We did an overview of day 1 yesterday here on Theme.fm and today we’ll continue our journey today. We’re watching the live stream (as it appears) and posting some of the most exciting moments, tweets, quotes and photos from the sessions. All to this post so we’ll update once in a while and announce our updates on Twitter.
Today’s schedule is split in two rooms — hardcore backend dev stuff vs frontend and themes. We’ll be trying to keep up with both tracks but we can’t promise a full coverage. You can find the second day program right here and in case you’re still wondering, all the videos from all the sessions will be published and available for free at WordPress.tv
The show starts at 9 am San Francisco time (PDT) so we’re all ready and waiting :) Stay tuned! Meanwhile you can view our Facebook photo album from WordCamp San Francisco 2011 which we’ll be updating today and tomorrow too!
8:45 — Getting Ready
Seems like there are more people than yesterday but some are being late and sleepy after the happy hour drinks last night. The dilemma though is which track to watch — Debugging in WordPress by Andrew Nacin or Awesome Up Your Boring Theme: WordPress Post Formats by Ian Stewart:
Can’t decide which one we wanna watch now and which one later on WordPress.tv: @iandstewart vs @nacin #wcsf
@themefm
A job board where people could leave their notes. Cool!
9:35 — Andrew Nacin vs Ian Stewart
Been switching from one room to the other, both presentations are so interesting! Andrew gave a great list of plugins to use for debugging in a WordPress environment (like Debug Bar) as well as some tips on not too popular constants, like SAVEQUERIES.
“If you use SAVEQUERIES in your production environment, @bazza will hunt you down” ~ @nacin on Debugging #wcsf
@themefm
Andrew also gave suggestions on some good IDEs: NetBeans, Komodo, and PhpStorm, although said that he’s not a fan of IDEs himself so he uses something as simple as TextMate, TextWrangler, etc.
Slides from my Debugging in WordPress talk at #wcsf: http://t.co/EFrDcc8
@nacin
Ian on the other hand is talking about the post formats techniques that he used in Twenty Eleven with a great explanation and code examples. Very neat tips about the template hierarchy, child themes and get_template_part.
Daryl Kooper and Chelsea Otakan up next on both tracks.
9:55 — “Decisions, Not Options” by Daryl Koopersmith
Things to watch out for when creating applications on top of WordPress, and in general too. Notes about scaling, security and usability. Here’s a good quote from Mark Jaquith and some more interesting tweets:
“If a plugin is insecure, it doesn’t matter what it’s supposed to do.” — @markjaquith via @darylkoop #wcsf
@nacin
2/3 of WordPress users are international via @darylkoop #wcsf
@dimensionmedia
“You can build the most complex software in the world, but if it’s not easy to use, you’re going to be its only user.” — @darylkoop #wcsf
@nacin
Seems like Andrew Nacin is really enjoying the show ;)
I wish more premium theme guys were in @darylkoop‘s session right now. Never fear, I will personally email them the WP.tv link. :) #wcsf
@nacin
“This… Is a bear. If I click this- are they going to maul my page? I am afraid of bears!” Oh @darylkoop #wcsf
@CailaB
For those who missed the joke, @darylkoop‘s “This…is a bear,” was a reference to @nbachiyski, who will talk unit testing later today.
@WordCampSF
10:35 — Developing Secure Widgets by Mike Adams & CSS3 by Estelle Weyl
Mike started his presentation with a little bit about himself, his hat and his work at Automattic. Topic: XSS, SQL Injection, CSRF and more, on a fake “new social network”:
Mike Adams just introduced the GulliBunny social network to the world. Watch out, Facebook. #wcsf
@philip_arthur
“Embedding stuff in other people’s sites is dangerous” ~ @mdawaffe on secure widgets session at #wcsf
@themefm
Mike used a neat plugin for WordPress for his presentation and did it on Twenty Ten.. Or Twenty Eleven ;)
“This is Twenty Ten.. Or maybe Twenty Eleven. My typography is not good enough to tell the difference” ~ @mdawaffe at #wcsf
@themefm
Meanwhile in the Themes and Front End track Estelle Weyl talks about CSS3 and it’s packed:
Nice unintentional IE smackdown happening in CSS3 session at #wcsf I love the unintentional part.
@techguy
11:20 — Plugin Security Showdown
One of the sessions we’ve been looking forward to since yesterday! Mark Jaquith, Jon Cave and Brad Williams on stage with great rules and demos!
