Two WordPress Glasgow meetups in February

Back to our usual two meets per month. Here’s what’s coming this February:

  • WordPress Community Workshop – Thursday 8th February, 6:30 pm at the Citizen M‘s ground floor lounge.
    This is our very popular and relaxed get-together. We all sit around the big table and talk about the WordPress projects or conundrums we are working on at the moment. Bring your laptop or tablet, as well as questions and answers for your co-members. We all help each other get better at WordPress!

    Event #35: WordPress Community Workshop

    Thursday, Feb 8, 2018, 6:30 PM

    citizen m hotel
    60 renfrew street Glasgow, GB

    17 Members Attending

    If you would like to build a website using WordPress, or if you already have a WP site which is having issues, or if you are looking to share your WP knowledge, then this is the gathering to come along to. The idea is that people of all levels of ability can come along, collaborate, and discuss and/or show those aspects of WordPress that are of int…

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  • “Improving the User Experience of Your Sites”, by Neil Scott – Tuesday 27th February, 6:00pm at iCafe Sauchiehall St.
    WordPress is known for pre-made themes that make it easy to get started. However, after a while you might wonder why certain design decisions have been made, how they affect your users, and what you can do to make the site better.
    This is where User Experience (UX) design techniques come in. UX is way of bringing together user needs and business goals through research, testing, and design.
    This talk will introduce the concept of UX and provide practical tips for improving your site.

    Event #36: Improving the User Experience of Your Sites, by Neil Scott

    Tuesday, Feb 27, 2018, 6:00 PM

    iCafe
    315-317 Sauchiehall Street Glasgow, GB

    10 Members Attending

    This is an event suitable for ALL LEVELS.Doors open at 6:00pm to give everyone time to come in and chat to each other. Talk starts at 6:30pm.* About the Talk:WordPress is known for pre-made themes that make it easy to get started. However, after a while you might wonder why certain design decisions have been made, how they affect your users, and…

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WordPress London Meetup #wpldn – 30 Nov. 2017

The final ‘formal’ WordPress London Meetup of 2017.  We’ll be looking at the discovery stage, our favourite plugins & scaling WordPress.

Missed a #wpldn recently?  Catch up at wpldn.uk

Winning at Discovery

That phase of any project that, if not pinned down and given the attention it needs, can trip us up big time. The Discovery process needs to be as thorough as it can possibly be.

Discovering just what the client expects and all the things around being able to make that happen. That’s what we want to do.

The thing is, we all know this. Some include this already in their process and from this they have become successful (surely!!). Each of us has a horror story of the client’s expectations not being met because we did not understand quite what they had in mind; there was a mismatch and the client holds us accountable for that. Or what they want and expect is just not possible on their hosting. Or the client’s data needs significant translation to be usable.

Being clear at the start is essential. If we do this, document it, get the client to confirm that this document is what they want and understand they’re paying for, then we’re winning and so are they.

Presented by Barbara Saul.  Working with the Internet for nearly 20 years now and wrangling web design clients for at least 15, Barbara has learned many things about keeping customers happy, how to handle a customer always being right, and mostly learning from when she gets it wrong... Follow her @babssaul.

Plugins Uncovered 

We all have our favourite go-to plugins, often using them repeatedly on our client projects.  We may have plugins we’ve used for years, or sometimes we come across handy plugins by chance.

Let’s spread the word about these great little plugins available to us.  Let’s find those hero plugins that will get us hooked!

In this session, Mike Pead will demonstrate two plugins he regularly uses, which are useful for all levels of abilities.  He’ll also open the session to the floor, so if you have any favourite plugins that could be useful to others, please share your suggestions!.

Presented by Mike Pead. Mike runs Primary Image, based in Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex, and designs, supports and hosts WordPress websites for clients.  Primary Image specialises in the transport sector, with Mike creating websites for Transport for London, National Express and Network Rail, amongst many others. Follow him at @mikepead.

Scaling WordPress with containers

With the REST API in full swing, SPAs (Single Page Apps) are popping up all over the place, built using <insert JS framework here>. In this presentation, I will show you how to get a simple site using the WordPress REST API from local development, through to production on Kubernetes (with a demo, or two mixed in), that scales.

