First of all, I’d like to thank all the people who organized or somehow contributed to this fantastic event. The people capable of hosting an event which attracts close to 200 visitors, two days in a row, deserve an extra compliment (or two).

It’s all about the talks

At most WordCamps, the entire event is spread out over multiple tracks. In the Netherlands, we have had a different approach the last years. During the morning, we have one main stage, where the talks are keynote style for the full audience.

In the afternoon, our WordCamp switches to the more traditional format and all talks are spread out over three tracks. This year we had a general track, besides a track for beginners and experts. The talks were a bit hard to put in the right track, but based on the title and speaker, most people we’re able to see the right talks.

This year, I missed most of the afternoon tracks, mostly because I was still too busy fixing the slides for my own talks. The talks that I was able to attend, were absolutely great.

English, or local language?

The only thing that I hope we might change for next years WordCamp, is the language of all the talks. To have a more international event, we could try to have more English talks in the afternoon. That is the only remark I have on this years Dutch WordCamp.

I know there is a statement on the Plan WordCamps website on speakers, that includes the chapter “Locals or Rock Stars?”. But there is nothing mentioning language. Perhaps it is a good idea for the beginners track to be in the local language, but the other tracks can serve a larger audience if the talk is in English, I think.

Meeting great people

The one thing I like best about WordCamps is that you get to meet people you normally only ‘speak’ online, on Twitter for example. This years WordCamp Netherlands was very well visited by the WordPress core team; Andrew Nacin, Jon Cave and Cristi Burcă attended. But we had more international WordPress rockstars visiting, I also met Noel Tock, Paul Gibbs, Tammie Lister and Siobhan McKeown.

A bunch of great guys visited our WordCamp just like last year; Andrew Nacin, Isaac Keyet and Frederick Townes are our regular guests now. :)

And last but not least, WordCamps are a great way to get back in touch with people you haven’t seen for a while. I’m not able to list everyone who I had a great time with, but hanging out with people who work in the same field is great. Meeting offline is a great way to improve working together, just by drinking a beer and have a good time.

My three talks

In case you missed my previous posts covering my talks, here is a quick list.

At this years WordCamp Netherlands, I was scheduled for a total of three talks. The first day, I did one talk in the expert track. The second day, I did one talk in the expert track, as well as a talk in the beginner track. I’ve posted more information on all these talks before:

Core contributions

The main purpose of this talk was to get into Trac and show people what was happening there. That is also the moment when people started to see how active the community really is and how things roll on Trac.

Version control

In this talk, my main goal was introducing people to version control, quickly showing them how things work and how different SVN and Git really are.

Custom Post Types

For this talk, I expected a different audience, different questions and therefore prepared a talk showing the basic usage of Custom Post Types, Taxonomies and Meta Boxes. This approach proved to be a great idea, I think everyone walked out having learned something new.

@media (min-width:1000px ) {
.one-column #page {
max-width:971px;
}

#primary {
max-width:690px;
float:left;
}

#supplementary {
max-width:230px;
border-top:0;
float:right;
padding-left:0;
padding-right:30px;
}

#supplementary.two .widget-area,#supplementary.one .widget-area {
float:none;
width:100%;
}

#colophon {
clear:none;
}

#site-generator {
clear:both;
}
}

It’s not perfect yet, but it works. Everyone can use this code to get a sidebar on larger screens, that will snap to the bottom (where it originally is positioned) on smaller screens.

Thanks Karim, big thanks to the Happiness Team for making this possible!

UPDATE: It’s announced on the WordPress.com blog too: Custom CSS gets an upgrade.

With Custom Post Types being such a powerful technique, I planned a talk that consisted mostly of a demonstration. Real examples work better in such a talk than pure words.

register_post_type() function

We had a good look at the register_post_type() function and lots of arguments that it will accept. In the Codex you can find the full list of arguments that can be used with that function and what they are used for.

The example code

I choose to create a plugin that registers a post type for recipes. Feel free to download my example code here: recepten.php to run/edit/break the code by yourself.

In that example code, I’ve also attached three theme files: archive-recept.php, single-recept.php and loop-recept.php. These files are mostly based on TwentyTen and can be added to that theme for testing. Note that this is a general bad practice and you should always create your own theme, or at least make it a Child Theme.

Please note: This code is not completely tested, is not 100% written according to the WordPress Coding Standards and could use a little function prefixing to minimize the risk of having duplicate function names. Use this code for educational purposes only.

