WordCamp 2007 Notes

That’s me in the front row with the sunglasses dangling from my shirt. Photo by hyku

I’m still recovering from WordCamp 2007. I’m not a big note taker and, unlike the vast majority of notebook toting attendees, I merely jotted a few fragments in my Moleskine, but I wanted to type up (and tidy) what few notes I took while things were still fresh. Here they are, loosely organized:

Best Quote

“Only make new mistakes.” —Matt Mullenweg, founding developer of WordPress.

Design

Blogs don’t have to look like blogs. See XXL Magazine, powered by WordPress, designed by Jason Brightman. —Dvorak

Build only what’s absolutely necessary, surfacing the important elements. —Robert Hoekman, Jr., author of Designing the Obvious

The right color for text is a color that has enough contrast to be readable. See Colour Check. —Hoekman

Note: Robert scrapped the slideshow he prepared for WordCamp in favor of a thought-provoking impromptu presentation. For example, he asked if the author tag was essential on a blog. I opined that if the blog had only one author, there was no need for an author tag (you’ll notice I don’t include an author tag on my posts). But Lorelle (who’s an absolute kick, BTW), said that including author information will help personalize your blog and lead to more comments. I think we’re both right. I could do more to tell you about myself, but I still don’t think I need my name on every page. I am going to give more thought to my About page, though.

Slides for Robert’s original presentation can be found on SlideShare: “Designing the Obvious” at WordCamp.

Usability, Findability, Interactions and their flow. See Designing massively multiplayer social systems by Rashmi Sinha

People don’t notice good design. —Liz Danzico

Findability, Consistency, Transparent Design —Danzico

Note: Liz presented some of the work she’s been doing with the WordPress team to redesign the Admin. It’s very exciting stuff and will begin to appear in 2.3 (due in September) and should be fully implemented in 2.4 (due about four months later).

“Desire Lines” —Danzico
Desire lines are the paths people make as they naturally seek the shortest distance between points. You often see them etched across lawns as people abandon the sidewalks for more direct routes. I’d heard about this at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where I went to school. Supposedly, when the campus was built, the builders waited to do the landscaping until the paths across The Diag were well worn by the students. Then they went in and paved the sidewalks where the paths were. It’s interesting to apply this idea to blog design.

Interfaces to study:
Vox
Tumblr

SEO

I took more notes during Matt’s presentation on Whitehat SEO tips for Bloggers than any other. He said he may be able to make his PowerPoints available on his website, Matt Cutts: Gadgets, Google, and SEO, within a few days so I’m just going to point you there.

Webjockey

The High Performance WordPress presentation was just a wee bit technical, but fascinating. I won’t try to summarize any of it here because, frankly, most of it is over my head.

Plugins

Plugins came up a lot and whenever I heard about one, I jotted it down, even if I knew about it. I’m already using some of these, but if you want to know what plugins WordCampers were talking about, here’s my list:

Ajax Comment Preview
Angsuman’s Permanent Redirector Plugin
Anti-Leech.com
Blicki « Extend › Plugins
Democracy AJAX Poll
Digital Fingerprint
Export WordPress to PDF
Math Comment Spam Protection
Rate Your Comments (Comment Karma)
SEO Title Tag
Subscribe to Comments
Threaded Comments
WordPress Mobile Edition
WP-Cache

For more, check out the WordPress Plugins Directory.

I’m also going to watch Mark Jaquith’s tutorial, Your First WP Plugin. I have an idea that I hope isn’t too complicated.

Sites to Check Out

A random list of URLs I scribbled down.

BigBlueBall
Blogads
Dawud Miracle (formerly Healthy Web Design)
Diablo Valley Design
Ensight - Jeremy Wright’s Personal Blog
Happy Cog
How Much Is Your Blog *REALLY* Worth?
I Can Has Cheezburger?
InformIT
jeffhester.net
LolCat Builder
Newstex
Scobleizer
Scripting News Annex
silencematters
SlideShare
Successful and Outstanding Bloggers
welovewp.com

My blog is worth $406,468.80.
How much is your blog worth?

