This Week

WordPress.tv Weekly Staff Picks

Posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2014 at 1:01 am by Jerry B

The past week (August 25-31, 2014) has brought with it a great collection of WordCamp videos for designers and developers alike. If you’re looking to learn more about WordPress, these videos are a great way to level up!

Loris Grillet: Selling Your Projects and Building the Perfect Client Relationship

From WordCamp Switzerland (May 3-4, 2014) comes this great presentation by web and UX designer Loris Grillet on presenting design work and building a good relationship with clients.

View on WordPress.tv

Simon Owen: Optimising Your Front-End Workflow for WordPress

For theme developers, this presentation from WordCamp Manchester (June 28-29, 2014) by Simon Owen covers the techniques, applications and shortcuts that he uses to help him when building WordPress themes.

View on WordPress.tv

Kevin Stover: The Candid Developer. Developing and Maintaining A Successful Plugin… Is Scary

Also from WordCamp Manchester (June 28-29, 2014) comes this presentation from Kevin Stover that is an honest look at the very scary prospect of releasing a plugin to the public, and how to overcome that fear.

View on WordPress.tv

Of course, this is just a sampling of the great videos that are being published every day, so feel free to visit WordPress.tv and expand your WordPress knowledge!

– Your WordPress.tv Moderator Squad

Weekly Recap: Inspirageek’s Interview with Matt Mullenweg and WordPress 2.9

Posted on Monday, December 21st, 2009 at 4:37 am by Ryan Markel

A happy holidays to you from WordPress.tv!

We published two videos for you this week—one an interview with Matt Mullenweg of Automattic, and the other a video introduction to the neat stuff included in the latest release of WordPress.

Josh Grenon of Inspirageek interviews Matt Mullenweg in our first video published this week. They discuss some general tips for entrepreneurs, the development process for (the now released) WordPress 2.9, some basics behind VideoPress and why it’s great, and a few other odds and ends.

This weekend also saw the release of WordPress 2.9, the latest and greatest edition of our favorite software. To herald this event, our very own Michael Pick has composed an introductory video to WordPress 2.9, hitting the major updates and changes you’ll be playing with in the weeks to come. It’s a quick watch—check it out and feel free to embed when you talk about WordPress 2.9 on your own blog.

With the Christmas and New Year’s holidays coming up in the next two weeks, I expect new videos here on WordPress.tv will be few and far between, but we’ll still be here to check out and publish videos you direct us to using our handy contact form.

All of us here at WordPress.tv wish you a very happy holiday season and look forward to more great WordPress videos in 2010!

Weekly Recap: Site Planning—and WordPress.tv Needs Your Videos!

Posted on Monday, December 14th, 2009 at 4:30 am by Ryan Markel

Three more French-language tutorials and one video tutorial make up this week on WordPress.tv:

First, our friends at WP Channel have produced yet another great set of WordPress tutorials: Configurer les clés de sécurité secrètes dans le wp-config.php, Optimiser la base de données MySQL de WordPress, and Intégrer un module Facebook Connect sur votre blog WordPress.

Also, Scott Ellis has provided us with another nice tutorial. In Building The Ultimate Website Content Map, Part One, he discusses some of the work that happens before you get going in creating a WordPress site—figuring out how you’re going to organize it. Past tutorials from Scott on custom fields and using sort order have been well-received, and all are worth your time.

This week, I’d like to focus on the community aspect of WordPress.tv. As with both Scott and the videos from WP Channel this week, some of the best tutorials and walkthroughs on WordPress.tv are videos that were produced by WordPress users and community members just like you.

As we’re entering a pretty quiet time for WordCamps—approaching the holiday season—WordPress.tv has had some pretty slow weeks recently. It doesn’t have to be so! You’ve seen what others in the community are capable of. Why not take the time to compose your own video tutorial and submit it for publication here on WordPress.tv?

To get you started, you can check out our submission guidelines or a handy list of screencasting resources that Michael put together earlier this year. Then, pick a topic! Find something about WordPress that excites you or that you feel you’re skilled with. Think about how you would teach someone how to do something or use a plugin, theme, or feature as well as you do. Then, get recording!

When you have your video together, contact us and we’ll be happy to take a look. If you have any questions, either contact us through the same form or feel free to leave a comment here—we’ll be happy to help you figure things out!

Weekly Recap: Better WordPress Search, wp-config Tips, and More

Posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 4:23 am by Ryan Markel

One English tutorial, two French tutorials, and a couple of WordCamp videos—including one overdue—make up this week’s activity on WordPress.tv:

Last week, we saw Google Summer of Code participant Daryl Koopersmith’s presentation on the Elastic plugin for WordPress. This week, we published the presentation from fellow Summer of Code participant Justin Shreve on his work creating a Search API for WordPress. Both projects are quite interesting and their presentations from WordCamp NYC are definitely worth your time. The audio levels are a bit low, so turn up your speakers or grab a pair of headphones—don’t let the sound stop you from watching.

