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Hello WordCamp Europe, I’m Rhys

I really not been blogging much here, so in an format blatantly stolen from Jeremy Felt. I have thought about doing an introduction post about me for WordCamp Europe attendees.

Hello everybody! My name is Rhys Wynne. I work for 3 Door Digital as a Digital Marketing Consultant and also make my own WordPress Plugins which are hosted on Winwar Media.

I’m traveling to WordCamp Europe with my partners-in-crime Alex, Shane & John, staying in an apartment in Amsterdam for the duration of the trip.

I’m super excited for attending the first ever WordCamp Europe, after attending WordCamp UK Lancaster earlier this year (you can read my notes here), so I’m looking forward for meeting as many of you as possible. However I’m particularly looking forward to attend and speak to the following people.

Any premium plugin developers – there’s 3 of us who are attending who have produced premium plugins in WordPress, and would like to talk about such topics as marketing, upgrading advice and generally share notes.
Anybody who works with bbPress – I’ve a few ideas that I want to share for possible plugins.

So if you fall into the following categories, send me a tweet or drop me an email, I’d be keen to meet up!

Furthermore, we’ll be knocking around Amsterdam on Friday, so if anybody fancies meeting up for a cheeky drink and a natter of all things WordPress, it’d be great to hear from you!

10 WordPressy Things You Can Buy with Gareth Bale Money

In one of the biggest sport stories of the week, Gareth Bale has left Tottenham Hotspur to join Real Madrid for a reported £85m. A Welshman is the most expensive footballer on this planet.

Already people have been looking at that money as a guide – so much so that the Vodafone sale of Verizon was quoted in “Bales” on Sky News, but just what can you get for that money? Ignoring the hospitals, schools & libraries that naysayers regularly bring up (who seemingly shout about footballer’s wages, yet are unusually quiet when comparing his wage to – say – that of a Hollywood A-Lister), and in stead let us look at what you – as an intrepid WordPress Developer, can buy for 1 Gareth Bale .

1. Gravity Forms

Lets be honest, if you’ve £85million, you’re in demand. And what better way to manage the demand than with a contact form on your website? Gravity Forms is the best form plugin for WordPress, and it’s one plugin that you really cannot live without once you’ve lived with it. It can do everything – literally everything – form based.

Assuming you’re using the developer licence, then you can buy a mere 665,257 developer licences . As Gravity Forms is currently (at the time of writing) on 731,241 sales, you would effectively double RocketGenius’ user base.

Click here to buy Gravity Forms

2. Genesis

Of course, probably the most famous WordPress theme suite out there is the Genesis Framework, with good reason. It’s remarkably well coded and – once you get your head around it – it is rather easy to throw together good-looking templates, leaving you to do what’s important to your site, whatever that may be.

If we’re buying the Pro Plus All-Theme package, you could buy 377,526 copies of the Pro Plus All Theme Package from Studiopress for the price of Gareth Bale . As there are 46 themes on the framework, then you’ll have around 8,200 sites looking the same.

Click here to buy Genesis Framework

3. Yoast SEO Bundle

Of course, once you’ve built your 377,526 Genesis websites, you will need them to be found! Yoast’s plugins are the leaders when it comes to SEO and getting your sites found on Google. Although the main plugin – WordPress SEO – is free, they have 3 extra plugins for optimising Local, WooCommerce and Videos, as well as training videos.

To buy the Yoast SEO Bundle, it is $599 at agency level. For Gareth Bale, you can get 220,561 copies of Yoast’s SEO Bundle. Not quite enough for your 377,526 sites, but getting there.

Click here to buy Yoast’s SEO Bundle

4. Twitter Feed Pro

So that’s SEO sorted, but what about social? Well social is mainly Twitter or Facebook, and for Twitter you need Twitter Feed Pro. Easy enough to install, compatible with Twitter API v1.1, and generally wonderful – no plugin I’ve used has been easy enough to use to integrate Twitter into your site.

It’s a steal at $19.99, so for Gareth Bale, you can buy 6,609,642 copies of Twitter Feed Pro . More than enough for your 377,526 sites. Social – sorted.

Click here to buy Twitter Feed Pro

5. Buffer

That’s tweets coming into your site sorted, but what about out of your site? Well one tool I love is Buffer. A lot of love for Buffer from me. If you’re unfamiliar with it then you simply schedule tweets to go out during the day.

Of course, it’s not strictly WordPress, but I do use it quite a lot. Going for the Agency level account of $250/month, you can subscribe to buffer for 44,039 years for the price of Gareth Bale . Considering that 40,000 years ago we were in the Upper Paleolithic Era, and a full 10,000 years before the Bow & Arrow was invented, then who knows if Buffer will still be going (sorry chaps, do love your work).

Click here to subscribe to Buffer

6. Automattic

Okay, lets talk less about products, what about companies? Well, let’s go with the big one – Automattic.

This is all ifs, buts and maybes, but Automattic – speculated in a Business Insider article – appears to be valued around the $1 billion mark. As such, Bale’s £85 million transfer value roughly equates to a 13% stake in Automattic. Assuming Matt wants to sell that, of course. And assuming I know about corporate valuations (which I don’t).

7. WordPress Training

I have assumed that so far you know everything about WordPress. Fact is, you probably don’t. You probably need some training.

MadLab in Manchester run three WordPress courses from Mike Little, who is the co-founder of WordPress, and are well recommended as Mike really knows his stuff. For Gareth Bale’s money, you can train 141,666 people to an advanced WordPress Standard in MadLab , which is the population of St. Vincent & The Grenadines, along with the population of Liechtenstein as well. Mike is going to be busy!

