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Have You Seen Hookr.io Lately?

Early last year a new online resource was launched for WordPress developers called Hookr.io. The website is described as The WordPress Hook/API Index, but it is so much more.

hookr-wordpress-resourceFast forward to today and Hookr.io has just launched a new beta layout. Not only does the website feature documentation for WordPress Core, but it also includes information on popular plugins and themes.  Hookr.io displays more than just action and filter hooks, it also includes all Classes, Constants, Functions, and Shortcodes available.  You can easily filter through the data to find exactly what you are looking for.  The new beta also features a more simplified UI and is device agnostic.

Hookr.io is a very valuable resource for all WordPress developers.   If you haven’t already, bookmark this website.  You will thank me later!

WordCamp Philly Celebrates 5th Anniversary

WordCamp Philly 2015 has been announced and this year is shaping up to be the best yet! This will be the fifth WordCamp Philly, which is an amazing milestone! There are still plenty of cities that have never had a WordCamp (looking at you Indianapolis), so I am extremely proud to see our event enter its fifth year.

rocky-wapuu-300x300So what’s the secret to organizing an event that lasts? The community. We have an amazing WordPress Community in the Philadelphia area. We have not one, but two very active Meetup groups focused on WordPress. The Philadelphia WordPress Meetup Group, which I help organize, as well as the Philly ‘burbs WordPress Meetup, which moves around each month to a different area in the Philly burbs. This community has helped us form a solid organizing team as well as an awesome group of Volunteers for the event over the years. Without a strong community WordCamp Philly would not be where it is at today.

We are planning another awesome event this year. Expect plenty of talented speakers presenting on topics for all skills levels, a few fun panels, plenty of food and snacks, and a few surprises! I will also be organizing a Philadelphia walkabout Sunday morning for anyone who has joined my #BenchPress initiative.

WordCamp Philly tickets are now on sale, so be sure to get your ticket while they last. We also have sponsorship packages available if you’d like to help support the event and promote your company to hundreds of local tech enthusiasts.

WordCamp Philly 2015 is going to be the best event yet. I look forward to seeing you all there!

What is #BenchPress?

In July of 2010 my wife and I decided to make a lifestyle change. We started working out, eating healthier, and taking care of our bodies. Since my lifestyle change I’ve been a regularly gym goer. One problem I have always struggled with is trying to stay (semi) healthy when traveling and attending events.

Fast forward to the WordCamp London afterparty, and I was having a conversation with Mendel Kurland about this struggle. Mendel, who travels to way more events that I do, was also struggling with this exact issue. When attending an event in a different city, it’s so easy to eat garbage food, drink garbage drinks, and just treat your body like garbage, if only for a few days.

After a few more drinks (I get the irony), #BenchPress was born! So, what is #BenchPress exactly? #BenchPress is an informal group of WordPress community members who want to help each other live a healthier lifestyle.

The rules of #BenchPress are simple:

  • If #BenchPress members are at the same event, they must participate in at least ONE workout together. This could be a walk around the city, a hike up a mountain, a morning jog, a Crossfit class, or anything that gets your heart rate going!
  • You must help motivate other #BenchPress members to workout. This is true whether you are at an event are not.
  • Tag all workouts with #BenchPress

Pretty easy right? We want to create a group of individuals to help keep each other motivated and work together to stay healthier when on the road. #BenchPress doesn’t mean you can’t indulge in some good local eats and drinks, but imagine how much more accomplished you would feel if you knew you ran/walked a 5K before you ate some of that local delicious BBQ? I know I would!

If you are interested in joining, please check out the #BenchPress Facebook Group. If there is enough interest I’ll launch a website to help track our progress. Are you ready to take the #BenchPress challenge?

Interview on WPRoundTable

Last night I was interviewed on the WPRoundTable podcast. I had an awesome time hanging out with Kyle, Jason, Kellen, and Marc. We covered a lot of topics including the start of WebDevStudios, my history of podcasting, writing books, and AppPresser/Reactor. Check out the interview below:

If you haven’t heard of the WPRoundTable podcast, you should definitely take a look. They’ve interviewed a number of amazing people in the WordPress community, including Brad Parbs and Ben Lobaugh from WebDevStudios.

I love seeing more WordPress podcasts on the scene. WPRoundTable podcast is a fun show that has a very bright future.

Multilingual WordPress Multisite Network

WordPress is hugely popular, powering over 23% of the entire internet today. As you can imagine, a good portion of these websites are not in English. Over the past few years I’ve had the opportunity to work on more multilingual sites in WordPress. One thing I have learned is that WordPress Multisite is a perfect fit for a network of multilingual sites. Each site in the network can be configured for a different language, making the administration much easier.

One of the big challenges I’ve faced is the relationship between the content across the language sites in a network. Imagine having an About page on your English site and an About page on your German site. Wouldn’t it be awesome if WordPress knew that these two pages were related? Well, now you can with an awesome plugin called Multilingual Press.

I had a chance to sit down with Caspar Hübinger at WordCamp London for a demo and I was blown away. Multilingual Press lets you create relationships between sites in your Multisite network, set a main language for each site, and start writing. When editing a piece of content connected to multiple languages, you can edit all of the language content on the same edit screen, as shown in the screenshot below. The content will then be updated in the appropriate language site in the network.

mlppro-edit-post

If you work with WordPress in different languages you need to check out Multilingual Press. It’s a multilingual game changer!

WordCamp London 2015

Next weekend I will be attending and speaking at WordCamp London 2015! This will be my third WordCamp outside of the US, with the first two being WordCamp Montreal 2009 and WordCamp Europe 2013.

wordcamp-london-2015-logoI am speaking on Sunday at 12:15pm in the Henry Thomas Room. My presentation is on Hiring Employee Number One: From Freelancer to Agency. I first gave this presentation at PrestigeConf last month and am very excited to present this to the London crowd. It’s a fun and informative presentation on lessons learned as we started and grew WebDevStudios over the years.

