Category: News

Thank you for attending our MWUG August Meetup at Madlab

It was brilliant to have such a great turnout at this months Manchester WordPress User Group Meetup (MWUG), especially with it being the August holiday season! So thank you again to everyone who attended this Wednesday, to all the new faces and the usual ones too.

Also thank you to @GurbirSingh for our very first MWUG, streamed on Periscope. If you would like to see this stream Gurbir very kindly uploaded it to YouTube for us, click here to see MWUG stream

Latest update – WordPress 4.6 “Pepper”

This months meetup kicked off by the announcement of the WordPress 4.6 “Pepper” Update which Mike Little deemed to be a ‘relatively safe’ update. Some of the features of this update include:

  • Managing plugins and themes will now be much faster
  • Native font systems mean your site text (at least the admin screens) will be faster on a slow connection and render better on mobile phones
  • It now auto detects if a URL has the correct syntax
  • Disaster recovery mode is now improved, a copy of your post will be saved and it happens more often

A lot of the changes in WordPress 4.6 “Pepper” are under the hood this time to cater for the future of WordPress, we’re hoping for front end editors in future!

Photograph of Mike Little teaching
Mike Little MWUG August 16

Plugin announcements

This month we announced the new A11y plugin, which scans your site for accessibility features. Also the Customize Snapshots plugin allows you to save snapshots of where you are and gives you a scheduling to go live feature. WordPress.com have released browser notification features too. Lastly WPSiteSync is another great migration tool and you don’t need access to both databases to use it.

August MWUG Speakers

Thank you to Keith Hyde for kicking off the August talks with demonstration of how to use the popular BackUpWordPress Plugin by HumanMade. Our second talk of night welcomed back Tim Nash with his talk on security and TLS certificates.

Photograph of attendees at MWUG August 16
MWUG August 2016

WordCamp announcements

The next upcoming event WordCamp Belfast taking place on the 1st-2nd October. Shortly after will be our hometown WordCamp Manchester on the 22nd-23rd October followed by WordCamp Edinburgh in November.

WordPress Clinic

Every month we hold a WordPress clinic where you can bring your laptops in if you want and get help from fellow MWUG members. This month we saw many problems successfully resolved. Thank you to Tim Nash for his help on the WordPress Genesis Framework. Also to Tom J Nowell for his problem solving on custom post type navigation. To Kayleigh Thorpe for her help on WordPress security. The reports back from those helped were all positive. If you are involved in WordPress of any level of technical ability get yourself down to MWUG and join in with the community. We are always happy to meet new people, make connections and help out where we can!

Photograph of MWUG August Attendees
MWUG August Attendees

We’re here at Madlab every third Wednesday of the month. See you in September!

–@SiobhanLHancock

August Meeting: Wednesday 17th, 6.30-9pm, Madlab

August’s Manchester WordPress User Group, run by WordPress co-founder Mike Little, takes place at MadLab (https://madlab.org.uk) on Wednesday, the 17th from 6.30pm to 9pm.

Note: this month we are continuing with the successful clinic format to try to help more of you in the ways you’ve asked us.

Timings and Agenda:

  • 18:30 — Prompt start –  Talk – Keith Hyde – How to install and use a backup plugin
  • 18:45 — Q&A – for topic covered and Mike’s WP update
  • 19:00 — WP clinic – bring your laptop and get the hands on help you need
  • 20:15 — In Depth Talk – Tim Nash – Switching sites over to HTTPS and the pitfalls thereof.
  • 21:00 — End
Anyone with any experience of WordPress is welcome, whether you’ve only heard about it and want to know more, you’re an experienced WordPress user or developer, or anything in between; you are welcome to our meetings.

If you fancy coming along, please let us know at our Meetup page.

Mike Little (https://mikelittle.org), co-founder of WordPress, runs MWUG so come along to discover how WordPress can benefit you or your organisation, and get specific advice on any WordPress questions you have.

See you at MWUG!

WordPress Translation Day 2016

Sunday, April 24th marks the occasion where WordPress users around the world unite to contribute to the development of WordPress. This day is about making WordPress fun and accessible to everyone of all backgrounds and languages. The day where we join together all over the world to help WordPress grow and most importantly to have fun doing it!

WordPress itself has been translated into over 160 languages with over 5000 people worldwide contributing to the translation of different elements of WordPress. The Polyglot team created WordPress Translation Day with the intention of holding events in major cities around the globe; banding together for one day only to increase knowledge on how to translate WordPress. There will be a 24 hour live stream of selected speakers from different countries teaching you how to translate in your own language, which we will be screening here in Manchester, UK.