One we’ve been waiting for came in this week: the final “Ignite-style” presentation from WordCamp Seattle, in which Josh Harrison teaches some tips and tricks for the wp-config.php file. Since it’s Ignite-style, it lasts only five great minutes—check it out.

We also published two tutorials in French from our friends at WP Channel: Restaurer une base de données MySQL and Rediriger vos visiteurs en fonction des préférences de langues du navigateur.

Last, there’s a tutorial from the creators of the Snipi plugin for WordPress.org, explaining the installation of the plugin and how it interacts with both the “stock” WordPress gallery feature and the NextGEN Gallery plugin.

We received a handful of emails this week with suggestions for future content, and one or two pointing us to videos you’ve found interesting enough to want on WordPress.tv for others to see. Keep those suggestions coming! You can always post a comment here or contact us through our handy form.

Stay tuned for more from WordPress.tv!

Weekly Recap: Your First Plugin, Internationalization, WordPress at School, and Geotagging

Posted on Monday, November 30th, 2009 at 3:04 am by Ryan Markel

More WordCamp NYC videos and a great tutorial from the community round out the videos published this past week on WordPress.tv. Here’s what you missed:

First, there’s John Hawkins’ talk from WordCamp NYC on how to build your very first WordPress plugin. He’s given this talk at a handful of WordCamps this year, but it’s always packed with great information and serves as a great introduction to building a very basic plugin.

Next, Automattician José Fontainhas gives an overview of how to properly provide for internationalization in your WordPress projects, including a brief look at the new GlotPress system. If you’re building something for WordPress, you should take a look at this presentation to learn how easy it is to help the community translate your project. Much of the WordPress community is not English-speaking.

The last presentation from WordCamp NYC comes from Serena Epstein and Shannon Houser: a talk titled “WordPress As a Gateway Drug“. It’s about how the use of WordPress in an undergraduate coursework setting has influenced students to continue the creative process even post-graduation. It has a unique style and flavor—check it out.

And lastly, we were pointed in the direction of a wonderful example of a tutorial coming out of the WordPress community. In this case, it’s Jesse P. Luna’s howto on using the new WordPress.com geotagging feature. It’s great to see these kinds of things come from dedicated WordPress users like all of you.

This is a great moment to remind you that if you have a WordPress feature you think could use a great tutorial, there’s never a better time to create one and send it on to us! If you’ve seen a tutorial or have made one, drop us a line and let us know about it.

If you’re looking for a suggestion, here’s one: are you one of the many people who are working with WordPress 2.9-beta? There are some excellent new features coming in 2.9, and there will be lots of WordPress users looking for information on those features. Why not consider whipping up a brief and to-the-point tutorial on one of the new features coming in 2.9?

Have a great week!

Weekly Recap: WYSIWYG Theming, Plugin Development, jQuery, and Child Themes

Posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 5:40 am by Ryan Markel

We had another light publishing week here on WordPress.tv last week, but we have the first of a bunch of WordCamp video for you tonight in a special weekend delivery to make up for lost time.

The one video we did get out for you was the first video to come out of the excellent WordCamp New York City, and it features an awesome concept that came out of the Google Summer of Code. It’s Daryl Koopersmith’s talk on the Elastic WYSIWYG theme tool; you should check it out.

Tonight, we have three more videos, also from WordCamp NYC. First, Matt Martz gives an instructional course on intermediate plugin development. Jim Doran talks to us about using jQuery when you develop for WordPress. And lastly, Allan Cole discusses the increasingly important role child themes take in WordPress development.

We have more WordCamp video on the way this week. To stay updated, follow @wordpresstv on Twitter.

Last week, I asked for suggestions for future video tutorials, and we received a handful of suggestions that I think are very good. I think you’ll see some information on those topics in the future. This week, I have a different request of the community.

We need volunteer transcribers and translators.

To get started, we have video coming in soon from WordCamp Kyoto. Almost all of it is (of course) in Japanese—and much of the WordPress community would still love to see those presentations but may not understand the Japanese language. If you are Japanese-speaking and could help us by volunteering to transcribe or translate the video from WordCamp Kyoto, please either leave a comment on this post or drop us a line using this contact form.

Thanks, and if you’re celebrating Thanksgiving this week, have a great holiday week. Don’t forget the contest currently going on at WordPress.com—a video contest! There’s some snazzy prizes being given away over there.

Weekly Recap: Community Building, Local WordPress Installation, and a Request

Posted on Monday, November 16th, 2009 at 4:49 am by Ryan Markel

I’m a little late to the party this weekend with last week’s recap, but we have a special request for all you viewers, so let’s get down to it.

