In this wrap-up podcast for the WordCamp Chicago weekend, Ashley and I talk about the last three talks on Sunday (Jim Turner’s, Time Frick’s, and Matt Mullenweg’s) as well as our overall feelings on the weekend.

Good news: Ashley enjoys podcasting, and will be sticking around on future Theme Playground WordPress Podcasts that we put together. You can follow her on Twitter at @arae.

We’ll be updating the blog again this afternoon with photos and links to others that were at WordCamp. It was a great experience, and one that both of us hope to attend again. Why wait until next year at Chicago — there’s one coming up in Canada, right?

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or just grab the podcast RSS feed if you don’t use iTunes for listening to podcasts (both AAC and MP3 flavors available). You can also find past episodes of the Theme Playground WordPress Podcast if you’ve missed an episode or two.

With day 1 of WordCamp Chicago complete, Ashley and I did a quick recording giving our initial thoughts on the presentations today, including the after-party at Morton’s the Steakhouse.

Some highly important notes from this podcast:

• Ashley was called out on her desire for a picture with Mullenweg by Mullenweg
• Ashley’s favorite speaker: Micah Baldwin, who she says sounds like Hurley from Lost. (Just sounds like, MIcah, seriously!)
• Ryan’s favorite speaker: Jeremy Wright with his talk on using WordPress MU with b5media.

The day really was a blast, and it was probably even more fun meeting some of the great people attending than it was to hear all of the speakers.

Also: it turns out Ashley really likes this whole podcasting thing. We may have to keep her on!

You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, or just grab the podcast RSS feed if you don’t use iTunes for listening to podcasts (both AAC and MP3 flavors available). You can also find past episodes of the Theme Playground WordPress Podcast if you’ve missed an episode or two.

Ashley (@arae) and I are getting ramped up for WordCamp Chicago tomorrow and recorded a podcast with some of our predictions, expectations, and goals for the weekend.

Some notes and links that we talked about:

• Ashley and I each talk about our first experience with WordPress, and why we choose it over other CMS options.
• The WordCamp Chicago speaker’s list is here, and a live search of the Twitter hashtag #wcchicago can be found here.
• Ashley apparently really wants to meet Mr. Mullenweg.

Be sure and say hey to Ash and I if you see us around this weekend. I’ll be lugging my iPhone and moleskine around, Ashley will be the 5 foot girl taking photos with a D80. Can’t miss us.

We’ll do another podcast on Saturday and Sunday, before packing up and heading home. If you’d like to join in at some point, contact me (Ryan) on Twitter at @ryanimel and we’ll see if we can’t set something up.

Happy WordCamp!

We know it’s possible to make money with WordPress. We’ve looked into that and have heard from the big players in the past.

But let’s take a step back. Before we can hope to make money with WordPress, however we choose to do it, we have to be in a position where we are recognized as WordPress professionals.

Establishing yourself isn’t an exact science. Some will succeed greatly while others, not so much. But there are some things you can do that will improve your odds quite a bit.

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Photo by naokomc, flickr.com/naokomc

WordCamp is one of those events where WordPress users either have gone, or else really want to go. It’s a place for developers, bloggers, and industry professionals to meet up and share ideas, if only for the day. And they happen all over the world throughout most of the year.

Some are lucky enough to have one show up in their town, or close enough to drive to and attend. But attending isn’t really the way to get the most out of the event. By thinking ahead, preparing a bit, and showing up with a purpose, odds are you’ll come away feeling not only excited and pumped up, but with a feeling of accomplishment.

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I’ll be the first to admit that not every website needs a forum, not by a long shot. Not many blog communities are very conducive to a full blown discussion board. Most of the time a comment section works just fine.

But if you decide a forum is appropriate, as I have decided, and you happen to run your website on WordPress, as I do, then you should absolutely consider using bbPress to run your forum. I did that last one also.

For those who don’t know, bbPress is open source forum software built by Automattic, the same people responsible for the continued development of WordPress. The bbPress template system is comparable to the WordPress system, but there are slight differences here and there that I’ll talk about as I walk you through how I built the Theme Playground bbPress theme.

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photo by Ryan Imel

Note: This post may be something only developers will relate to. Any WordPress users might find these thoughts kind of strange.

I always cringe, sometimes inwardly and sometimes outwardly, at the idea of using someone else’s WordPress theme instead of my own. Let me try and explain.

The theme I’ve used more than anything in the past on my WordPress projects is Sandbox, from Andy Skelton and Scott Wallick. I suppose at this point it would be considered a Theme Framework^TM, something comparable to Thematic or Theme Hybrid. I was a big fan of things like the body class function and the beautiful XHTML markup that stood at its core. At the time I was using Sandbox I wasn’t yet working with child themes to any extent, so I was pretty much digging into the theme each time.

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I’ve been wanting to add a forum to Theme Playground for a while now, so I’m happy to present it to you now, in true bbPress form.

One of my biggest complaints about forums in general is that they seldom fit well into the website or blog they are a part of. I finally sat down over the long weekend and pieced together a bbPress theme to go along with the current Theme Playground theme.

Also, for those of you who are interested, I’ll be putting up some bbPress tutorials in the coming week. It’s about time for some advanced bbPress themes to start coming out, don’t you think?

I’m excited to discuss WordPress and development issues with you guys on the forum. Don’t hesitate to jump in, it’s only a quick (and free!) sign up away. Make a name for yourself early.

What are you still doing reading this? Go sign up as a member on the new Theme Playground Forum!

photo by Destany Maddox / Ashley Hittinger

The “ultimate” measure of whether a guide is really the ultimate is not in how many links it can put into one place, but in how many dodgy resources it leaves out. I have sifted through the vastness of space we call the interwebs, employing all manners of searching, in order to bring you the best resources available on creative a WordPress photoblog – minus, of course, the outdated, useless and repetitive information you really don’t need.

While various dedicated photoblogging services can be found online, most of them are very simplistic. Converting WordPress into a photoblog allows you to tap into the vast array of features available with WordPress while still displaying your much-loved photos in a context that suits them.

For every one photoblog resource there were at least 20 WordPress gallery resources. This collection features the most up to date resources available for people wanting to make a genuine photoblog using WordPress.

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Matt announced a couple of days ago that Automattic has acquired control over the URL WP.com now, thanks to (another!) deal they struck with Yahoo!. Anyone who has ever gone after a short domain name — which today means anything under five or six characters plus the dot com — knows that this is an occasion for congratulations. First ma.tt, now wp.com. It’s been a good year for Matt and domain names.

After what I can only imagine was at least one celebratory drink with a friend, Matt announced on the official WordPress.com blog that he’s open to hearing any suggestions as to how best to use this new domain. His callout for ideas surprised me a little. At first mention it only seemed obvious to me that WP.com would now forward on to WordPress.com, the company’s hosted blog network built on WordPress. This shows how lacking my creativity is when it’s being quickly prompted for, I guess.

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