Photo by @axl163
Rule #1, #2, #3, #4 and #5: Don’t Trust the User ~ @williamsba @markjaquith & @joncave at Plugin Security Showdown #wcsf
@themefm
I consider it ironic that the premium theme panel is at the same time as the security panel. #noreason #wcsf
@nacin
If you are working w/ queries in your WordPress themes or plugins, aren’t using $wpdb->prepare – shame on you. #wcsf
@dimensionmedia
Great demos about plugin security although we didn’t see any ones of the submitted that were vulnerable, congrats! Also two good constants mentioned by Mark Jaquith — DISALLOW_FILE_MODS and DISALLOW_FILE_EDIT if you’re working through version control. Real life savers, so read more about them in the Codex.
None of the Security Panel speakers work for @automattic, btw #wcsf (they’re still super awesome)
@chexee
“Tell the author privately about the vulnerability and give them a reasonable time to fix it.” ~ @markjaquith #wcsf
@themefm
And after a few more questions the event went all to lunch while live stream viewers sit and wait, but we did host a short Google+ hangout to chat about the event :) Bon appetite! And here’s the lunch queue:
13:35 — Contributing to WordPress
Back from lunch and watching Aaron Campbell and Andy Stratton talk about contributing to the core. A very interesting topic about how designers, developers and even users can contribute to WordPress and the WordPress core.
Those wanting to contribute to WordPress, first step is to join IRC weekly metings and check out wpdevel.wordpress.com. #wcsf
@dimensionmedia
Designers should contribute to the WordPress.org Theme Repository and http://t.co/s16JvGd #wcsf
@themefm
If you want to get involved in translating WordPress (or Plugins / Themes) then visit http://t.co/lYx9cJS #wcsf
@westi
on contributing, I found @markjaquith‘s WordPress Toolbox article very helpful http://t.co/JkKHrqS #wcsf
@trepmal
Alex (known as Viper007Bond) shares his first changeset that got into the WordPress core:
This is apparently my first changeset that got into the @WordPress core: http://t.co/JqflJUd #wcsf
@Viper007Bond
Meanwhile on the Responsive Web Design session by Sara Cannon the place seems to be packed! Mark Jaquith and a copule of other folks were actually watching the live stream from the nearby room since they couldn’t get in with all those people :) Here are some interesting tweets and quotes:
“don’t round up, keep all numbers after the decimal point” re: responsive web design @saracannon #wcsf
@tammyhart
Can also use WP conditionals in your templates with is_phone for responsive design. #wcsf
@cafenoirdesign
And on a question from Ozh on “how do you make wp-admin responsive” the web design session ended. Few minutes break and preparation for the next two sessions. Staying tuned!
“@saracannon: My Slides: Responsive Web Design – WordCamp San Francisco http://t.co/R9o5eVM” #wcsf
@lukepilon
14:20 — Bendywords and CSS Pseudo Elements!
Jane Wells, Daryl Koopersmith and John James Jacoby created a game on WordPress called Bendywords. There’s no scoring yet but they’re working on it and talk about the backend during the session. Here’s a screenshot from the Bendywords game:
Don’t think #WordPress is flexible? #BendyWords proves you wrong! http://t.co/DwIAVXL #wcsf
@HeatherActon78
Chris Coyier is giving a talk about CSS pseudo elements, before and after content, first and last child, very exciting indeed!
Who’s crushing their CSS session at #wcsf? This guy -> @chriscoyier
@adriarichards
“I give people a gold star if their comment is awesome” @chriscoyier @wcsf
@dholowiski
Sounds like @chriscoyier‘s presentation is going well. I’ll have to make sure to catch it on @WordPressTV! #wcsf
@Viper007Bond
Oh, puppy!
15:00 — Unit Testing and Getting to +1
So Nikolay Bachiyski gave a presentation about unit testing based on his own plugin. Quite an interesting topic but not really clear about what he wanted to show. We enjoyed it anyway, and so did Alex:
I think @nikolayb has convinced me to finally start using unit tests when writing my plugins, etc. #wcsf
@Viper007Bond
Didn’t get much of the talk but he was basically explaining how unit testing is important when developing themes, plugins and of course the WordPress core. He showed an example with Bearify how a bug was not noticed on the front end of the blog and how he had a hard time debugging it, while the test quickly revealed what was wrong. Great talk!
“We should embrace the warm and cozy feelings of unit testing.” @nikolayb #WCSF
@mikeleeorg
OH: “bearify.com is available!” “No it isn’t. I just bought it.” #wcsf
@markjaquith
In the other track Crystal Teams talks about negotiating features in open source teams. Great stuff to sit down and think about :)
“Your team members are probably not stupid, or crazy, or evil.. I hope!” ~ @skinny at #wcsf
@themefm
A few more questions and the sessions are over, next up in 15 minutes and meanwhile we spotted this very cool WordPress phone. Is this Tammy’s?
