WordCampPDX in 0… 15… 30…

Today, I created an outline, but more on that later. Right now, I want to talk about WordPress.

I love WordPress.

WordPress is a dream come true. It’s a great writer’s platform, it’s a great programmer’s platform, it’s a great tinker’s platform…

It’s also a total and complete pain in the ass.

Like many great things, it’s virtually perfect. And, like many great things, it can be finicky, sometimes contemptible, and often frustrating as hell.

Why?

Because it attracts tinkerers, and tinkerers break things, and breaking things is frustrating.

Honestly, not all the frustration that people have with WordPress is the WordPress team’s fault. It’s the fault of the system. It’s a function of a system and philosophy that allows people to have as many options as they can.

That’s a problem.

WordPress is almost infinitely customizable, totally hackable and utterly configurable. That’s the beauty and the curse. Whenever something has that many buttons to press and levers to pull, something is always going to break… eventually

I’m Speaking at WordCamp Portland

This year, I have been honored by being invited to speak at WordCampPDX. Actually, “honored” is a bit of an understatement. I’m overjoyed. Getting up in a room full of people who love WordPress in order to talk about WordPress is pretty damn exciting. It might even be the most exciting speaking engagement I’ve ever had, and I’ve spoken a lot.

What will I talk about?

Well, there’s that whole “double-edged” sword aspect of WordPress that I’ve just been describing. How you can do anything you want to with it, but how that means that it will always break. That’s really the most interesting thing to me. But, that’s just a description of a problem. That’s a complaint.

So, I’m talking about a solution.

WordPress & Source Control

Source control management (SCM) is a concept that is as natural as breathing to most developers. But it’s not something that WordPress users often think of.¹ Hovever, anyone who has ever modified a theme, fiddled with a plugin, or wanted to change the way WordPress works for them in any way could find it valuable.

It’s strange to me that more WordPress users don’t actually use an SCM system, but then again, I’m a programmer. SCM may be as natural as breathing to a developer, but it’s about as natural as breathing underwater to a non-programmer.

But it doesn’t have to be like breathing underwater.

So I’m speaking on ways to integrate Source Control and WordPress, to make your life easier and make it much safer to play around and tinker. Hopefully, after my talk, even non-programmers who want to tinker in the WordPress code will feel confident that they won’t break things.

Or, rather, that they will break things, but that breaking things is okay and a good way to learn– assuming you can fix them.

Getting Excited

Today I created an outline.

It’s day zero of the first of my three WordPressPDX countdown timers. Today was “outline” day.

15 days from now is “Presentation” day- the day I need to be done with my presentation (so that I have enough time to test it, tweak it, and maybe break it)

30 days from now is WordCampPDX!

Today I created an outline, and it’s a pretty good one. We’ll look at messing about with WordPress themes and plugins, we’ll create Github repositories, and we’ll break things.

We’ll even– crazy thought– hack the WordPress core!!

But it’ll all be okay, because we’ll have a safety net.

You don’t need to know PHP, you don’t need to know about source control. All you need is the desire to fiddle with stuff and see if it breaks.

And you need a love of WordPress, but if you’re coming to WordCampPDX, you already have that base covered.

Yay for WordCampPDX!!

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1. despite the fact that there is a revision control system built into the WordPress editor [↩]

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