We are more than happy to announce on behalf of MWUG Manchester WordPress User Group, that we will be taking part in WordPress Translation Day 2016, by holding our own event at the luxurious Manchester building very kindly provided by Auto Trader Group.

Please come along and join us! Our event will be held 1pm to 4pm on Sunday 24th April. The event is for WordPress Users and Translators to meet in an informal environment, talk tech, eat pizza and generally have a good time. All you need is a laptop and keenness to come and get involved. You don’t need a technical background, just a love of WordPress or helping to teach others about languages.

How to find us

Venue:

Auto Trader Group plc 6th Floor
1 Tony Wilson Place
Manchester
M15 4FN
+44 (0) 161 669 9888

The entrance to the Auto Trader building is located next door to Pizza Express and directly opposite HOME. Wapuu will be there in person to welcome you and direct you to the 6th floor where the fun begins!

The Auto Trader is a 10 minute walk from Manchester Piccadilly and 2 minute walk from Manchester GMEX. If you are coming via metrolink the closest stop is Deansgate Castlefield, via train please see below for directions from Deansgate Station or 5 minute walk from Oxford Road Station too. Parking is also available on M15 4FN Q-Park

[googlemaps https://www.google.com/maps/embed?pb=!1m28!1m12!1m3!1d1187.3516983064274!2d-2.249427891695157!3d53.47376074142835!2m3!1f0!2f0!3f0!3m2!1i1024!2i768!4f13.1!4m13!3e1!4m5!1s0x487bb1e62b2916b1%3A0x11c254148728e69f!2sDeansgate-Castlefield%2C+Whitworth+Street+West+M3+4LG%2C+United+Kingdom!3m2!1d53.474820699999995!2d-2.2499557!4m5!1s0x487bb1e930e040ad%3A0xc22dc5024b7347b6!2s1%2C+Auto+Trader+UK%2C+Tony+Wilson+Place%2C+First+Street%2C+Manchester!3m2!1d53.472941!2d-2.246667!5e0!3m2!1sen!2suk!4v1461000526021&w=100%&h=450]

Thank you to Auto Trader Group who are kindly providing the venue and to 34SP.com Ltd who will be providing free refreshments on the day. If you have any further questions or want to contact one of the organisers please contact us:

Facebook: WordPress Translation Day Facebook page, MWUG Facebook page

Twitter: @mwug

Email: mwug.translation@gmail.com

Tel No: +44 (0) 7791003310 (Siobhan McMinn part of organisation team)

 

 

December Meeting: Wednesday 16th, 6.30-9pm, Madlab

December’s Manchester WordPress User Group, run by WordPress co-founder Mike Little and Saz Bailey, takes place at MadLab (https://madlab.org.uk) on Wednesday, the 16th from 6.30pm to 9pm.

Note: this month we are having our Xmas party! Kindly sponsored by 34sp.com

Come along for snacks, drinks, and a good chat.

Timings and Agenda:

  • 18:30 — Prompt start –  Talk – Mike Little – WordPress 4.4 demo
  • 18:45 — Q&A – for topic covered
  • 19:00 — Party!
  • 21:00 — End

Thanks again to our sponsors: 34sp.com

34SP_logo_white-band

Anyone with any experience of WordPress is welcome, whether you’ve only heard about it and want to know more, you’re an experienced WordPress user or developer, or anything in between; you are welcome to our meetings.

If you fancy coming along, please let us know at our Meetup page.

Mike Little (http://zed1.com), co-founder of WordPress, runs MWUG so come along to discover how WordPress can benefit you or your organisation, and get specific advice on any WordPress questions you have.

See you at MWUG!

Volunteering Opportunity for Video Enthusiasts

Mike and I are working on ways of making the knowledge sharing of the group more accessible and usable for more of the community. MWUG have some awesome expertise that could reach and help a much wider audience if we create the channels to do so.

We appreciate that not everyone can get to all or regular Meetups and that even those who do attend would like to review and digest some of the content again and later at their own pace. To that end we would like to video parts of the night and publish them on the web.

We are looking for a volunteer (or a small co-ordinated group) who would like to support the community in creating these video recordings. We would need you to have the appropriate equipment for lighting, recording, editing to then post on the MWUG site.

If this is your area of expertise either professionally or as a hobby, and you think you might be able to support MWUG in this way then please get in touch with either Mike or myself through MWUG, Meetup, or our social media.

We hope you can help us create a really cool resource for all of us.

Many thanks, and hope to see you at our next Meetup – go RSPV so we know to expect you!

Saz Bailey