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WordFest 2021 – 23 July 2021

We are pleased to be a community partner for #WordFestLive – the festival of WordPress.

Lots of great activities for the 2nd edition at the event starting on 23 July 2021.

Join us there by registering at WordFest. Tickets are free! There is an optional $10 donation that can be made when registering.

WordFest Live 2021 is an inclusive, one-day virtual event with speakers from around the world.

For a continuous 24 hours, speakers will present on one of four stages and most from their home region. The event is staffed completely by volunteers with all donations going to support Big Orange Heart, enabling the further development of the 4 Health Hubs.

What’s New for the July 23 WordFest Live

copied from the Media Kit…

Photo Booth

This time around attendees can jump in our virtual photo booth and take a snap of themselves at WordFest Live.To add to the fun, attendees can share their WordFest Live experience on social media by showing off their photo booth snaps.

Games Tent

Here’s a chance to grab a freebie from our Global sponsors. Attendees can visit the Games Tent to try their hand at any of the games there. You never know what you might just come away with – a year of free web hosting, access to premium communities or maybe some cool swag – so make plans to swing by throughout the event!  

Community Interviews

Meet the community in a whole new way! Along with the fun and games, we’ve added interviews with different members of the WordPress community. Some have been selected by our sponsors, others by our organizers, and WordPress podcasters and other dynamic community members will be doing the recorded interviews. We can’t wait to hear all these great conversations.

Live Human Captioning

We continue to look for ways to make WordFest Live as accessible — and as enjoyable — as we possibly can. To do this, we’ve added in Live Human Captioning. But this does come at a cost and we need help from the community to fund the Live Human Captioning across the whole event. Live Captions benefits all attendees, not just those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

If you’re wondering how this benefits your business on a practical level, read through 3 Business Benefits of Sponsoring Live Human Captioning.

#24KStepsToMentalHealth

The 24,000 Steps To Mental Health Challenge

This WordFest Live, we’re inviting attendees to join us for a special challenge #24kStepstoMentalHealth where you can help raise funds for mental health by pledging to take a fixed number of steps.

We are asking WordFest attendees, WordPress enthusiasts, and supporters of mental health anywhere in the world to join us in taking not one, not two, but 24,000 steps towards mental health.

It’s a big number but we can do it together!

Pledge to run/walk/hula hoop a fixed number of steps every day until the big day and share your journey with friends and colleagues.

You can also choose to take part in our 24-hour relay where 6 participants around the globe will complete 24,000 steps between them (4,000 steps per individual).

There are multiple ways you can participate:

  • 24,000 steps in the run-up to WordFest Live
  • 24,000 steps in 24 hours on the day of the event – a cross-continent relay race where participants in groups of six will complete a total of 24,000 steps
  • Come up with your own fundraiser like some of our supporters have: 24 days of artwork, 24,000 yards of swimming, and 24 days of mindful movement. Get creative!

Head over to the WordFest Live website to get started today!!!

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Calling all local WordPress agencies in 2021

Towards the end of 2019, we published this blog post “Calling all local WordPress agencies”. In this post we outlined our objective to double the number of WordPress Portsmouth Meetup members from 130 to 260.

Well,

  1. We didn’t quite achieve the target – membership on Jan 18th is 242.
  2. Our growth was not in response to any effort to contact local WordPress agencies.

So let’s try again in 2021.

Calling all local WordPress agencies

In 2021 we want to grow the WordPress Portsmouth Meetup group’s membership. We want to attract more members from WordPress agencies.

We’ll be writing to local WordPress agencies to:

  • let you know we exist
  • invite you to our meetups
  • invite you to get involved in the local WordPress community

If you’re part of a WordPress agency, and we haven’t written to you, and some or all of your team are interested in finding out more about the local WordPress community, then please join the Meetup group and get in touch.

Let us know what you want

We want to ensure that our meetups satisfy the needs of the local community.

If you think that the WordPress Portsmouth Meetup is for you and your team then join the community and get involved.

Join our meetup

Join the Portsmouth WordPress Meetup group today.

Join now. It’s FREE

If not, why don’t you let us know what we can do.

Write to WordUp Pompey!

We want to know what you want to know.

WordUp Pompey organisers

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#OnlineWPMeetup – the next 6 months

For the remaining 6 months of 2020, the WordPress Portsmouth Meetup will remain online. I ( Herb ) will be creating the Events on Meetup.com and the website in due course. The proposed events are as follows.

Date Title Speakers / Notes
22 July 2020 How to build a WordPress website – Part Two Paul Tansom and Scott McKeown
19 August 2020 Plugin Kollektiv Bernhard Kau, Torsten Landsiedel and Simon Kraft
16 September 2020 What’s new in WordPress 5.5 and how to use it. PLUS
What bugs you?		 The organisers.
21 October 2020 Gutenberg Belinda Mustoe
18 November 2020 WP Plugin presentation Joe Simpson jr
16 December 2020 Quiz and social With tinsel and baubles
Overview of the next 6 meetings

Apart from July’s meeting, which was postponed for a week, all are being held on the 3rd Wednesday of the month, from 7pm.

