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WordPress Meetup Tomorrow 7/26 @ 6pm – Frameworks and Gutenberg Blocks

Join us tomorrow to learn from two great speakers!

We have a WordPress Meetup – an online MegaMeetup – tomorrow evening with the South Florida group and others. We are also working on arranging speakers for the August and September WordPress Meetups as well. If you have a topic you would like to speak on, please let us know!

Vito Peleg: “The Perfect WordPress Project Framework”

Building a website for a client within WordPress is a completely different game compared to building one for yourself. In fact, most agencies and designers would agree, that building a basic business site (for the sake of the example), on our own, can take between 3-5 days. But as soon as a client or stakeholder joins the process, the project become a 4-6 weeks journey (that is, if all goes well).

On this session, Vito will share what he learned from exploring the workflow of thousands of WordPress agencies and Solopreneurs through Atarim.io as well as sharing his own experiences. The goal is to map out the biggest bottlenecks within website projects without compromising on the quality and increasing client satisfaction for increased referrals.

Anne Katzeff: Beginner’s Guide to Gutenberg Blocks

Anne introduces you to the basic Gutenberg blocks so you can edit existing pages and posts, and create new documents. She’ll start with a quick orientation to Gutenberg features, then dive into some of the common blocks. Anne will show her best ways to use blocks, along with her favorite blocks, layout methods, and tips. For those who are new to using the Block editor or experienced users wanting to check out different ideas and techniques, everyone will get great take-aways from the evening!

Laura Byrne commented on Twitter: “This is hands down the best Gutenberg 101 for content creators I’ve seen. Seriously, bookmark this now and use as a reference: logical progression, great screen caps, user-friendly language.”

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Go ahead and RSVP today and we’ll add the Zoom link tomorrow afternoon.

If you would like to speak in August/September please let us know (email me or David @ dbisset@dimensionmedia.com)!

Guy Cicinelli
SWFL WordPress Meetup Organizer

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April WordPress Meetup Recap & Links

Full Site Editing and the Future of WordPress

As always, thanks to everyone that spent their Thursday evening with us last night at our April WordPress Meetup – another edition of the WordPress MegaMeetup. A special thank you to Anne McCarthy and Marcus Kazmierczak from Automattic for showing us the future of WordPress with Full Site Editing (FSE). Also, a big thank you to @GoDaddyPro for sponsoring our MegaMeetup once again! 

Our apologies for the Meetup.com issues which delayed (and perhaps deterred) many folks from joining us for our great event. Despite the server issues, we had over 120 people connected!

For the TL;DR folks:

You can watch the whole recording on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4IFn73Nzvk 

Or, even better – subscribe to WCMIA’s channel and click the bell icon to get notified when new videos are posted: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPaXHepv6YbVy-mnElQOx5w 

Our WordPress Meetup Speakers –

First Speaker – Anne McCarthy

Find Anne on the web: 
Twitter: @annezazu
Web: https://nomad.blog

“Full site editing is a collection of projects… arguably too much for a single release”. – Josepha https://make.wordpress.org/core/2021/04/08/full-site-editing-scope-for-wp5-8/

The FSE effort is broken down into 7 milestones:

  1. Infrastructure & UI
  2. Browsing
  3. Styling
  4. Theme Blocks
  5. Query Block
  6. Navigation Block
  7. Gradual Adoption

WordPress 5.8 Plans include: improvements from Gutenberg 9.9+, introduction of new blocks (Query, Site Logo, Navigation, a theme.json mechanism, a Template Editor for Pages/Blank Template, Widgets Screen & Block widgets in Customizer, and some Design tools.

Important Dates:

  • April 27, 2021 – Next Go/No Go decision
  • June 8, 2021 – Beta period for WordPress 5.8
  • July 20, 2021 – WordPress 5.8 release
  • December 2021 – WordPress 5.9 release

Get involved!

Anne’s links:

Link to Anne’s FSE presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPPzATDkHzg

Second Speaker – Marcus Kazmierczak

And then we had Marcus do a live demo of Full Site Editing! Marcus even built a theme live. We also got to see how super fast he types – an absolute Command Line wizard!  I wasn’t able to take useful notes as he was doing a live demo – watch the video!

