On the 18th June 2010, a small community of WordPress lovers met up for the first time under the banner of the Official Singapore WordPress User Group (SWUG). It was the beginning of a routine each WordPress user and developer would do every 3 months: meetup, talk about WordPress, makan, make new friends, do something interesting.

As the co-founder of this community, the progress of finally having a proper meetup was one of much satisfaction. The tribulations of the past year disappeared and now we’ve achieved a new goal of organising a WordCamp in Singapore in the year 2011.

This WordCamp will be special. Not only will it be the first WordCamp in Singapore, if discussions with our Malaysian and Indonesian counterparts progress, it would also be the world’s first WordCamp Asia. As many of our neighbours have already done WordCamps, in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, it would be more sensible to pool resources and have a regional conference with a different host country each year, instead of having 4 different WordCamps every year.

I’ve already set up a Facebook page for an Asian network under the shortname http://facebook.com/wordpress.asia. This is a Facebook page specifically for the Asian network of WordPress User Groups and I invite all Asian WUGS to join this facebook page and network with us.

But first, more on SWUG itself.

9 people (4 more than the people who RSVP), attended our 1st meetup. It was held at Qotion’s SmartSpace at the 2nd floor of 262 Waterloo Centre on Waterloo Street. This will be the default venue for the meetups and our de facto home, unless kind sponsors *hints* would like to sponsor their venue. SmartSpace is a lovely office, run by Mike Zhan, an NUS law grad, and I would like to thank Mike for offering his office to hold our quarterly event. The office is conveniently located less than 100m from the Bras Basah MRT. The next nearest MRT would be Bugis MRT and is about 600m away. If you drive, there is ample parking space at the Waterloo Centre basement carpark but you must enter through Queen Street as it is a 1-way road.

Here are the 3 presentations I gave. Click on the links for the Google Docs of the presentation.

Introduction to SWUG

• Who can join?
  • Anyone who uses WordPress whether for publishing/ blogging or for development and anyone who isn’t but interested to.
• What we do?
  • Share the WordPress spirit
  • Advocate using WordPress
    • For Blogging
    • For Website Content Management
    • For cool, niche website development
• Activities
  • Meetups 4x a year. February/March, June, August, October/November
  • WordCamp Singapore
  • WordCamp Asia
  • WordConf (proposed)
• Where
  • Meetups
    • Qotion SmartSpace at Waterloo St
    • OR Venue Sponsor
  • WordCamp/WordConf
    • University Halls/LTs
    • Hotel Event Halls
    • You decide
• $$
  • Meetups are Free
  • WordCamps/Confs are not
• Who runs SWUG
  • Interim Team
    • Hazrul Azhar Jamari
    • Lester Chan
    • Mike Zhan
    • Ridzuan Ashim
• Governance
  • Not yet discussed. Will ask community’s interest in implementing bi-annual elections
  • Drawing up of SWUG constitution
  • Get involved! Email hazrul@verbeter.com

Rules of Governance for Meetups

• Rules
  • Choose the path of least resistance. Everyone is welcome.
  • Minimum of 2 presentations. Max 15 mins per presentation. 1 Publisher Oriented. 1 Developer Oriented.
  • Please RSVP always.
• Approved Topics
  • Publishers
    • Setting up MU blogs
    • How to use BuddyPress for social network
    • Increasing your PageRank
    • etc…
  • Developers
    • Plugin development done right
    • Write your first Theme framework
    • Why is Web Standards important?
    • etc…
• GPL/Non-GPL?
  • WordPress is strictly GPL.
  • Discourage discussion of non-GPL WordPress themes/plugins.
  • Can bring non-GPL discussion outside.
• Open floor discussion
  • Done after presentations
  • 20 to 30 minutes maximum
  • Questions related to presentation
• Be nice
  • Greet guests just like you. Make everyone feel welcome.
  • Excuse yourself if need to leave.
  • Silent your phone during presentations.
  • Bring your own internet just in case.
  • Thank the sponsor. No meetup possible without them.