There may still be a clash with other meetups: e.g. Cheltenham, Manchester, Edinburgh. But we do start slightly later. You can, if you wish, try to attend more than one meetup in an evening. I don’t recommend attending meetings concurrently.

We’ll continue to use Zoom and will record some of the meetings. We’ll edit the videos before publishing them on YouTube. This may not be done instantaneously.

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Third Wednesday – 7pm – Technopole Portsmouth

Starting from January 2019 the WordPress Portsmouth Meetup, aka WordUp Pompey! is changing from the 4th Thursday of the month to the 3rd Wednesday.

In 2019 we’ll finalise the meetups month by month.
This website wp-pompey.org.uk will have the draft agendas and topics for forthcoming months.

We’ll try to confirm the agenda before it appears in your WordPress dashboard.

We have a couple of new speakers lined up for our meetups in the first quarter.
Watch this space.

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Belated report from WordUp Pompey! March 2018

The WordPress Portsmouth Meetup in March 2018 took the form of a clinic where people briefly described their immediate problems then we teamed up to help solve them.

In case there were no problems I prepared 4 problems associated with our Meetup group’s websites.

Suffice it to say

  1. We didn’t need them.
  2. I have been working on them.

Here’s a sanitised list of some of the topics that were raised.

  • Migration from WordPress eCommerce to WooCommerce:
    • How to map taxonomies?
    • Should customer lists and orders be migrated?
  • Any recommendations for an RSS aggregator?
  • Do we have to read all 50 pages every time there’s some GDPR news?
  • Avada theme issues:
    • Why do image file sizes increase?
    • Is it true that related posts ignores the post’s category?
    • How do I integrate a booking form?
  • Live editing with Fusion builder:
    • How do I clone a page?
    • What happens if I save a live page as draft?
    • How should I name my image files?
    • Is there an SEO friendly way to format addresses and phone numbers
    • What’s the difference between a widget in a side bar and a widget in content?
    • What’s the best way of saying “We’re on holiday”?
  • What parts of the database needs to be encrypted for GDPR? Can it be done?
  • Who can help me with my Two Factor Authentication project.
  • Where do I learn about WP-CLI?
  • Do I still need a domain mapping plugin for WordPress MultiSite. Is Mercator much better than my current plugin?
  • How do I get in the building when I arrive late?

I’d love to hear from everyone whether or not they found solutions to their problems.

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WordUp Pompey! – 6 years old today

WordUp Pompey!’s first meeting was held 6 years ago today in Old Portsmouth.

The WordPress meetups themselves lasted just under a year, but the website has remained.

  • I’d like to restart a WordPress meetup for Portsmouth, South Hampshire, West Sussex or wherever.
  • Somewhere nearer than Brighton, Bournemouth and London
  • But I don’t really want to do it on my own.
  • Is there anyone out there who is willing to help, or even take the lead?
  • And are there people who are interested anyway?
  • If so, contact me via this website or the UK WP Community Slack #meetup-organisers channel

Herb Miller

Summary of WordUp Pompey! Meetings

Here’s a summary of the meetings we had in 2011/2012. Some of the slideshows and sample websites should still be available.

Title Excerpt
Follow up to 25 SEO top tips In this follow up to 25 SEO top tips is a link to the YouTube video, the links extracted from the chat, and a copy of the chat file from the Zoom meeting.
Follow up to #WPTranslation day: using poedit

The only part of the September meetup that was recorded was Nilo Vélez’s demonstration of using poedit to quickly translate strings from US English to UK English.
Follow up to the September clinic Some brief answers to two questions: 1. What PHP code editor do you use? 2. Advice on plugin development.
WebP

WebP version of the plugin banner for Akismet

WordPress 5.8 now supports WebP files.

Follow up to the Midsummer Clinic Follow up notes to the Midsummer clinic extracted from the unpublished video recording.
Follow up to the January Clinic

In January 2021, the WordPress Portmouth Meetp conducted an online Clinic. We attempted to answer questions and problems raised by members of the community. Some were answered there and then. Others took a little longer.

Gutenberg for Editors – follow up to the Q&A session

At the October 2020 WordPress Portsmouth Online Meetup – Gutenberg – the block editor there were a number of questions that were answered during the Q & A; and there were others that were posed but not fully covered. This post is a follow up for some of the questions.

#OnlineWPMeetup – the next 6 months

For the remaining 6 months of 2020, the WordPress Portsmouth Meetup will remain online. I ( Herb ) will be creating the Events on Meetup.com and the website in due course. The proposed events are as follows.

Date Title Speakers / Notes
22 July 2020 How to build a WordPress website – Part Two Paul Tansom and Scott McKeown
19 August 2020 Plugin Kollektiv Bernhard Kau, Torsten Landsiedel and Simon Kraft
16 September 2020 What’s new in WordPress 5.5 and how to use it. PLUS
What bugs you?		 The organisers.
21 October 2020 Gutenberg Belinda Mustoe
18 November 2020 WP Plugin presentation Joe Simpson jr
16 December 2020 Quiz and social With tinsel and baubles
Overview of the next 6 meetings

Apart from July’s meeting, which was postponed for a week, all are being held on the 3rd Wednesday of the month, from 7pm.