Find Marcus on the web:
Twitter: @mkaz
Web: http://mkaz.blog 
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/mkaz7000

Marcus’s links:

Special Announcement by Joe Simpson Jr

Find Joe on the web:
Twitter: @joesimpsonjr
Web: https://joesimpson.info/ 

We also had our good friend Joe Simpson Jr., Lead Organizer of WordCamp Santa Clarita (@wordcampscv), pop in to announce a few upcoming events he is working on:


Thanks again to David Bisset and Jean Felisme for hosting another fantastic WordPress MegaMeetup! Stay tuned for the May Meetup date and topic announcement.

Cheers.

Guy Cicinelli @guycicinelli 

WordPress SWFL Organizer @wpswfl  

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Update June 2020 and Slidedeck

New lead organizer: Guy Cicinelli

Big Thank You to Guy Cicinelli for steping up and become lead organizer of the WordPress Meetup SWFL. Co-organizers are Anne Katzeff, Ani Carlson.

After six years of being a co-organizer, it’s time for new ideas, new voices and new energy. I also started on the WordPress documentation team and that work as mushroomed into a bigger task that I anticipated. I feel the local WordPress community is in excellent hands with Guy, Anne and Ani. I’ll be available until the end of June to handle the transition.

I am grateful for all the work we did together in the community, for the things I learned and the friendships I gained. I won’t be a stranger and show up at meetings, of course. See you then!

If you also want to be part of the organizing team,
please join us on WP SWFL Slack and start a conversation.

Save the Dates: Upcoming events

June 18, 2020 Google Search Console Slides

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Meeting Information

First Virtual WordPress Meetup in SWFL

Due to #Stayathome practices during COVID-19, we only hold monthly meeting on Zoom. On April 16th we started our first meeting. Here are the notes

Announcement and Online Events.

News

WordPress 5.4 came out.

If you haven’t updated, you might want to study the Field Guide with all the goodies in there.

Also on Gutenberg Times you’ll find a summary of the new block editor features

Gutenberg plugin was released this week 7.9 

With additional Block Design Tools, like line heights, for Heading and paragraph, Gradients, for Cover Block, Columns and Media & Text blocks. 

More Block Patterns 

  • Hero Two Colums
  • Numbered Feature list and 
  • It’s Time 

Approx 138 Pull Requests are listed in the release notes. Dive in or subscribe to the Gutenberg Changelog podcast. The latest episode will be recorded the Friday after a new version is released and will come out Saturday afternoon or Sunday. 

WPTavern also has the highlights for you, too: Gutenberg 7.9 Adds Gradients to More Blocks, Extra Typography Controls, and New Patterns

Online Conferences

WPBlockTalk

Two Weeks ago the WPBlock Talk conference took place. All talks are now available on WordPress TV. 

WordCamp Santa Clarita – April 18th, 2020

Virtual on Saturday with three tracks and a great mixture between business related content, WordPress content creators tips & tricks and developer/designers how to.

It starts at 11:45 EDT until about 8pm EDT. 

WPGameShow Saturday April 18 at  8pm ET with David Bisset 

WPFeedback Summit April 27 –May 1, 2020

JavaScript for WordPress July 8 – 10th, 2020

With Workshops, talks on Headless WordPress and Gutenberg Talks.

Guy Cicinelli: Building Landing Pages with the Block Editor

Plugins Mentioned:

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December 2019 Updates: Schedule, Slack and Session proposals

The top six most popular topics from our Topics Survey. 

  1. Search Engine Optimization for Content Creators 
  2. Performance Testing for Website Owners and Developers 
  3. How to create a Landing/Front Page w/ Block Editor 
  4. Using migration and Cloning tools for WordPress sites 
  5. Using Google Search Console to check on search keywords and content creation
  6. Create Blocks with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) and other tools
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How to Choose a WordPress Theme

Finding Your Way Through the Labyrinth

At April’s MeetUp, I shared some of my insights and experiences with themes. Below are the slides and key topics from my presentation. We had a great Q&A afterwards about theme selection and creation, business practices, client relations, and more!

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Presentations

Introduction to Web Design

Key Design Principles and How to Implement Them!

At November’s MeetUp, I shared some of my design knowledge. Below are my slides and the key topics from the evening’s presentation. The ensuing discussion was fun and enlightening!