Call to Action

• WORDCAMP SINGAPORE 2011
  • Register at http://bit.ly/volunteerwcsg2011
  • At least 6 months commitment
• CALL FOR SPONSORS
  • Open for Venue, Goodie Bag and F&B
  • Sponsors Please email to hazrul@verbeter.com
• CALL FOR SPEAKERS
  • Publisher or Developer Oriented
  • Please email to hazrul@verbeter.com

In future, all WordPress meetups will be documented at http://wordpress.sg. The next meetup is proposed to be on the 1st Wednesday of August. We’re proposing to call it WordPress Wednesdays so every meetup will be held on a first Wednesday. Makes it easier to remember when’s the meetup. I hope to see more people this August! 2 great speakers will be lined up and more details will be released soon.

This is a liveblog, latest item first. Refresh manually every 5 mins.

Location: CitiTel Hotel, Mid Valley City, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

1646pm: END. Thanks WordCamp Malaysia!

1643pm: Colin Charles crediting the sponsors of WordCamp Malaysia 2010.

1642pm: after answering lots of geeky qns from floor, Aizat ends the day on a techie feel. For questions, pls visit his blog at http://blog.aizatto.com.

1626pm: 2 kind of hooks. actions and filters. actions = do something. filters = transform

1605pm: Know your friends (Codex, Google; people who blog abt development).  More here -> http://blog.aizatto.com/2010/05/04/speaking-at-wordcamp-malaysia-2010/

1600pm: Aizat Faiz: Beginning WordPress Plugin Development

1540pm: Celebrating Naoko’s birthday as well!

1500pm: Forum Panel:  Monetising your blog. Recorded clips of the forum. Watch for it on my youtube, vimeo and maybe FB videos later.

1450pm: Fai showcases WP running on Azure cloud, explaining how you can create multiple instances of the application to cater to traffic.

1445pm: Fai showcases the Silverlight Media Player Plugin

1430pm: Fai now showcasing Silverlight for WordPress.

1425pm: Fai shows how fast Web Platform installs WordPress with IIS over Web Platform 2.0

1420pm: Lai Hoong Fai: Light up your Web site with technology

1300pm: LUNCH!

1250pm: Jimmy shows a few demos on geotagging + buddypress by integrating foursquare and bp. http://thepremiumpress.com/blog/2010/02/10/introducing-gmaps/

1245pm: BP is easily extensible into other social network-related implementations like office intranet through the use of document management plugins.

1240pm: BP pot language files can be used for more than language. Turn BP into foursquare by renaming posts as check-ins and groups as venues.

1235pm: Jimmy says, why another social networking platform? better control of your private information. fb changes tos, and personal info tends to be abused. Another reason is to allow platforms to build niche social networks.

1225pm: Jimmy describes that BuddyPress is a social networking layer sitting on top of WP. Going through a quick tutorial on BuddyPress features.

1221pm: Jimmy Ngu: Geo-Tagging with BuddyPress

1220pm: Yahya describes how Facebook is the number destination in ASEAN, whereas it’s #2 in the US. So leverage on Facebook.

1215pm: Yahya discusses the various SM wp plugins like WordBook and Sociable. This requires creating a Facebook application, but all you need is to follow readme instructions to set it up.

1210pm: How to marry sm and wp together? People. SM is all about people. Word of mouse through social platforms redirect to your wp blog. Machines can’t be social.

1205pm: align your social influence. what’s ur guruship?

1200pm: Yahya: the key to sm in wp is establishing your guruship

1155am: Yahya Ayob: Blending Social Media in WordPress

1145am: noindex robots. make the robot not to follow categories, tags because its not useful for users and robots.

1145am: images are ranked better than content. ensure descriptive file name. include alt and title attributes with a description that includes your keywords. not doing this is a waste.

