WordPress Conference Roudup

Just returned from a wordpress conference in Boston. Here are some of what I learned:

* JQuery: selector by id is really fast, selector by class is fast, selector of body or head is simple.

* Buddy Press
- Use BB Press 2.0 for forums rather than Simple Press (because it has same functionality to user but better integrated admin)
- BB Press would complement Wishlist Member if I wish to charge for content and protect certain content
- BB Press plays more nicely with standard wordpress themes
- Buddy Press innately uses WordPress MultiSite so that each end user stores data on a separate instance without a
having the interface of the wordpress backend (that was the core functionality)
- Buddy Press groups can be associated with content (but there is no protection or monetization built-in)
- Buddy Press is aware that it is missing capability to address multi-media
- Buddy Press uses custom posts
- Buddy Press best documentation is the source code
- Buddy Press has free support on the buddypress.org forum
- Buddy Press would seem suitable as one potential solution to an music website (but missing certain pieces)
- Buddy Press believes it is big enough that they don't know whether they are compatible with other plugins such as WP E-commerce, but they think they are.
- Buddy Press focuses on custom profiles for users

* Themes
- Build website without Javascript/JQuery with the structure of keyword rich URLs with separate pages for separate keywords
- Use a gateway page with links to each of their children if javascript is missing, but shows the children in a slider if has js

* Media Handling
- Need to upload to specific media library location
- Need to enable playing and/or downloading from that location
- payment infrastructure for selective digital purchases
- Need to host media on a server

* Custom Posts
- Can configure in PHP using Wordpress logic specific fields for artists such as mp3 or images
- Does not require buddypress
- Can separately create bands who have music (without associating members to bands)
- Tag the posts with relevant sorting fields
- Can pull content from blog such as mp3 attachment or lyrics in a blog post based on tags

* Moodle vs. Wordpress
- Moodle has way to track grades
- Moodle has assessment structure such as quizes and tests
- Community of Moodle administrators is much smaller (e.g. no moodle conferences)
- Growth of plugins slower, less vibrant community
- Wordpress supports better user to user interaction
- Moodle has profiles and forum software competitive to buddypress

* Mobile Devices
- Core issue seems to be using relative numbers in the css (keep the long decimals)

* Multisite
- Set up specific set of plugins and themes that are enabled on the superadmin will be inherited by children
- Installed plugins can be available for children
(Question: can a child site have a different theme?)

* Lead Generation
- Focus on industry-wide research questions/what customer is searching for...

* Multi-Voice Blog
- Blog contributors need to register at least with email so you can ban them or encourage them to contribute more

RSS feeds will transmit only the content of posts, not the headers or footers. Similarly, content scrapers.

wordcamp, Wordpress, jquery, buddypress, bb press, inbound marketing, themes, education, mobile