15:50 — Writing Javascript Unit Tests
Aaron Jorbin is up next on the developers track stage, who by the way has an interesting project called Thirty Ten which is a Twenty Ten child theme that teaches you a bunch of stuff about child themes, quite a great find!
“Mistakes are gifts. Bugs are gifts. You don’t kick the bug-horse in the mouth.” @aaronjorbin #WCSF
@mikeleeorg
Venn diagram: “Things that are easy” and “Writing JavaScript unit tests” – the circles don’t overlap. @aaronjorbin at #wcsf
@nacin
Javascript is scary, but @aaronjorbin is still doing a good job explaining how to test it. #wcsf
@Viper007Bond
Aaron made quite a few good points about doing unit testing for Javascript in the WordPress core and promised to open up a few Trac tickets in the coming hours. Anyways, off to break before the last and one of the most exciting sessions of the day — Core Team Q&A! Here are the slides from the JS session:
My Slides about JavaScript Unit Testing are now onlne: http://jorb.in/46 #wcsf
@aaronjorbin
And here’s the opened trac ticket for the password meter:
I created a ticket and patch to improve the WordPress Password meter (as mentioned in my presentation) – http://jorb.in/47 #wcsf
@aaronjorbin
16:50 — Core Team Q&A
Great Q&A session with Andrew Nacin, Mark Jaquith, Jane Wells, Daryl Koopersmith and others. Questions from the audience and answers from the core team. First question was how they feel about MySQL being acquired by Oracle — silence and laughter :)
“I’m the most senior person working on WordPress that isn’t on @photomatt ‘s payroll.” @markjaquith #wcsf
@dimensionmedia
If we need to switch from MySQL there are already a couple of other open-source forks we could switch to like MariaDB or Drizzle #wcsf
@westi
.@markjaquith “I’ll be 30 next year.” @nacin: “You’re not 29 yet!” @markjaquith: “I’ll be 29 this year.” #WCSF
@TJList
Photo credit: @wonderboymusic
@darylkoop “media gallery is something we’ve delayed working on for a few versions.” @markjaquith “try half a decade!” #wcsf
@alltheinterwebs
Otto launched a new service called Placebear — sweet!
After several presentations mentioned bears today, I was inspired. Therefore I bring you http://t.co/rn2rilh #wcsf
@Otto42
The Philosophies that guide WordPress http://t.co/KjuXgbA #wcsf
@aaronjorbin
Andrew Nacin almost gave out something about plugin reviews and security that Matt Mullenweg will talk about on Sunday #blamenacin :) And the WordPress Themes Reviewers Team got mentioned by Andrew as well, great job!
.@photomatt asks core team what they code on if they couldn’t code on WordPress for a year… LONG PAUSE #wcsf
@dimensionmedia
.@markjaquith would do Ruby and Minecraft mods. @nacin building news apps in Python. @janeforshort learning management systems. #wcsf
@dimensionmedia
17:30 — Closing Remarks
So the time is out but the core team is still on stage. Jane did a short announcement on the evening schedule, the happy hour and what’s coming up next day. After the announcement the Q&A continued, Jane said they could stay until six as long as there are questions :)
Core developers (svn) checkout the whole themes and plugins directories to run quick checks and fixes — @nacin at #wcsf
@themefm
LOL “There’s actually a function in WordPress called ‘Doing it wrong’. Look it up” @nacin #wcsf
@JeffLee
More comments by Jane, Mark and Andrew about mobile blogging and publishing, about the WordPress native application for the various platforms and then a great deal of time dedicated to contributing to WordPress, submitting patches and reporting security holes to WordPress — don’t write a blog post about it but report it to security@wordpress.org.
And on that note the Q&A session has finally ended and everybody leaves for their happy hour. Well done everyone, thank you for all the sessions and for teaching us more great stuff today! Too bad the two tracks both had awesome sessions at the same time so we couldn’t really follow them all which is why our overview is a little selective. We did try and pick out the best tweets from both tracks though, even when we didn’t watch one of them :)
And this ends our live blog for today. Thank you so much for tuning in and hope you see you again tomorrow, same time and same place with sessions for content creators and power-users. Matt is giving his “State of the Word” presentation too, so stay tuned!
Continued: WordCamp San Francisco 2011 Day 3
It is very crowded. More people than seats. However there’s no coffee queue.