

Meet your panel (in alphabetical order):

Lucy Beer
webtrainingwheels.com
Lucy Beer of Web Training Wheels is an online marketing professional of 8+ years. She has a background in constructing and executing online marketing campaigns for small business, entertainment and art clients. These days she loves to teach small businesses and entrepreneurs how to develop their online marketing strategies. She has been using WordPress since around 2004 and has never looked back. In addition to marketing consulting she provides WordPress training through one-on-one or small group sessions to help businesses build a solid online foundation for their marketing.

Glenn Bennett
happenings.com | anybrowser.com
Glenn Bennett is a computer programmer and magazine publisher. He has his own publication, Happenings Magazine. In the mid-90′s Glenn became involved in creating workable solutions for the Internet and created the “AnyBrowser iii Specification” that allowed website builders to create websites that would render consistently with the browsers of the day. He also created his own web browser that rendered web pages using the “AnyBrowser iii Specification” so site creators could view sites using the spec. This experience has given a unique prospective on the web. In addition to continuing to publish his magazine, Glenn is hard at work on several experimental Internet projects and occasionally works as an adviser to online businesses. He currently uses CodeIgniter, PyroCMS, and WordPress to create his projects. His WordPress work includes Widgetifyr.com, WPMultisite.com and PodcastingPlugin.com. He is the current maintainer of the WordPress Podcasting Plugin, which has more than 100,000 downloads.

Carole Bonds
agentevolution.com
Carole Bonds is a web developer and the WordPress “Guru” for AgentEvolution. A semi-retired chemist, she turned her passion for programming into a second career. She is the lead developer for AgentEvolution since its inception and all the websites she has done for clients are based on WordPress. She is not a designer but loves the “back-end” aspects of WordPress and fully utilizing WordPress as a CMS.

Dan Cameron
sproutventure.com
Prior to Sprout Venture, Dan Cameron was the project manager on multi-million dollar web projects and had a director position with top 100 e-commerce company; he started Sprout Venture in 2008 to escape that start-up scene & out of the management games. Sprout Venture, from day one, has focused on WordPress development and has never looked back. Dan Cameron has been the lead front-end developer on a few high-profile clients, including GigaOm and a network of Radio sites where his theme development is used on hundreds of sites. Late this year he completed a WordPress plugin that allows for groupon.com type functionality with e-commerce integration and membership capabilities. It really has been a crazy two years, with 85% of all client solutions involving WordPress as a solution. Specialties: Theme Frameworks, Advanced WP Themes and Plugin Development, Programming without the future getting in the way, Reuse and not Rework, & Freelancing.

Zeke Franco
@quasarkitten
Zeke is an interaction designer and Front End Developer. He specializes in UX desgin, semantic HTML, CSS, jQuery, and web strategy. Basically – he designs, simplifies, and builds the user interfaces of web sites.

Marieke Hensel
brandingpersonality.com | @hensel | facebook.com/brandingpersonality
Marieke is an online brand strategist since 2002 and is the owner of Branding Personality: the online brand strategy agency for consumer brands. Marieke is an internationally published co-author of BusinessWise, a collaborative book for small companies with large ambitions. Her company, Branding Personality now has 7 employees who help businesses attract customers through online advertising, search engine optimization and social media. Branding Personality generates results for local businesses and national brands such as Fairmont Private Schools, Microsoft Xbox, Chevrolet and Hyundai auto dealers. Marieke started building her first WordPress blog in 2005 and adores WordPress because of the search engine optimization benefits it has and its versatility. Marieke gives workshops to full day trainings in WordPress and leads her clients onto the path of attracting customers through blogging, both by building a community and it benefiting its search engine ranking.

Susan Hildebrand
Marblesoft Technologies, Inc.
Susan Hildebrand has been a programmer since 1980s.  As founder of Marblesoft Technologies, Inc. , she has designed databases and software for Fortune 500 companies.  She is versed in multi-media production on the Windows platform.  She is also a certified NLP coach and a writer/copywriter. Her current focus is in building WordPress sites and mentoring business owners on best use of this exciting technology.