1145am: @liewcf keyword keyword keywords. SEO is all about keywords. bold/italic impt keywords but don’t calefare. interlink related pages using key phrases.

1140am: title, meta, permalink, impt tags to make your site produce good seo result. remove irrelevant words (is, are, etc in permalink). @liewcf recommends /%category%/%post_title%/  to improve SEO. but if u change ur category name in future, u will have a 301 problem. future proof it with /%postname%-%post_id%/ instead to better improve SEO.

1135am: @liewcf goes technical. discusses how to optimise your front page for best search results. use tools google.com/insights/search – / google.com/trends – google.com/analytics

1128am: Liew Cheon Fong @liewcf: SEO for Blogs

1051am: Adjourning for tea break.

1045am: David answers qn. He uses headway framework which is drag and drop theme suitable for people with no css knowledge.

1043am: woohoo! end of geeky bit. for a geek like me, i think that was a bit difficult to bear coz it’s newbie stuff for me.

1040am: WP3.0 make frameworks more pwrful. In-built support for child themes and its features.

1035am: Ok. So it’s gg to get technical. David show’s the code on how to make child theme.

1030am: David kinda taking very long to make his point that theme frameworks make developing themes easier.

1025am: Discusses history of theme frameworks beginning from Sandbox. It’s now discussing technical stuff right now. Probably more suitable for smaller group sessions.

1020am: David is discussing how some theme frameworks aren’t really theme frameworks. Themes that are blank themes, without hooks etc.

1015am: David Wang: Theme Framework: A glimpse into the future presentation.

1013am: yay! sponsor session done. -yawn-. *opocot* Kevin tripped on the mic wire. haha.

1010am: Kevin discusses flaws and strengths of WordPress. Developer ranting right now.

1005am: Kevin Zahri, Founder of embunweb.com on the podium, giving a sponsor session. Introducing his web hosting company.

1000am: Naoko ends her keynote. Colin Charles (MC) takes over podium.

0955am: Admin UI transition, Automattic listens to user feedback (well… most of the time).

0950am: 40++ WordCamps last year. 2010 has 45 WordCamps already by May scheduled.

0945am: Naoko talks abt benefits of WP. Sharing (9000+ plugins and 1000+ themes). Child themes (a recommended method of theme development beginning with wp3.0). 60+ core translations (plugins/themes). Contributions. etc. A bit preachy right now.

0940am: Cool feature in wp3.0! Event post type in-built by default!

0935am: Twenty-ten new default theme. New navig menu management. Lots of widget canvas. TwentyTen Demo at http://2010dev.wordpress.com

0930am: Merge of wpmu, buddypress and wp in 3.0. You guys already know the features of this. Currently still in beta.

0925am: Showcasing sites that use wp. Stuff we already know like techcrunch.

0920am: STATS. 9.5 million downloads of WP. WP powers 8.5% of the ENTIRE Internet. Drupal came 1% behind. All this in 7 years. WordPress.com is the 12th most visited site in Malaysia (Alexa). 79% of top 1mill sites with blog use WP.

0915am: Naoko describes WordPress history. Too boring right now. May 27 2003, WordPress began. Discussing WP growth till today.

0910am: Naoko from Automattic gives keynote.

0905am: Video of Matt appears. 3.0 successfully merged with wpmu. Talks about B2 history. Also discusses about the legal bits of WP. Encourages Malaysian wpers to continue collab.

0900am: We’re in!

0845am: Unboxing of WP Schwag.

0830am: People having coffee first.

0825am: Registered for WordCamp.my 2010. Drank some coffee. Still not started.

Getting a Reserved Lot for the first time

I went to a client meeting in town last week and for the first time, I had a reserved lot, with the license plate of the car printed on it, and a friendly staff escorting me to meet with my clients for the first time. This is the first time I was treated grandiosely, with people making tea for me and all.

Perhaps more of such occasions in future? I must then do an excellent job for them. Nothing short of a Nirvanic Internet Presence.

Insya Allah. Amiin.