Presented by Craig Willis.  Craig is a Full-Stack Developer working on internal and external products for Ayima, Digital Marketing Agency in London. He is also the co-organiser of PHP London. https://www.meetup.com/phplondon/. Follow him @craigwillis85.

Running Order (STC):

18:30 – Arrive for networking and refreshments
19:00 – Opening remarks
19:10 – First Speaker – Barbra Saul
19:50 – Plugins Uncovered – Mike Pead
20:05 – Break
20:15 – Third speaker – Craig Willis
20:50 – Closing remarks
21:00 – Social

Follow #wpldn on Twitter for all the latest and join the Facebook Group to take the conversation further.  Have a talk you’d like to present?  We’d love to hear from you. 

The WordPress London meetup is supported by a team of volunteers: AnnabelleDan and Gary.

WordPress London

London, GB
2,368 WordPress Community Members

Welcome to the WordPress London Meetup #wpldn.WordPress London is a monthly meetup for developers, designers, business owners and users of WordPress, held the last Thursday o…

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WordPress London Meetup – Nov. 2017

Thursday, Nov 30, 2017, 6:30 PM
92 Attending

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WordPress London Meetup #wpldn – 26 Oct. 2017

Ensuring the design process stays on track, providing world class support and speedy database queries are just some of this months #wpldn discussion points.

Missed a #wpldn recently?  Catch up at wpldn.uk

The Night of the Living Style Guides

The line between design and development is getting blurrier, and our approach to web design is becoming more modular. How do we keep track of it all?
Style guides to the rescue!

Using style guides that update as our projects progress, we can visually document our work and ensure that everything stays consistent. They may seem daunting and time-consuming at first, but they don’t have to be.

How do I get started with living style guides? What’s a living style guide anyway, and how do I know if mine is dead? Isn’t that going to slow me down? Why should I bother?

Let’s find out.

Presented by Sarah Semark. Sarah is a designer, developer, and world-traveller. After running a business for eight years, she now works for Automattic where she spends her days building WordPressy things.

When she’s not busy making things, Sarah likes obsessing over typography, collecting impractical footwear, and exploring new places. Follow her @sarahsemark.

Why You Should Give Great Support

So you’ve created a plugin or a theme for WordPress? Awesome! It doesn’t stop there. Find out why great support matters and learn simple ways to get a reputation for excellent support without increasing your time or effort.

Presented by Deborah Beckett. Deborah Beckett has been building web sites and training site owners for over ten years. She lives with her husband and two kids in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, USA. When not engineering happiness for WordPress.com users, she enjoys running, travel, and spending time with her family. Follow her at @dbeckettnc.

What you didn’t know you need to know about WordPress and databases

There are a number of ways to speed up sites. Caching is one of them. However caching can’t be used in all instances, for example when checking out on an eCommerce site. In those circumstances the speed of talking to the database is important.

WordPress and its plugins aren’t the greatest at structuring data. In this talk we’ll walk through some basics of how databases work, how WordPress is set up, and why some of the queries you thought should be fast, aren’t. And hopefully what to do about some of those.

Presented by Gabor Javorszky.  Gabor is a software engineer / eCommerce consultant who works with WordPress and WooCommerce. His focus is on solving performance bottlenecks. He spends most of his time buried in New Relic. Follow him @javorszky.

Running Order (STC):

18:30 – Arrive for networking and refreshments
19:00 – Opening remarks
19:10 – First Speaker – Sarah Semark
19:50 – Second Speaker – Deborah Beckett
20:05 – Break
20:15 – Third speaker – Gabor Javorszky
20:50 – Closing remarks
21:00 – Social

Follow #wpldn on Twitter for all the latest and join the Facebook Group to take the conversation further.  Have a talk you’d like to present?  We’d love to hear from you. 

The WordPress London meetup is supported by a team of volunteers: AnnabelleDan and Gary

WordPress London Meetup – Oct. 2017

Thursday, Oct 26, 2017, 6:30 PM

Location details are available to members only.

49 WordPress Community Members Went

Ensuring the design process stays on track, providing world class support and speedy database queries are just some of this months #wpldn discussion points.Missed a #wpldn recently?  Catch up at wpldn.ukThe Night of the Living Style GuidesThe line between design and development is getting blurrier, and our approach to web design is becoming more…

Check out this Meetup →