There may still be a clash with other meetups: e.g. Cheltenham, Manchester, Edinburgh. But we do start slightly later. You can, if you wish, try to attend more than one meetup in an evening. I don’t recommend attending meetings concurrently.

We’ll continue to use Zoom and will record some of the meetings. We’ll edit the videos before publishing them on YouTube. This may not be done instantaneously.

Follow up to – Hands on problem solving clinic – 15 Jan 2020

Thanks to everyone who attended last night’s hands on problem solving clinic;

  • to those who were brave enough to air their problems
  • and those who attempted to help solve them

We had a range of problems to solve. Some of them a lot harder than others.

Here’s a summary of the problems that I know were discussed. I understand that a few were at least partially resolved.
Third Wednesday – 7pm – Technopole Portsmouth From Jan 2019 the WordPress Portsmouth Meetup will now be held on the third Wednesday of the month. Same time – 19:00 to 21:00 and same place – The Technopole, Portsmouth
Lean coffee and lightning talk proposals Summary of Lean Coffee discussion topics and Lightning Talks proposed in December 2018 for addressing in 2019.
Practical Security Workshop slides Slides from the WordPress Portsmouth Meetup’s “Practical Security Workshop”; getting around to it!
WordPress Portsmouth Meetup agenda slides April to September 2018 Please find below the introductory / agenda slides to the WordPress Portsmouth Meetups from April to September 2018.
Belated report from WordUp Pompey! March 2018 The WordPress Portsmouth Meetup in March 2018 took the form of a clinic where people briefly described their immediate problems then we teamed up to help solve them.

In case there were no problems I prepared 4 problems associated with our Meetup group’s websites.

https://www.slideshare.net/bobbingwide/wordup-pompey-march-2018

Suffice it to say

  1. We didn’t need them.
  2. I have been working on them.

Here’s a sanitised list of some of the topics that were raised.

  • Migration from WordPress eCommerce to WooCommerce:
    • How to map taxonomies?
    • Should customer lists and orders be migrated?
  • Any recommendations for an RSS aggregator?
  • Do we have to read all 50 pages every time there’s some GDPR news?
  • Avada theme issues:
    • Why do image file sizes increase?
    • Is it true that related posts ignores the post’s category?
    • How do I integrate a booking form?
  • Live editing with Fusion builder:
    • How do I clone a page?
    • What happens if I save a live page as draft?
    • How should I name my image files?
    • Is there an SEO friendly way to format addresses and phone numbers
    • What’s the difference between a widget in a side bar and a widget in content?
    • What’s the best way of saying “We’re on holiday”?
  • What parts of the database needs to be encrypted for GDPR? Can it be done?
  • Who can help me with my Two Factor Authentication project.
  • Where do I learn about WP-CLI?
  • Do I still need a domain mapping plugin for WordPress MultiSite. Is Mercator much better than my current plugin?
  • How do I get in the building when I arrive late?

I’d love to hear from everyone whether or not they found solutions to their problems.
Report from WordUp Pompey! 22nd Feb 2018 Here’s a brief report following the Portsmouth WordPress Meetup on 22nd February 2018.
Report from WordUp Pompey! 18th Jan 2018 Here’s a brief report following our reboot meetup on the 18th January.
WordUp Pompey! August 2012 – a brief summary After a 2 month break ( June and July ) WordUp Pompey! reconvened at the end of August for a look at the Top-10-Wordpress-plugins. It was a fairly interactive session, led by Herb Miller of Bobbing Wide and oik-plugins.
WordUp Pompey – March 2012

This month’s WordUp features Steve Lowsley of YesCanDo

How Google works” – Ever wondered what goes on once your website has been visited by Google?

with a supporting cast of Herb Miller of Bobbing Wide

Galleries and slideshows – a look at some of the favoured plugins

Report from WordUp Pompey – Feb 2012 – Part 2 Herb Miller gave a brief presentation on his experiments with creating a responsive web design based upon an Artisteer generated theme.
Report on WordUp Pompey – Feb 2012 WordUp Pompey for February was kindly hosted by Penny and John Plimmer, Japcis Photographic, at their studios in Horndean. Herb Miller of Bobbing Wide presented on two topics: Shortcodes and Responsive web design. There was lovely discussion on other topcs: including company logos, which way should slideshows slide, mobile apps and more
WordUp Pompey! Dec 2011 – slideshows on slideshare WordUp Pompey! slideshows, 21st December 2011, not including Roger Marsh’s slideshow on browsers, HTML and CSS, which was a lead in to an interactive demonstration of “hacking the BBC website using Firebug”
January 2012 WordUp Pompey cancelled! Due to unforseen circumstances, the WordUp Pompey! meeting that I was planning for 26th January 2012 (Australia Day) has had to be cancelled.

So kick off for WordUp Pompey will now be in late February.

WordUp Pompey! Nov 2011 – slideshows on slideshare I’ve uploaded PDF versions of the slideshows from WordUp Pompey! onto slideshare.net
belated report on WordUp Pompey 20th October 2011 Well, we had our first meeting = nearly two weeks ago. Been a bit busy so only just getting around to writing about it.