Extreme WordPress Customization

Discussion & examples of Wordpress as an application Exygy does a lot of WP customization & development

What WP is, Where it comes from, where it's at now, where it's going

Wordpress split off from moveable type blogging engine, turned it into Wordpress

WP began as a blog, on the backend everything is a post

WP does a lot out of the box, is easy to use, a lot of developers & admins are able to do it

Became more of a content manager in 2008 with WP 2.9

WP 3.0 came out in 2009, made custom post types, allowing to build custom objects/more sophisticated architecture

Began with everything as a post --> everything as a post/page --> now you can customize posts

Buddypress-->more opportunities to do things with user accounts

Drupal-->uses cck, more difficult to admin for non-techies, but easier to customize

Site example: samasource.org

Zack logged into Wordpress Admin Page for sample site dev server Custom meta panels for all posts & custom post types -under pages and posts that we're all familiar with, admin for each custom object i.e. "worker" with options for the popup image, description, title etc so that it's easy for end users to update

Skoll World Forum has video, speakers, etc connect speakers to sessions, have video auto-play at specific point use caption box plug-in: transcribes youtube video in SEO-friendly way

Caution: plug-in creep Exygy has started disabling plug-ins for content

Noun project: custom icons

Posts 2 Posts plug-in Connect posts to one another i.e. post to video to picture what it doesn't do: connect posts to users

Margot: How much customization of the template is required? Zack: the plug-in does the connection, the display depends on the template

Margot: How active is the development around this plug-in? Zack: good question, and should be asked about every plug-in in order to evaluate When was it last updated? Ideally last month Is it compatible with the current version/your version of Wordpress? How many users? Is there a large community using it, supporting each other, continuing development

Wordpress mu/Merge/Network

Air Music Project Connect bands to fans as activists gogreenmusic.com --> get to show green each band has a page with upcoming shows, carpool, public transit options, contest to send a picture of self getting to show "green"

Buddypress as an option for groups/members Getting easier to add more functionality for users without giving them admin

Margot: concern w/r/t no native cacheing, what is a good long-term cacheing solution?

Zach: recommend supercache plug-in, integrates with CDN (Content Delivery Network), push to akami/s3, make site load super fast