WordCamp San Francisco 2013

There’s something satisfying about surrounding yourself with like minded people. So when the chance arose to visit San Francisco and attend the 2013 WordCamp it didn’t take too much convincing before plane tickets were purchased.

With just over 800 WordPress developers, designers and users in one place, getting surrounded was not a problem!

What’s a WordCamp anyway?

WordPress is an open source platform, meaning there are literally hundreds of people that contribute to the project. Not just working on code but also the design of the software documentation and support. It’s a big movement with a lot of people involved and they take it very seriosly.

WordCamps are held all over the world, every month there are 20 or more held. San Francisco is the big one though, held each year around this time it’s brings people from far and wide. Over a 2 day period there are around 20 sessions that cover all manner of topics. Some sessions are for the serious code boffins while others are more focused on end users, there is something for every kind of WordPress geek.

State of the Word

San Francisco is also the venue for Matt Mullenweg’s (WordPress co-founder) annual update that outlines some of the achievements throughout the year as well as looking forward to what is coming up in the WordPress ecosystem.

We all love stats and there was no shortage of those, one that’s updated each year is the take up of WordPress around the globe. It’s now attributed to powering 18.9% of the entire web. There is also a healthy number of plugins still being created around 6,000 new ones in the last 12 months bringing the total to over 26,000 in the official repository.

If you’re you’ve got some time, watch the video here, the entire State of the Word runs around 1 hour.

What’s new that’s going to affect me?

Outlined at the conference was what is coming up in versions 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8.

The next release (3.6) will be available in the next couple of weeks and provides some interesting and useful updates. There was a really good video covering some of the new features but I can’t find it anywhere online at the moment. I’ll post it when it’s available.

Let’s look at some of the details that will be coming to your WordPress sites very soon.

Native support for audio and video

Video and audio files can be included now much the same way that you can images. You can simply upload the file and it will be embedded automatically. Certainly makes working with different media types much more simple.

Post Locking and Auto Save

This is going to be a great help for sites that have multiple users working on content simultaneously. WordPress will notify you that someone else is editing a page and offer to take over the editing or leave it be while the other person finishes. The editor will also save your work a lot more regularly, so even if you don’t click update your work will not be lost if there is an interruption to your connectivity.

Revision Management

“Time Machine” for your WordPress posts. Mac OS X users will know what I’m talking about :) The new revision management tool looks brilliant, giving you the ability to move back through the various versions of a page or post. So if you’d like to see what the content was like before you started or before another user edited the document you can. All with a simple to use slider that moves through the various versions of the document.

Versions 3.7 is being worked on right away and will focus on security and stability, while 3.8 is on the road map for around December this year and aims to bring a new look design to the WordPress Dashboard. We’ve been playing with the prototype of this MP6 and it looks really good so far.

So who’s answering the phone in Sydney?

We are on the way back to Sydney this week but still working away on projects and answering support problems, living the reality of the mobile, always on office! Certainly call our 1300 number and leave a message there, but probably you’ll get a quicker response by dropping us an email to support {@} thedma.com.au.