We want to hear your WordPress story.

19 June 2017Community Leave a comment

 

When I joined @hlashbrooke in planning WordPress meetups I was full of vim and vigour to organise more meetups. I had just come from my first WordCamp and I was super excited to help the community grow. Sadly since then I have only managed to either plan or attend two meetups. Work, life, family, it all just seems to get in the way.

We started #coworkpress as a way to try and counter our lack of more formal monthly meetups but I realise that this does not fill the gap properly. So (in my usual gung ho way) I am going to try and see if I can setup something a bit more robust for the rest of the year.

Your WordPress story.

I want to hear your WordPress story. How did you get started with WordPress? What are you doing with it now? How are you using it to change the world? What do you love about it? What do you hate about it? What would you like to do with it in the future?

We all have our WordPress story and I want to hear yours. And, seeing as it’s your story, I want to make it happen somewhere that you are comfortable with. So I’ll discuss with you and find a meetup location that makes it easy for you to attend and comfortable to speak.

There are six months left until the end of this year, so I’m looking for six people who are willing to share their story. July is just around the corner, so if we can get someone for July already that would be great. If not, I’ll find someone, even if I have to do it myself.

If you are interested in telling your story, use the form below to get in touch.

WordPress Beginner Workshop #2

13 June 2017Community Leave a comment

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We had so much success with the last workshop, packed house, amazing food and fantastic people, that we’ve decided to do another one.

The second workshop will be held on the 1 July 2017, at Workshop 17, V&A Waterfront.

We will start at 9am sharp and finish around 3pm.

Its important to bring a notebook and laptop (we have plenty of plug extensions).

A little information on the workshop itself:

These workshops are aimed at users rather than developers. No coding experienced is necessary and no WordPress experience is required either. However, if you are a developer, this will give you a solid understanding of the powerful tool that is WordPress.

In this workshop you will learn all about WordPress, themes (how to choose a good theme, installation and customization), plugins(what is a plugin, how to choose a plugin, installation and optimization), how to manage your plugins & themes, edit menus, use widgets and security.

Tickets can be purchased here: https://www.quicket.co.za/events/29933-code-saloon-beginners-wordpress-workshop

Hope to see some of you there.

 

 

Sign up to use your skills for charity

24 May 2017Community, do_action, Events Leave a comment

We’re very excited to announce that sign-ups are now open for our fourth annual do_action WordPress Charity Hackathon! We have a great selection of 10 non-profits that we will be working with and we are looking for participants from the local community to work on their brand new sites.

All skill sets are needed!

As always, we’re looking for Social Media Managers, Content Managers, Project Managers, Designers, Developers, and Quality Assurance Testers for each of the teams, so if you have any experience managing websites in any capacity then you can participate!

The sooner you get your name in the better as these spots do tend to fill up fast – we already have half of the spots filled 🙂

This year we’re working with the following organisations:

  • The Homestead Projects for Street Children
  • Durbanville Children’s Home
  • Kidz Adventure Camp
  • Iliso Care Society
  • ASSITEJ South Africa
  • Usiko Stellenbosch
  • Daughters Of Destiny
  • Rotary Club of Constantia
  • Little Lambs Christian Day Care
  • Tygerberg Association for Persons with Physical Disabilities

When you sign up you can select which charity you would like to work with and what your role on the team will be.

What is do_action?

In case you haven’t heard about it before, do_action is a charity hackathon that uses WordPress to uplift local communities. The hackathons are community-organised events that are focussed on using WordPress to give deserving charitable organisations their own online presence. Each do_action event includes participants from the local WordPress community coming together to plan and build brand new websites for a number of local organisations in one day.

We first started do_action in 2014 in Cape Town and, in the last year or so, it has grown into a global movement with events starting up all over the world.

I’m really looking forward to working with many of at this event once again!

WordCamp Cape Town 2017 – Call for volunteers and speakers

23 May 2017Announcements, Community, WordCamp Leave a comment

It is with great excitement that I announce that the WordCamp Cape Town 2017 call for volunteers and speakers is now officially open!

Every year, local and national WordPress users volunteer their time to help make WordCamp Cape Town happen. Our volunteers help manage the venue and keep the event running smoothly, while our speakers provide engaging workshops and talks to provide our attendees with the mental stimulation they need to go forth and build bigger and better websites, eCommerce stores and blogs with WordPress. Without them, WordCamp simply wouldn’t exist.

This year we have some big things planned, so we need as many hands on deck as we can possibly get. If you’ve never spoken or volunteered for a WordCamp before, I highly encourage you to give it a bash this year. We have a great organising team and with the right group of volunteers, I’m sure there is nothing we can’t accomplish this year.

Visit the WordCamp Cape Town website for all the relevant information, or go straight through to the Call for Volunteers or Call for Speakers announcement posts.

WPHugs & Mental Health Awareness Month

17 May 2017Community, Leave a comment

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2001, one in four people would experience a mental health issue, and less than a third of these people would seek the help that they need.

May is Mental Health Awareness Month in the US, so we would like to take moment to talk more about it and to help others reach out and speak out.

The first time I openly spoke about my personal struggles with mental wellness was with the mic and a full audience at WordCamp Cape Town 2016. It was not easy to do, and that is exactly what raising awareness is trying to do; make it easier for people to speak up and reach out.

It was also at WordCamp Cape Town 2016, that I spontaneously decided to add a hashtag to the bottom of all of my slides called #WPHugs. I didn’t know what to expect from the talk – a non-tech talk at a tech event. But, WordPress has never just been a technology, WordPress is it’s community.