My wife and I are staying in the London area for a week to explore the city, art, music, food, and everything London has to offer! My last trip to London I was a teenager, and to be honest didn’t really appreciate the history a country like England has to offer. I’m excited to learn more about the history of the city and country. I am also very excited to eat yummy English food!

If you are attending WordCamp London, make sure to track me down and say hi! I’m looking forward to seeing old friends and making new ones at WordCamp London next weekend!

WordCamp Indy Needs to Happen

If you aren’t familiar with a WordCamp, it’s defined as “an informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users”. WordCamps are amazing events for all types of WordPress users. Whether you’re an avid blogger, or advanced developer, a good WordCamp will have something for you.

Indiana has never had a WordCamp. Being a WordPress fanboy, and born and raised in Indiana, this makes me extremely sad. Most major cities in the United States have had multiple WordCamps at this point, but sadly Indiana hasn’t had a single one. This needs to change.

WordCampIndy.org and the @WordCampIndy Twitter account have been squatted on for years by a company called WatershedStudio. They stated planning for WordCamp Indy was underway back in 2008, but the event never happened. I would really love to see WordCamp Central put some pressure on the owners of the site and Twitter account to hand them over to someone who will actually help organize an event.

The one thing that WordCamp Indy really needs is a leader to step up and take charge. I am willing to support a WordCamp Indy as much as possible. I will sponsor, apply to speak, help volunteer, and promote the event to the entire WordPress Community. The one thing I can’t do is help organize, because that responsibility should fall on locals.

Are you interested in seeing a WordCamp Indy happen? Leave a comment and let’s make WordCamp Indy a reality!

ToeJam and Earl are Back!

One of my favorite video games growing up as a kid was ToeJam and Earl for the Sega Genesis. I spent hundreds of hours exploring the various randomized levels, opening up presents, running from nerd herds, and throwing tomatoes at earthlings.

toejam-and-earlI’m really excited to see that ToeJam and Earl are coming back with a new Kickstarter campaign created by the team behind the original game. The goal of the crowd-funding campaign is to raise $400,000 to fund a new ToeJam and Earl game in the same style as the original.

The funding rewards are actually really good. I decided to go with the Bling Master reward level, which includes ToeJam and Earl vinyl figures as well as the Rapmaster Rocket figure. These collectible figurines are going to look awesome on my desk!

If you enjoyed this game as a kid, be sure to help fund the Kickstarter campaign. I can’t wait to check out the new ToeJam and Earl game! Jammin!

My Podcasting Equipment

I love to podcast! There’s something that has always excited me about recording an internet show that anyone in the world can subscribe to. I started playing with podcasting back in 2007. The first official podcast I co-hosted was WordPress Weekly back in January of 2008. After a few shows I was hooked, so I helped organize the SitePoint Podcast in 2008 and co-hosted the show for 3 years. In 2012, I started co-hosting a new podcast dedicated to WordPress called WP Late Night. All of these roads have lead to my current podcast, which is the DradCast podcast.

I’ve been asked about my podcasting setup for years, but never took the time to document it. So here it is, my official podcasting hardware setup:

I love this mic. I have actually owned this mic since around 2006 and it still works as good as it did when I first used it. The mic is actually easy to travel with as well and since it’s USB it works on every computer.
When you are ready to get serious about your mic setup you need to purchase a boom arm. This arm easily locks onto the side of my desk and allows me to swivel the mic in and out of range as needed.
If you decide to upgrade to a boom arm you will need a shockmount. The shockmount is used to attach your mic to your boom arm and also absorbs any movement if the mic is adjusted so your audio isn’t affected.
Another great tool for crystal clear audio is a pop filter. I don’t use this as often as I should, but the idea is the pop filter eliminates “popping” sounds you might hear in some audio broadcasts.
I use this pretty standard Logitech webcam for video. The video is HD quality and also has a built-in mic, which I obviously don’t use. Overall it’s a solid camera in a slim size which is great for travel.

At the end of the day you don’t need a lot of fancy equipment to podcast. A simple mic is really all you need. If you are looking to get a bit more serious, I highly recommend the hardware above. Its worked well for me over the years and I have no plans to upgrade any time soon.

Detecting a Large Multisite Network in WordPress

If you have ever worked on a very large Multisite network in WordPress, you probably understand the challenges of working with large sets of data. WordPress contains a function to help you detect a large network, wp_is_large_network(). This function accepts a single parameter $using, which sets whether to count users or sites. If your network is either more than 10,000 users or more than 10,000 sites, the function will return true. Let’s look at an example:

<?php
if ( wp_is_large_network( 'users' ) ) {

    //this network has over 10,000 users

}elseif ( wp_is_large_network( 'sites' ) ) {

    //this network has over 10,000 sites

}
?>

This function is extremely handy if you are trying to work with large sets of data. When working with Multisite, and WordPress in general, you should always write code that can scale. You can also easily alter the large network criteria using the wp_is_large_network filter.

WordPress Multisite is an extremely powerful feature of WordPress. Understanding the tools available when working with Multisite will help you build amazing, and stable, WordPress networks.

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Brad Williams Blog

WordPress and the Web

Who is Brad?

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Brad Williams is a computer programmer and tech junkie who enjoys exploring technology and sharing his knowledge and experience with others.

 

CEO of WebDevStudios, Maintainn, and Pluginize. Co-author of Professional WordPress and Professional WordPress Plugin Development.

 

Brad resides in Philadelphia.

 

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