Here are my slides from my presentation at OC WordCamp this weekend. It was a great event and I hope everyone learned a few things! If you’ve never been to an event like this and you use WordPress, or are interested in learning more about the platform, look for a WordCamp in your area. The 2nd annual Reno-Tahoe WordCamp is just around the corner on June 12th!

I submitted an application to Google’s Summer of Code last year on building a CMS Theme Framework for wordpress and I’m back at it this year.

An IDE for WordPress Plugins & Themes

My proposal for GSOC 2010 is an integrated development environment for WordPress to allow for integration between the code editor, publishing, developer collaboration and the WordPress codex.

Features

• Open Source: Built on Eclipse
• Code Share: Share and collaborate on WordPress projects with fellow developers using Git or SVN
• Publishing: Setup FTP to allow for publishing your plugin to a WordPress installation to see your progress and test out functionality
• WordPress Codex Autocomplete: Start typing out a wordpress tag and the IDE will display autocomplete options and relevant parameters for each.
• WordPress Codex Wizard: Forgot what codex tags to use when you’re developing a theme or plugin? The Codex Wizard can help you browse the WordPress Codex and build your queries without leaving the IDE.

Example of a WordPress Theme developer’s workflow in WP Builder

1. Start Eclipse
2. Create New Project
3. Select WordPress Theme Project
4. WP Builder will create a project with a basic template structure (index.php, page.php, single.php, etc.)
5. Edit theme files within Eclipse
6. Browse the Codex for template tags within the Codex Wizard
7. Enter FTP information for a WordPress installation to see changes live on the web

Example of a WordPress Plugin developer’s workflow in WP Builder

1. Start Eclipse
2. Create New Project
3. Select WordPress Plugin Project
4. Select options such as “Include backend admin panel, etc.”
5. WP Builder will create a project with an empty plugin shell
6. Share project files with another developer across the world using a GitHub repository or SVN
7. Enter FTP information for a WordPress installation to see changes live on the web

Future Roadmap Features

These features are a little ambitious for the GSOC program timeline but as future features could include:

• Testing & Debugging
• WYSIWYG editor for theme development

The first Reno-Tahoe WordCamp was a great success and we are looking forward to an even better one this year. We have a lot of great things lined up but we can’t make the day a success without your help!

Are you a WordPress guru, blogger, podcaster, writer or community builder? If so, then you should consider submitting a proposal to present on  June 12th April 10th.

The official website for Reno-Tahoe WordCamp 2010 will be available soon with more information. If you have any questions, feel free to send an email to renotahoewordcamp@gmail.com.

I have a lot of things going on right now so I thought it might be a good time to get it all out in writing, for my own sake as well as to share it with all of you.

Now that I’ve graduated, here are the different areas of my world:

Twelve Horses

I’m still working on Salesforce.com projects at Twelve Horses and taking on a few projects with a project management role.

Social Network Project

I can’t name names right now but I have been hired by a social network startup in San Francisco as a contractor to do two things. The first is to take their existing website and social network framework, originally built on Ruby on Rails, and move it to WordPress MU with BuddyPress. The second is to implement a full redesign that they have already had commissioned by another designer.

Their current site is far from being user friendly so I’m excited to be working on the project as it mixes information architecture, interaction design, and my platform of choice, WordPress. Their goal is to be a content provider with many of the elements you would find on a social network. In fact, because of this, instead of competing with other social networks like Facebook, users will actually be able to sign up for a profile using their existing Facebook profile using the Facebook Connect technology.

Random Projects

I just got done acting as a technical editor for a book on developing with the Force.com platform. It was pretty cool to offer insights and feedback on the author’s manuscript as well as providing validation on the concepts and code examples that were covered.

Reno Collective

My biggest endeavor for the last year has been Reno Collective. If you don’t already know what it is, check the website. There have been a few ups and downs and we have certainly learned alot. Ed and I went and visited quite a few coworking spaces when were were in California during the San Francisco WordCamp. Jeremy over at NextSpace in Santa Cruz hooked us up with the inside perspective.

The LLC is in place and everything is on track to open. Our efforts are now being poured into finding a building that fits all of our magic numbers to make the space work and thrive as the community grows. We have a benefit show down at The Amendment 21, featuring a hip-hop and burlesque show that we’ve called Beauties & Beats.

Events to bring people together

In the process of promoting Reno Collective, we started to see a need for social (and yes, often geeky) events in Reno. From this need spawned Ignite Reno, Reno-Tahoe WordCamp and what will soon be a Reno WordPress User Group. WordCamp turned out great and we will definitely be putting on another one next year. The first Ignite Reno was also great success and the second Ignite Reno is quickly approaching this month on July 16th.

Future events that we have in the works are FreelanceCamp Reno and LaidOff Camp Reno. Dates, locations and more details are still being worked out but these events will focus on bringing freelancers together to learn from one another and helping locals who have been laid off from their jobs to get back into the job market by working smarter instead of harder, essentially hacking the job process.