Many people came to me during breaks and during the after party and opened up about their own struggles. Many saying they wished that they were brave enough to speak to their bosses or colleagues or employees about it. I want to help make speaking out less of a bravery; and more akin to the ease at which we admit to others that we are cold in winter.

I went through one of my most difficult struggles in February this year, I had fallen, and it was largely the WordPress community that I have grown into, locally and internationally, that have been helping me with the lifting up.

I could not leave WPHugs to simply be a #hashtag. WPHugs for WordPress is now a full project that began early May, and is volunteer driven, just like WordPress. It aims to offer a supportive and educative platform to raise awareness about mental health and make it easier for everyone to never reach the darkness of not knowing or feeling alone, it’s a community by the community for the community.

The future of WPHugs sees it having regular essays written by other WordPress friends as well as created a repository of resources and supporters of the WPHugs initiative. Currently all discussions happen in Slack. WPHugs Slack has many members from around the world and our local WordPress South Africa Slack has a #wphugs channel.

Let us come together to remove the stigma of mental health issues – The WordPress Way.

Visit: WPHugs.org

Other:
WPTavern: WPHugs: A Community Devoted to Educating, Discussing, and Raising Awareness of Mental Health
HeroPress: Community saved my life: Falling down, lifted up.

Workshops for WordPress beginners & users by the Code Saloon

10 April 2017Community Leave a comment

Code Saloon workshops are specifically aimed at teaching you how to manage WordPress websites. Whether you’re running your own business, working as a content manager, or learning the basics of web development, this course will put you in the saddle and expand whatever skill set you already have.

These workshops are aimed at users rather than developers. No coding experience is necessary and no WordPress experience is required either (although preferable). However, if you are a developer, this will give you a solid understanding of WordPress.

In the Beginner WordPress Workshop attendees will learn how to choose, install and customize a good theme, what a plugin is and how to install and optimize one, and how to manage your plugins & themes, menus, widgets & security.

Tickets can be purchased on Quicket:
https://www.quicket.co.za/events/21219-beginner-wordpress-workshop/

Facebook Event:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1256510881131696/

For more information visit http://codesaloon.net

Email: thecodesaloon@gmail.com

 

WordCamp Cape Town 2017 – Call for organisers.

24 January 2017Community 1 Comment
WordCamp Cape Town 2017

New Year, new resolutions, new WordCamp. While it is still months away, the time has come to start planning the WordCamp Cape Town 2017 and we’re looking for people to be part of the organising team.

If you were on the team last year, your experience and knowledge would not only be greatly appreciated but welcomed with open arms. If you are keen to help organise the next WordCamp, we’re always looking for fresh ideas to make our yearly ‘grand meetup’ something special.

If you are ready to play a vital role in the planning and organising of the next Cape Town WordCamp, fill in your details below and hit that submit button.

The Cape Town WordPress community thanks you.

 

Meetup: ReactJS & WordPress

19 January 2017Community, Meetups, , 1 Comment

This is a joint event with the Cape Town Front-end Developers meetup group – you can RSVP on their event.

For the first meetup of 2017, we will be joining up with the Cape Town Front-end Developers meetup group to talk about ReactJS and how you can use it with WordPress.

The meetup will be held at the Media24 building (14th floor) on Wednesday, 1 February – it will start at 18:30 with the talk starting at 19:00. Food and drinks will be available, so come along and have a good time with the WordPress and Front-end Developers communities. This event is fully sponsored by Media24.

RSVP on the event here (also includes further venue details and such).

About the talk

ReactJS is the new kid on the block and WordPress has stood the test of time. This talk will cover how easily you can introduce ReactJS within an existing WordPress site. We will talk about React tooling (Webpack and Babel) and how to setup a modern JS workflow for development. Last we will talk about how you can package your code for production using Preact.

The talk is for anyone interested in ReactJS and how to get started.

About the speaker

Kurt Farao (Car Brochure, @kingramsi) is a Fullstack JS developer at Liquid Thought. His current Front-end stack is React. He also dabbles in MongoDB and NodeJS from time to time. When away from his keyboard, you’ll find him battling his best time at your local racetrack.

Meetup: Let’s talk about code quality!

9 December 2016Announcements, Meetups 1 Comment

On Tuesday, 13 December (this coming Tuesday) we’re hosting our final meetup for 2016. We will be gathering at Hint Hunt at 18:30 to hang out as a community and hear from Thierry Muller who will be talking about code quality and why it matters for businesses as well as for developers.

You can find out all of the info on the meetup event page.

As always, the event will include snacks and soft drinks – we will not be serving alcohol in order to be as inclusive as possible for the diverse community of Cape Town.

Thanks to WooCommerce for sponsoring this event!

WordCamp Cape Town 2016 session videos

24 November 2016WordCamp 1 Comment

In September this year, we all came together to improve our WordPress skills, build some community spirit, and just generally have a great time at WordCamp Cape Town 2016. One of the things we promised at the event was that all of the day 2 sessions would be recorded and the videos published online for everyone to watch, rewatch and appreciate.

Well now, thanks to the tireless work of the WordPress TV volunteer team, all of the sessions from day 2 are available on WordPress.tv! We didn’t record the workshops because they’re just a bit too impractical to film and watching a video of a workshop isn’t really all the beneficial as you need to really be there to take part. Sessions are different of course as they don’t require active participation on your part.

So, go forth and enjoy all of the talks from WordCamp Cape Town 2016 right here!