Click here for WordPress Training in Madlab (Beginner) Course

Click here for WordPress Training in Madlab (Intermediate) Course

Click here for WordPress Training in Madlab (Advanced) Course

8. bbPress Complete

Of course, that’s WordPress, what about diversifying? Well suppose you know a fair bit and want to learn about another Automattic piece of software, say bbPress?

Recently, I launched bbPress Complete, probably the world’s first book dedicated to bbPress. For Gareth Bale, you can get 3,865,393 copies of my book – which is roughly enough for two-thirds of the population of both mine and Gareth’s native Wales. Do it Gareth, you know it makes sense!

Click Here to Buy bbPress Complete

9. WP Email Capture

I don’t just write books, oh no. I also write plugins. WP Email Capture is my most successful one, having a few downloads and helping users capture email addresses quickly and painlessly.

However, for Gareth Bale, you could buy 2,695,845 copies of WP Email Capture, making it more successful. More than enough for all your sites!

Click here to buy WP Email Capture

10. One Extremely Generous Donation To Inline Tweet Sharer

Yes for Gareth Bale’s £85m fee, you can give me one extremely generous donation for Inline Tweet Sharer , which you can read more about here or download for free here.

What? A guy can dream, right? 😉

Inline Tweet Sharer Released

Last night I released my new plugin – Inline Tweet Sharer!

Inline tweet sharer is a WordPress Plugin that allows you to turn quotes in your blog to tweetable content . Kind of like that last sentence – well exactly like that last sentence.

Apparently the Twitter links first seen in the wild (in a New York Times article) was just an experiment, but as Mashable reported – it was tweeted 11 times more frequently than the average of the top 500 shared Times articles from the last month – so Inline Tweet Sharer could help increase the amount of shares of your content on social media .

Anyway, it’s version 1.0.1. Full installation instructions are included in the plugin (or if you just search for “Inline Tweet Sharer” on the WordPress Plugin Repository). Support is given on the Official WordPress Forums, and bug fixes or feature requests are gratefully received if you contact me.

You can download a copy of the plugin here.

Please let me know what you think!

Confessions of a WordCamp Virgin

I must admit, I’ve been suffering recently with what is jokingly called “Chronic Conference Fatigue Syndrome”.

You know the feeling, but are probably yet to admit it. The last few conferences I have been to have been a little bit underwhelming. More focus on how much drink is drunk afterwards. Politics. “Big Name” speakers sold as the next big thing from organisers who come in, charge a fortune that is passed onto the ticket for the privilege of selling to an auditorium. Itchy Lanyards.

ALWAYS with the itchy landyards.

So it was with a wee bit of trepidation that I attended WordCamp UK. My first WordPress UK Conference.

In short, it was a bit of strategy that I attended (nay, sponsored!) the conference. More and more of my SEO role at 3 Door Digital has been WordPress based, so I felt it was good to mix with the community a little more. So I attended with Alex & my mate John to the sixth ever WordCamp UK, in the leafy town of Lancaster.

The night before began in the leafy surroundings of the Water Witch, with a few other WordPressy types. It was a blast! WordPress’ trials and tribulations were discussed over a pint or two right over the canal. Genuinely couldn’t think of many better ways to spend a Friday night.

So came to the conference, what of it? Well it was a “hackday” themed affair from my perspective. Not as slick as many other conferences I’ve attended, but full of well meaning and passionate people happy to talk about things. Food was pretty good too.

All in all, many – if not all – of the sessions I attended were enjoyable and had actual bloody takeaways from. Absolutely unheard of from conferences I’ve attended recently. However three talks that I learned the most from were the following:-

Three presentations caught my eye in particular:-

Taking Taxonomies Totally To The Top from Simon Wheatley (@simonwheatley), who’s talk gave some great ideas on how to take taxonomies to the next level, particularly when it comes to bookmarks.

WOW! Plugins 2013 from Kimb Jones (@mkjones), as any presentation with at least one plugin that makes me download there and then in the auditorium is worth a share.

The Base Ingredients for Debugging by Jenny Wong (@miss_jwo) was probably my favourite presentation of the day, largely because it was reassurance. I’m largely self taught in WordPress development, so am kind of finding my own way, so for somebody with a little more experience to stand on stage and say that the debugging methods used are similar to the ones I use is rather reassuring :). Furthermore, I’m now a convert into “Rubber Duck Debugging”!

The day ended with a social, and was quite a friendly and nice affair in one of the campus bars on the site. Unfortunately the bloody Race for Life closing off half of Lancaster’s bus routes prevented me from attending the second day, but I saw enough to re-ignite a fire for conferences.

And it was much less than the price of some conference tickets that exude all of the “qualities” discussed in the opening paragraph.

It was my first WordCamp, but won’t be my last. In fact, a troop of us are heading to WordCamp Europe in Amsterdam in a few weeks. If you actually want to learn about WordPress, I implore you to attend.

Big thanks to Primary Image for the images for this post!

bbPress Free Tickets Now Available

I’ve come back from WordCamp Lancaster and am still recovering, so whilst I write up that event, I’ve got a small bit of news.

This Saturday is my bbPress Book Launch Party (which is looking less and less likely I’ll actually have a book out by then, damn delays), and right now free tickets are available.

It would be great to see you there! Tickets are available until they’re gone.