My ‘Infinite’ Amount of Spare Time

Yes, there is and will always be, spare time. I like to work hard and play hard. I just completed the Tour De Nez as my first century bike ride. I’m prepping for Burning Man at the end of the summer with the camp that Ed is putting together, The Black Rock Center for Unlearning. I am still not 100% sure I will be going out to the playa this year as I also have my eye on heading over the England and Switzerland for the first time but I am pitching in where I can to help prepare. Now that it is summer time, I also look forward to many visits up to Lake Tahoe (geocaching, perhaps?), rafting down the Truckee River and getting in hundreds (thousands?) of miles on the road bike.

Example File:

Reno-WordCamp plugin (save and rename to reno-wordcamp.php)

Slides:

Want to help save the planet? @edadkins and I created Globes for the Globes (NSFW 18+) to help spread tips that will help the earth.

Ed already wrote about why we made the website, which you can read here. I wanted to quickly talk about what went into making it happen and why we used WordPress to power the whole thing.

WordPress is obviously a blogging platform but the fact that it is lightweight and customization is only limited to the developer’s imagination and knowledge of PHP and the WordPress core.

Plugins used:

TDO Mini Forms
Used for image submission. TDO Mini Forms takes the content entered on the G4tG submission page and creates a draft post in WordPress. We are alerted of new posts and can approve or reject those posts.

Popular Posts + Post-Plugin Library
Used for displaying the most viewed images in the sidebar. This plugin and the post-plugin library offers a very robust set of features for filtering and displaying your posts based on related content, highest number of page views and more.

Ad-minister
Used to display our Partner Sites. Ad-minister is another plugin with a very rich feature set including the ability to track ads and an ad’s individual cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-impression(CPM) in terms of impressions and clicks.

Akismet
Our spam fighting power, thanks to WordPress

I’m 18 or Over

Due to the content of the website, we decided to hide the actual images until someone clicks on the “I’m 18 or over” button. We’re using Javascript to set a cookie indicating that the user wishes to turn off the image filter. Setting cookies via Javascript is pretty simple and because they are set in the browser, we can access the cookies later via PHP for showing, or in this case, hiding certain content including the “Flag This” links, most viewed images in the sidebar, and of course our unicorn gatekeeper.

The ability to set, retrieve, and manage cookies within a WordPress theme is a pretty slick way to show content or display options to a viewer. As soon as I get some downtime, I’m going to make it into a plugin that will allow cookies and related template tags, such as <?php if(is_18()) ?> to be created through the admin panel for use in existing themes.

Flag Content

Once the image filters are turned off, each image also has a “Flag this” link that sends a notification to us indicating that someone believes the content to be offensive or have comprised our system somehow.

This was a really fun project to work on and Georgette and Shone over at Bohocrush (NSFW 18+) are awesome as always to work with. We look forward to more community and collaborative efforts in the future.

WordPress as a Content Management System
I currently use WordPress for many of my projects. Want to start a blog? WordPress is a perfect fit. Do you want to build a website on WordPress? WordPress can do that too. However, because WordPress was originally designed as a blogging platform, there are quite a few tweaks that need to happen in order to get the most out of WordPress as a content management system (CMS).

Current State of Content Management Systems

• Most content management systems consist of hundreds of features
• Complex templating systems
• Complicated codebase prevents it from being extended through plugins by anyone less than a computer scientist

Why is WordPress an ideal candidate to use as a CMS?

• Lightweight
• User-friendly administration interface
• Rich, existing developer and user community
• Large number of existing plugins and themes
• Ease-of-use in incorporating media such as images, audio, video

Enter 2009 Google Summer of Code (GSoC)
Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together nearly 2500 successful student participants and 2500 mentors from 98 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

Building a Theme Framework
My proposal for the 2009 Google Summer of Code is a theme framework that provides a rich feature set of tools right out of the box to manage a website powered by WordPress.

The focus of this framework is two-fold:

For CMS users: If I had to guess, I would say more than 75% of CMS users in most organizations and companies do not have any existing knowledge of PHP, CSS, and/or HTML. Creating or even editing a theme to function as more of a traditional website rather than a blog is a herculean task for this type of user. All the user needs to know is how to install WordPress to their server and install the framework.

For WordPress developers: The real power of this framework comes into play for those individuals who do use PHP, CSS, and HTML. The framework provides documentation on how to create or edit existing themes to work well with the CMS framework and extend functionality through the use of existing/custom plugins and widgets.

Features

• In-place content editor that allows for content updates without using the post or page editor in the administration panel
• Interactive theme/template designer allows for customization without code
• Customizable administration theme created for CMS
• A set of included themes that can be customized using the theme/template designer
• Installer script to easily add the CMS framework to any installation of WordPress