Natalie MacLees
purplepen.com | nataliemac.com
In addition to being the organizer of the WordPress Meetup group, Natalie is also the founder of Purple Pen Productions, a virtual creative agency. She’s been building web sites since AOL was cool (1996). She specializes in user experience, UI design, interaction design, and front end development, and especially loves coding up custom WordPress themes. In addition to client work, she’s working on releasing a set of flexible, extendable WordPress themes.

Vasily Myazin
konspiredesign.com | @vasily_m
Vasily Myazin is a passionate web designer, developer, user experience enthusiast and interface builder based in Los Angeles, CA. His journey with the web started back in 1997 in Russia, when he coded his first website by hand, overnight, with no prior knowledge of HTML. Since then, Vasily has survived though numerous chapters of the online evolution, including the dot-com bubble and bust, as well as the onset of Web 2.0. Vasily is more of a generalist when it comes to web technologies and disciplines: he spends a quarter of his day making the most of Photoshop and Illustrator, a quarter tinkering with jQuery, another quarter dealing with HTML+CSS, and the rest playing with WordPress and stand-alone PHP apps. Accessibility and usability are goals that are always highly sought after. Vasily is an avid user of Apple products: Mac, iPhone and iPad. It’s no wonder he’s got a knack for clean and easy-to-use interface aesthetics. Web tech consulting is a big part of Vasily’s day-to-day occupation; he serves various start-ups and small businesses around the world, as well as gigantic clients like Sony. He has built over a dozen of custom themes for WordPress and uses it as a content management system of choice. Vasily currently runs his own tiny agency called Konspire Design.

Austin Passy
frostywebdesigns.com
Austin Passy is a freelance web designer and WordPress developer. He was the Organizer of WordCampLA 2009 and 2010. He’s also a traveling speaker for WordCamps all over.

Marty Thornley
martythornley.com | @martythornley | identitykitchen.com
Marty is a freelance designer and developer who works 100% in WordPress. In addition to designing and building custom blogs, he has been the goto developer for design and branding company Identity Kitchen for the last year, with a focus on custom websites and pushing the limits of WordPress as CMS. Most recently Marty has co-founded a development company with Identity Kitchen owner Ellen Petty. They are preparing to launch their first project, PhotographyBlogSites.com to enable customizable yet affordable WordPress based portfolio sites for photographers, developed using WordPress 3.0′s MultiSite abilities. Marty has developed several plugins including SEO Image Galleries, and the PhotoBlog Image Fixer – both developed as part of PhotographyBlogSites.com.

Ed Tiongson
Marblesoft Technologies, Inc.
Ed Tiongson has over 25 years working in Information Technology.  His expertise was with Microsoft technology until he came across WordPress, which is now his chosen platform for deploying websites. Ed has researched, customized and debugged many WordPress plugins (i.e. Shopping Cart, Membership, Autoresponders, Analytics, PayPal integration, etc.) .He works at Marblesoft Technologies, Inc.,  a solutions provider focused on building WordPress sites with E-commerce and Membership functionality. Ed is also a graphic designer, a video editor, and an avid musician who enjoys using Mac-based software, synthesizers and electronic music, and loves comedy.

Cost: $5.00/person

RSVP at meetup.com to save your seat

Typesetting for the Web
by Zeke Franco

Zeke will cover the fundamentals of the art of typography and then will cover some ways to implement beautiful typography on your WordPress blog.

Typography is important because presentation is important. Good typography can reinforce the meaning of your text, can help move your reader beyond your words deeper into your meaning. Your site visitors need to be able to understand the message you’re communicating – if your text is too small, too large, or cramped together, your visitors will have difficulty reading.

Typography on the web has mostly been confined to a small set of web-safe fonts, but now that has changed. Learn to take advantage of all the latest technologies and take your site to the next level.

Zeke is an interaction designer and Front End Developer. He specializes in UX desgin, semantic HTML, CSS, jQuery, and web strategy. Basically – he designs, simplifies, and builds the user interfaces of web sites.