WordPress Resources I Somehow Didn’t Know About

Automattic Mailing Lists
WordPress IRC

Miscellaneous

There’s an easter egg in the WordPress.com Terms of Service. The TOS is available under a Creative Commons Sharealike license, so you can repurpose it for your own site.

MOO MiniCards are the Twitter of business cards. Or something like that. If you want to be a cool blogger, you have a Moo card, not a business card. I’ll be ordering mine soon.

You’ll see more iPhones at a WordCamp conference than almost anywhere else, outside of Macworld.

Matt Mullenweg is an impressive guy; sharp, generous, mellow. After the session Saturday, he bought dinner for about 15 or 16 people. He’s got an iPhone.

Met Donncha O Caolmh (Holy Shmoly!), WordPress MU developer. Donncha rhymes with Veronica, doncha know. I have no idea how to pronounce his last name.

Apparently, WordPress developers prefer boxer briefs and have a penchant for (free) beer.

One Trackback

9 Comments

Liz Strauss 24 Jul 07
Thanks for the scribble.

Also thanks for the great overview.

On the issue of author tags I can come at it two ways at both support having them. One: when I go to a new blog I look to see who wrote the post I’m reading. It’s nice to have a name. It’s name to be able to say “Hi Jim, Joe, Louise, Ann,” etc. in the comments to recognize the writer that way. After all I’m talking to the writer not the blog. Two: the author tag automatically tags the post with your name. I would think that would be SEO friendly and leading toward more authority as a blogger for bloggers who write strong content.

Again, I really enjoyed this one. Thanks for sharing your experience — especially all of the quotes. :)
Will 24 Jul 07
Nice. Thanks for the list of great resources.
Upstart Blogger 24 Jul 07
Liz, thanks for your comment. I was glad to hear about your blog at WordCamp. I subscribed.

Yeah, I’m rethinking the author tag. I’m such a minimalist that when I design a theme I try to get rid of everything that isn’t absolutely necessary. Then everything creeps back in. The author tag seems redundant to me if I’m the only one writing. But what I’ve learned is that my blogs probably aren’t personal enough in their design. My avatar in my header is miniscule compared to your picture in your header, for example. I still mulling it over, but my next design will be very different, I think.
Upstart Blogger 24 Jul 07
Will, you’re welcome. Plan to attend WordCamp next year. I think you would have enjoyed it.
Jason 25 Jul 07
Thanks for the event summary! If I remember my (utterly rudimentary) Irish pronunciation correctly, “O Caoimh” would be Anglicized into “O’Keefe” or something like it.
Alex 27 Jul 07
I always wish I could get away to one of these conferences as it always seems like there’s so much energy and great ideas floating around.

I currently go to the University of Michigan and I never really thought about the “desire lines” thing never really even as much as I walk the diag. I do think this would be pretty cool if applied to blog design though. It’d be pretty sweet if you had a blog that would dynamically restructure itself based on how the traffic flowed, and not just on a “this link is more popular so we’ll put it on top of the list” way.

Hmm.
Upstart Blogger 27 Jul 07
Alex, WordCamp was great. I definitely recommend it.

It would be interesting to apply “desire lines” to a blog dynamically. Plugins like Popularity Contest can be set to display popular posts for a given period, for example. But a simpler approach is just to use something like Crazy Egg to find where the “desire lines” are for your site, then tweak your design based on that. I test every design I create to see how people are using it.

BTW, like your site. Bookmarked. Hey, is Campus Corners still there?
Alex 27 Jul 07
I forgot about Crazy Egg. Good stuff. After my next redesign I’ll definitely have to make some great use of that.

Thanks for the bookmark, hopefully I’ll find time to post more so it’s actually worth reading. Anyway, Campus Corner is still here along with most of the same old AA institutions that were probably here in your day, whenever that day was.
Upstart Blogger 27 Jul 07
Thanks, Alex. I haven’t been to AA in a looong time. I lived above Campus Corners. Fond memories.