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

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

The Agenda includes: NOTE: We will be continuing with the split session idea. The evening will be split into two sessions with a general session from 6.30 through to 7.30 and a development/technical session from 8pm through to 9.

General Session

  • WordPress News
  • A talk or presentation (TBD)
  • Questions & Answers
  • Troubleshooting session
  • A Chance to show off your WordPress site

Technical session

  • Technical news
  • A talk or presentation (TBD)
  • Questions & Answers

If you have other suggestions for items to go on the agenda, please comment here or on the mailing list.

Anyone with any experience of WordPress is welcome, whether you’ve 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, let us know at our Meetup page.

 

MWUG is run by Mike Little (http://zed1.com), co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg (http://ma.tt/about), so come along to discover how WordPress can benefit you or your organisation, and get specific advice on any WordPress questions you have.

Subscribe to our Mailing list (https://groups.google.com/group/manchester-wordpress-user-group), check out our website (https://mwug.uk), follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/mwug), join us on Linked In (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Manchester-Wordpress-User-Group-3125011), like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/manchester.wordpress.user.group or join our MeetUp group https://www.meetup.com/ManchesterWordPressUserGroup.

See you at MWUG!

WordPress ebooks offer at Packt Publishing

For those of you who were at last Wednesday’s MWUG meeting, you may recall I mentioned Packet books when asked about learning theme development from a book.

By coincidence, a couple of days later, I received an email informing me there is currently a promotion on WordPress books over at Packt.

Packt Publishing is crowning September, WordPress Month, and celebrating its range of WordPress eBooks with exciting discounts.

As a part of this offer, Packt has slashed the prices on all its WordPress eBooks. So go select any 5 WordPress eBooks of your choice for just $49 | €39 | £31 | AUS$47

Packt Press have a considerable range of WordPress books, and I have a few of their ebooks in my collection.  Some of their recent titles include:

  • WordPress for Education,
  • WordPress Plugin Development Cookbook,
  • WordPress 3 Ultimate Security,
  • Social Media for WordPress: Build Communities, Engage Members and Promote Your Site, and
  • WordPress Mobile Web Development: Beginner’s Guide

There’s only a few days left on the promotion so hurry! Remember any 5 WordPress eBooks for £31. That’s a bargain!

 

 

 

Report from MWUG Meetup September 2012

For those interested, here are some brief notes from last night’s User session in the first half of the evening:

Security

One subject raised was security. I mentioned the following plugins:

Limit Login Attempts
Limit rate of login attempts, including by way of cookies, for each IP. Fully customizable.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/limit-login-attempts/

WordPress Firewall 2
This WordPress plugin monitors web requests to identify and stop the most obvious attacks.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-firewall-2/

Update Notifier
Sends email notifications if a new version of WordPress available. Notifications about updates for plugins and themes can also be sent.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/update-notifier/

There are many more, some with more in-depth analysis and tools.

I also mentioned LastPass (https://lastpass.com) (whilst not directly WordPress related it’s great for creating and managing very strong passwords.

Deployment from ‘Dev’ to ‘Live’

We talked a little about moving from a development environment to a production or live server. I mentioned the WordPress import tool (to use with a standard WordPress export):

WordPress Importer
Import posts, pages, comments, custom fields, categories, tags and more from a WordPress export file.
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-importer/

And mentioned the Interconnect it search and replace tool
http://interconnectit.com/124/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/

I also talked about using a backup and restore solution because the better ones seem to include a migrate option too. There are a good number out there, but almost all are commercial (note, unlike the security plugins I mention and recommend above, I haven’t used any of these):

Backup Buddy – http://ithemes.com/purchase/backupbuddy/
Blog Vault – http://blogvault.net/
and many more.

There are other free backup solutions in the WordPress plugin repository (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/search.php?q=backup) but most only backup your database or your files, but not both. You can of course always use two — but I didn’t see any that also include the option to migrate or restore to a new URL.

Update: I found this plugin: Duplicator – http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/duplicator/ which says it can “Duplicate, clone, backup, move and transfer an entire site from one location to another in 3 easy steps.”

One other tool I mentioned was ManageWP (http://managewp.com/) which is a commercial WordPress site management tool that also includes functionality to update many sites remotely as well as backup and restore/deploy functionality.

Getting Involved

When covering general WordPress news, I talked about the make.wordpress.org site (http://make.wordpress.org/) which is an umbrella site for several different streams of activity involved in making WordPress. It includes core WordPress, UI, Accessibility and more. It’s a great place to see what is happening in the WordPress world as well as to get involved.