This week we published one WordCamp video and one tutorial—a little light considering recent weeks, but this week also saw a great livestream from WordCamp Phoenix. I hope you were able to watch it—there were some great sessions included and we’re hoping to have them available on WordPress.tv soon.

The WordCamp video from was WordCamp Netherlands: Liz Strauss‘s presentation entitled “Meeting Your Audience Where They Are.” If you’re interested in community-building or in building a personal brand, it’s definitely worth a look.

On the tutorial side, we published a run-through by Tom Johnson on running a local copy of WordPress using WampServer. Local copies can have tremendous development potential; if you regularly develop themes or plugins, or just like to tinker with WordPress, local installation can be a great help.

So here’s the special request: I’d like you to take a moment and think up one thing—just one thing—you’d like to see covered in a video tutorial here at WordPress.tv. It can be anything WordPress-related, but here’s an exercise to focus your thinking.

Think of questions like: What do I wish someone had told me when I started using WordPress? What kinds of things seem hard at first but really aren’t once you get down to it? What feature of WordPress do I wish more people knew about and used? What’s the feature, plugin, or whatever that gives me an awesome productivity boost or makes me a better WordPress user?

Come up with one thing you’d like to see covered in a future video tutorial, and then send us an email using our handy contact form. We’ll take a look at those suggestions and report on them in a future week’s recap so you know what your fellow community members are asking for.

Until then, stay tuned for more WordPress.tv!

Weekly Recap: WP for iPhone, AStickyPostOrderER, and More

Posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 2:45 am by Ryan Markel

This week was a light one compared to the last four, with a break in the stream of WordCamp videos. We’re eagerly awaiting the arrival of a fresh batch of WordCamp video, with more sessions from the great speakers lined up for WordCamps both from the last few weeks and also from the next couple of weeks in November.

There were a handful of videos published this week:

We announced the arrival of the new WordPress for iPhone 2.0 with a brief overview of its features and quick introduction, and published a great plugin tutorial from Adam W. Warner on the AStickyPostOrderER plugin.

We also received and published yet another fantastic French-language tutorial from WordPress Channel: Effectuer une mise à jour de WordPress.

Next week will see the first videos from WordCamp Netherlands, and we hope to get you back up to a daily dose of WordPress video starting on Monday.

Off-weeks don’t have to be light like this! We’re always looking for new videos from the community—this is your resource. A great example is Adam’s plugin tutorial from this week. Is there a plugin that you absolutely can’t live without? One that you think more people should be using? Check out this list of screencasting resources and put together a quick tutorial. It’s really quite easy to get the hang of it.

Then drop us a line here at WordPress.tv and let us know about your great tutorial!

Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you on Monday.

Weekly Recap: The Image Widget, Pods CMS, and Interviews with Matt

Posted on Sunday, November 1st, 2009 at 3:34 am by Ryan Markel

Happy Halloween!

This week, we took a little break from WordCamp videos to post a couple of tutorials, a couple of interviews, and one introduction to a different way of using WordPress.

We published one tutorial on a newer feature of WordPress.com: the Image Widget. If you’re a self-hosted WordPress user and like the widget in the video, there’s a great suggestion in the comments for a plugin you can use.

Matt Gibbs sent us a great overview of the basic functionality of the Pods CMS plugin. You’ll need some basic PHP knowledge, but if you’re interested in some of the different ways people are using WordPress, it’s definitely worth a look.

We also made available two French language tutorials:

Lastly, we posted more in the series of interviews with Matt Mullenweg, one with his thoughts on the current state of the WordPress platform, and another regarding the role and importance of open source to WordPress.

This week, there’s been some great discussion after the event on some of the video from WordCamp Seattle. Check the list of sessions here, and if you see something that interests you, join the conversation!

Next week, we have even more from the WordPress community, and we’re looking forward to more WordCamp sessions from around the world. If you have a tutorial or other WordPress-related video you’d like to share with the community, please send us a note and we’ll be happy to check it out.

More video to come on Monday!

Weekly Recap: Finding Themes, Bulletproofing WordPress, and More from WordCamp Seattle

Posted on Sunday, October 25th, 2009 at 2:43 am by Ryan Markel

Another week, another great set of presentations published this week from WordCamp Seattle. This week brings the Seattle video to a close, and we hope you’ve found the presentations to be informative and useful.

The first set of sessions posted this week were a neat experiment from the Seattle organizing team: WordPress presentations done “Ignite-style”, where each presenter was given only five minutes in which to deliver their talk. As a result, you’ll find these talks move quickly and give you lots of information in a short amount of time:

We also published the closing session from Seattle, given by Liz Strauss:

Remember that if you missed any sessions from WordCamp Seattle, you can view the whole list of them here.

Next week, we have a small series of videos that have come in from the community to publish while we wait for a short lull in WordCamp activity, but with WordCamps happening over the next few weeks in more places all over the world, we’re looking forward to more sessions from great speakers.

Stay tuned for more from WordPress.tv!