Zeke’s presentation will be followed by a Q&A.

A $5 fee/person helps to cover the costs of the venue rental, food and drink. If you’re paying cash the evening of the event, exact change is much appreciated. Make checks payable to Purple Pen Productions.

Get more information and RSVP at Meetup.com

So few themes offer easy-to-use theme options and even themes like Thesis only give you limited options for many parts of the theme – to truly customize your theme, you’ve got to dig into CSS … Ack! It’s code! It’s scary! And intimidating!

In this workshop, I’ll teach you the basics of CSS, how to modify your theme’s CSS, and how to figure out which lines of CSS need to be updated. I’ll show you which things can be updated safely without breaking your theme, and which things require the attention of an expert to make sure they still work in all browsers.

By the end of the evening, you should be able to make simple theme customizations with confidence.

We’ll also be giving away two copies of WordPress Theme Design from Packt Publishing.

Please note that there are intermittent issues with the wifi at this venue, so come prepared. Please have Firefox installed, with the Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug add-ons before you arrive. If you need help with this, please email me at natalie@purplepen.com. I’ll bring sample files on USB drives for you to practice on if you can’t get online.

Please also have a simple text editor installed – I recommend Notepad++ for Windows users and TextWrangler for Mac users – both are free.

If you previously paid for the CSS workshop that was postponed and have a credit to be applied, please drop me a line and let me know when you RSVP. If you are paying cash the evening of the event, exact change is MUCH appreciated.

I know that we all have emergencies and last minute issues, but please honor your RSVP and let me know if you have reserved a seat for yourself and cannot make it.

RSVP to save your seat:
http://www.meetup.com

Download the files: CSSWorkshop

Then we’ll dive into the main feature for the evening: CSS.

We’ll cover a few CSS basics so that everyone understands the syntax and basic rules, then we’ll learn how to make simple adjustments to our themes, and how to add a new class that can be used inside posts and pages.

We’ll have free WordPress swag provided by Automattic, some book giveaways from our sponsor, Packt Publishing, and free food and drinks from our sponsor, Purple Pen Productions.

We are introducing a small fee to attend the meetup, and the reason for this is twofold. One, it will help to defray the costs of venue rental, food and drink, and two, it will help reduce the number no-shows from our members who RSVP to attend. Thank you for your support and understanding.

Reserve your seat

More details coming soon…

It’s impossible to find a time that doesn’t conflict with some other SXSW event – but Saturday night seems like a pretty light night for events – there’s a couple of big events later that night but we’ll be done with dinner in plenty of time!

Templates and Template Tags Demystified: A WordPress Workshop
presented by Austin Passey

Austin Passy is a freelance web designer and WordPress developer. You can find his work at Frosty Web Designs, and follow him on Twitter.

This workshop is open to all, but is particularly intended for our web developer members who are learning to develop custom WordPress themes or who are interested in customizing prebuilt themes. Thorough knowledge of HTML and CSS are required for creating custom themes, but if you just know a little you might pick up a few tidbits for tweaking a theme.

Our sponsor, Packt Publishing, has also provided us with a copy of WordPress Theme Design that we’ll be raffling off during the meetup. Automattic (the company behind WordPress) has also provided us with WordPress swag – pencils, buttons, stickers and tattoos.

Purple Pen Productions, our group’s sponsor, will be providing light refreshments. Please note any special restrictions (vegetarian, vegan, allergies, etc) when you RSVP.

• What HTML is and where it came from
• The correct syntax for writing HTML
• How to add special characters
• Structure of an HTML document
• Validating the code you’ve written
• Introduction to web standards

After this workshop you’ll be able to understand basic HTML documents and edit and troubleshoot without fear.

This is a hands-on workshop, so feel free to bring a laptop or netbook to follow along as we create and validate a basic HTML document. A computer is not a requirement – just helpful to have.

Light refreshments will be served.

To reserve your spot, you may RSVP through Upcoming or Meetup.

Workshop Resources:

• Files for Class
• Presentation