If you have any questions, or I missed something out from the first half of the evening, please leave a comment below.

September Meeting: Wednesday 19th, 6.30-9.15pm, Madlab

September’s Manchester WordPress User Group, run by WordPress co-founder Mike Little, takes place at MadLab (https://madlab.org.uk) on Wednesday, September 19th from 7pm to 9pm.

The Agenda includes: NOTE: We will be continuing with the split session idea. The evening will be split into two sessions with a general session from 6.30 through to 7.45 and a development/technical session from 8pm through to 9.15.

General Session

  • WordPress News
  • A talk or presentation (TBD)
  • Questions & Answers
  • Troubleshooting session
  • A Chance to show off your WordPress site

Technical session

  • Technical news
  • A talk or presentation (TBD)
  • Questions & Answers

If you have other suggestions for items to go on the agenda, please comment here or on the mailing list.

Anyone with any experience of WordPress is welcome, whether you’ve 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, let us know at our Meetup page.

 

MWUG is run by Mike Little (http://zed1.com), co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg (http://ma.tt/about), so come along to discover how WordPress can benefit you or your organisation, and get specific advice on any WordPress questions you have.

Subscribe to our Mailing list (https://groups.google.com/group/manchester-wordpress-user-group), check out our website (https://mwug.uk), follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/mwug), join us on Linked In (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Manchester-Wordpress-User-Group-3125011), like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/manchester.wordpress.user.group or join our MeetUp group https://www.meetup.com/ManchesterWordPressUserGroup.

See you at MWUG!

August Meeting: Wednesday 15th, 6.30-9.15pm, Madlab

August’s Manchester WordPress User Group, run by WordPress co-founder Mike Little, takes place at MadLab (https://madlab.org.uk) on Wednesday, August 15th from 7pm to 9pm.

The Agenda includes: NOTE: We will be changing the way the evening runs based on discussions on the mailing list. The evening will be split into two sessions with a general session from 6.30 through to 7.45 and a development/technical session from 8pm through to 9.15. Check back later for more details. Even better subscribe to the mailing list and join the discussion — the form is on the right.

General Session

  • WordPress News
  • A talk or presentation (TBD)
  • Blog North Awards (by Gurbir Singh)
  • Questions & Answers
  • Troubleshooting session
  • A Chance to show off your WordPress site

Technical session

  • Technical news
  • A talk or presentation (TBD)
  • Questions & Answers

If you have other suggestions for items to go on the agenda, please comment here or on the mailing list.

Anyone with any experience of WordPress is welcome, whether you’ve 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, let us know at our Meetup page.

 

MWUG is run by Mike Little (http://zed1.com), co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg (http://ma.tt/about), so come along to discover how WordPress can benefit you or your organisation, and get specific advice on any WordPress questions you have.

Subscribe to our Mailing list (https://groups.google.com/group/manchester-wordpress-user-group), check out our website (https://mwug.uk), follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/mwug), join us on Linked In (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Manchester-Wordpress-User-Group-3125011), like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/manchester.wordpress.user.group or join our MeetUp group https://www.meetup.com/ManchesterWordPressUserGroup.

See you at MWUG!

July Meeting: Wednesday 18th, 7-9pm, Madlab

July’s Manchester WordPress User Group, run by WordPress co-founder Mike Little, takes place at MadLab (https://madlab.org.uk) on Wednesday, July 18th from 7pm to 9pm.

The Agenda includes:

  • WordPress News
  • A talk or presentation (TBD)
  • A report from WordCamp Edinburgh UK 2012
  • Questions & Answers
  • Troubleshooting session
  • A Chance to show off your WordPress site

If you have other suggestions for items to go on the agenda, please comment here or on the mailing list.

Anyone with any experience of WordPress is welcome, whether you’ve 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, let us know at our Meetup page.

 

MWUG is run by Mike Little (http://zed1.com), co-founder of WordPress with Matt Mullenweg (http://ma.tt/about), so come along to discover how WordPress can benefit you or your organisation, and get specific advice on any WordPress questions you have.

Subscribe to our Mailing list (https://groups.google.com/group/manchester-wordpress-user-group), check out our website (https://mwug.uk), follow us on Twitter (https://twitter.com/mwug), join us on Linked In (https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Manchester-Wordpress-User-Group-3125011), like our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/manchester.wordpress.user.group or join our MeetUp group https://www.meetup.com/ManchesterWordPressUserGroup.

See you at MWUG!