Tucson Digital Arts Community

Tim Bowen and Read Whittier will be presenting different E-Commerce systems and going over features.

The following systems will be covered:

• Magento
• Shopp (WordPress plugin)
• WP E-Commerce (WordPress plugin) ?
• Shopify ?
• CS-Cart ?

Please offer any other systems you’d like to see covered by leaving a comment.

Learn about Barebones CMS – a high-performance, minimalist content management system.  The author, Thomas Hruska, will give a short presentation and demonstration of this open source product.

Time permitting, Q&A and installation help will be offered afterward.

When: July 15th from 7 to 9pm
Where: Spoke6, 439 N 6th Ave., Tucson, AZ 85705 (SW Corner of 6th and 6th)

This event is free, however please bring a drink or snack to share.

Here are the slides from the presentation I gave about rapid WordPress development at Spoke6 on June 22, 2010.

Demo Night!
Currently we have two demos of projects in the works. If you have something you’re working on bring it down to present to the group. Other than that we’ll be discussing startups, funding, and, of course, beer (or wine).

Where: Spoke6, 439 N 6th Ave, Tucson, AZ 85705 (SW Corner of 6th and 6th)
When: June 29th from 7-9pm.

BYOB/Snack and come on down

Join us for an evening of WordPress. We’ll cover the latest in WordPress news, share how we are using WordPress, and possibly have several 10-minute presentations.

• Where: Spoke6, 439 N 6th Ave, Tucson, AZ 85705 (located on the SW corner of 6th Ave & 6th St)
• When: Tuesday, June 22nd 7–9 PM
• Cost: Please bring a snack or drink to share

This is an open event. Everyone is welcome.

Presentations scheduled:

1. Intro: Latest WordPress news (Lance)
   - 3.0 launched last week! Whoo-hoo! Read all the details and watch a video overview, then go update your WordPress sites.
2. Rapid development (Josh)
3. WordPress community and 100 Stands (Sam DeVore) Canceled
4. Ian: Integrating development frameworks and custom applications with WordPress: pros and cons
5. Child themes (Lance)
   - Codex page: http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

Ideas for presentations in July and August:

1. How to develop a theme: A-Z, learning all the files (based on ThemeShaper tutorial)
2. Writing with WordPress: Britt
3. Plugin development basics
4. Common tasks and how to solve them: calendars and events, migration of old sites to the latest WordPress version
5. Commercialization of WP (plugins, developers, bloggers…)
6. Top 10 things you should know about WordPress
7. Compare photo gallery themes/plugins
8. Search Engine Optimization
9. Best practices in development and design
10. BuddyPress review of capabilities

If you’d like to present a topic related to WordPress, drop Lance an email: lance at simpledream dot net.

Tim Bowen’s Speeding up WordPress 5/25/10 presentation

Test load times/elements here: Pingdom
Also use YSlow and Google Page Speed to test speed.

PHP Query Elimination:
Use this: <meta charset=”UTF-8″ />
Not this: <meta charset=”<?php bloginfo( ‘charset’ ); ?>” />

Use Google hosted JQuery / Prototype libraries by adding this to functions.php file:
function my_init_method() {
wp_deregister_script( ‘jquery’ );
wp_register_script( ‘jquery’, ‘http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js’);
}
add_action(‘init’, ‘my_init_method’);

Remove actions for WordPress meta, rsd_link and wlmanifest by adding these lines to functions.php:
remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wp_generator’);
remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘rsd_link’);
remove_action(‘wp_head’, ‘wlwmanifest_link’);

Use Google minify for JS and CSS files.
Add Javascript files to bottom of page for faster load speeds.

Define elements in wp-config.php file:
define(‘ENABLE_CACHE’, true );
define(‘WP_ALLOW_REPAIR’, true);

Set the WP URL and Site URL to improve site performance.  Make sure these are same as in the General Settings page
define(‘WP_SITEURL’, ‘http://SITENAME.com/cms’);
define(‘WP_HOME’, ‘http://SITENAME.com’);

Set the template directory and stylesheet directory to improve site performance and eliminate server queries
define(‘TEMPLATEPATH’, ‘/home/public_html/cms/wp-content/themes/THEMENAME’);
define(‘STYLESHEETPATH’, ‘/home/public_html/cms/wp-content/themes/THEMENAME’);

Use optimized .htaccess file

Disable hotlinking with this code in .htaccess file:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?example\.com/.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpg|png|ico)$ – [F,L]
</ifModule>

Image hosting off-site with WP-Offload plugin and Steady Offload

Add <?php flush(); ?> after the </head> and before <body> to speed up loading.

Potentially useful plugins:

• DB Cache Reloaded (small speed bump while helping to eliminate queries to server)
• W3 Total Cache (small speed bump, also good for heavy traffic)
• Quick Cache (small speed bump, good for heavy traffic)
• WP Super Cache (didn’t notice speed bump, reviews claim good for heavy traffic)
• PHP Speedy (compresses scripts from plugins, small speed bump)

Join us for an evening of WordPress. We’ll cover the latest in WordPress news, share how we are using WordPress, and possibly have several 10-minute presentations.

1. Review WordPress news and happenings (Lance)
2. Two or three short presentations (5-10 minutes each)
3. Q & A and networking

Event information:

• Where: Spoke6, 439 N 6th Ave, Tucson, AZ 85705 (located on the SW corner of 6th Ave & 6th St)
• When: Tuesday, May 25th 7–9 PM
• Cost: FREE (though please bring drinks or snack to share)

This is an open event. Everyone is welcome.

Ideas for presentations:

1. Ian: Custom Post Types
2. Ian: WordPress Performance
3. Common tasks and how to solve them: calendars and events, migration of old sites to the latest WordPress version.
4. Tim and Lance: Commercialization of WP
5. Lance: Child themes

If you’d like to present a topic related to WordPress, drop Lance an email: lance at simpledream dot net.

Startup round table – What are you working on? Need help? Need a co-founder?

Come to Tucson Startup Drinks to talk about all things entrepreneurship, trade information, the latest book you’ve been reading or just to take in the vibe.

7 pm at Spoke6 6th St & 6th Ave. – parking available in lot south of 6th St.

Please bring a drink to enjoy and share.

Hear from several local video game developers about what they do, including both past and current game design projects -Followed by an open forum discussion and ITT Technical Institute student game design presentations.

Sony Online Entertainment, SMERC, Riverman Media, and Good Call Sports, have all registered to sit on a panel of game developers.

Where: ITT Technical Institute, 1455 W. River Rd (by La Canada)
When: Monday, July 19th from 7 to 9pm

Food and Refreshments will be Provided

What is HTML5? HTML5 is the next generation of HTML, superseding previous versions and providing new features needed to build modern web applications.

The web is evolving faster than existing browsers and tools can keep up with, which were largely designed for documents and not for applications. HTML5 paves the way for designers and developers to push the boundaries of web publishing by introducing and improving features such as semantic elements, multimedia, form controls, APIs and other browser extensions.

Join Tucson Digital Arts Community members Aaron Wagner and Lance Willett to learn about this exciting new web technology.

• Where: Spoke6, 439 N 6th Ave, Tucson, AZ 85705 (located on the SW corner of 6th Ave & 6th St)
• When: Wednesday, May 19th 7 PM. Presentation starts at 7:30 PM.
• Cost: FREE (though please bring drinks or snack to share)

This is an open event. Everyone is welcome.

Update: View the slides here: http://timesupapp.com/html5/. The final slides have more links and resources.