This plugins also adds a single meta box, created for the recipes post type, to the default ‘page’ post type. We did this while running the code and never got more testing out of it than seeing the meta box appear. You can quickly hide it there, by commenting line number 98 in the plugin file. The function will no longer be called.

The slides

I think I was able to reach the goal of the talk; introducing people to version control, quickly showing them how things work and how different SVN and Git really are.

Live script testing

Note to self: Never, ever try some new scripts that you haven’t used before during a talk, unless you want to look silly. I tried running Scribu’s Deploying from git to svn script, but it failed and I didn’t get it to work. This made the talk a little messy. Tonight, I checked the script again, found out what I was doing wrong and I had my own *facepalm* moment…

The slides

In this talk, I raced through my slides just to get into Trac and show people what was happening there. That is also the moment when people started to see how active the community really is and how things roll on Trac.

The needs-patch keyword

Report 16 shows all tickets that need a patch: {16} Needs Patch, for the people trying to actually write a patch.

More Dutch Core Contributors

By the end of the talk, I asked how many people were going to dig in and try to get patched actually reach status ‘commit’ for WordPress 3.4. I saw around 10 hands in the air, so if we’re lucky the number of Dutch Core Contributors will be a lot higher for version 3.4. I’ll be following all commits in the next few weeks, to see if anyone makes it. :)

The slides

Starting next week, I will be working for WooThemes, arguably the most popular premium WordPress company in the world. I am very excited to start improving and extending WooCommerce, which I will be working on mostly at first.

I will be joining Mike Jolley and Jay Koster in the WooLabs division as a development ninja, adding more development power to the team.

Woo!

While developing the Mollie iDEAL extension for WooCommerce, I already worked with Mike and really liked the way team WooThemes works.

Once I made the choice to leave my current job and WooThemes also liked the idea of me working for them, it didn’t take long for us to close this deal.

Reinstating my home office

Now that I will be working at home more, I needed a real home office again. While I was thinking of setting it back up, my girlfriend beat me to the punch and did all the hard work by moving the desk, bookcase and put my stuff back on it. :)

At WordCamp Netherlands 2010 was the first time I got to speak at a WordCamp and I’m really looking forward to this years edition.

Speaking

This year, I got myself three slots in the program. Two of my talks will be in the expert track and one in the beginner track. All of my talks will be in Dutch, as most of the audience will be Dutch and we have the hot shot international speakers in the mornings already. :)

Core contributions

Expert track, day 1 (March 24), 13:30

For WordPress 3.3, there were only three Dutch contributors to the WordPress core. As I think this number should be bigger for future versions, I’m showing in this talk what it takes (and how easy it is) to submit patches and actually contribute back to WordPress.

Version control, Git and SVN

Expert track, day 2 (March 25), 13:30

Some developers start using it from the first line of code, others hate it. That, plus the fact that there are different kinds of version control, makes a great topic for this talk. I’m showing differences between multiple version control systems and I am hoping everyone sees the advantages of using one by the end of my talk.

Custom Post Types

Beginners track, day 2 (March 25), 15:00

This talk is an extended version of the talk I gave during the local WordPress meetup in Eindhoven last year. I will be showing how Custom Post Types, Custom Taxonomies and Meta Boxes work, with working examples and quick code reviews.

Tickets still available!

Read this far and still don’t have tickets? Tickets are still available. Go buy them now!

One of the things that bugged me since the first time I saw Twenty Eleven, is it’s lack of a sidebar on single post pages. To work around that, I tried to add the footer sidebar to the side of the single column layout. That wasn’t too hard, with a few easy CSS overrides (that even work on WordPress.com blogs, with the Custom CSS Upgrade):

.one-column #page {
max-width:971px;
}

#primary {
max-width:690px;
}

#supplementary {
max-width:230px;
border-top:0;
position:absolute;
top:220px;
left:830px;
}

#supplementary.two .widget-area,#supplementary.one .widget-area {
float:none;
width:100%;
}

Problem with this idea is that this will break the responsive design. This code should only be applied on the full size version of the theme. On any smaller screens, the footer sidebar should be shown below the content. Because my CSS uses absolute positioning, there is no way this will scale well. We need a media query here.

It would work if we would wrap the CSS code in a media query like this one:

@media (max-width > 800px ) { /* CSS GOES HERE */ }

Unfortunately, WordPress.com strips out specific CSS3 properties and characters.

Until WordPress.com supports media queries (and with that, other CSS3 goodies) we can’t fix this in a way that scales well. In case you want to attempt this, give the WordPress.com Custom CSS plugin a try. It is very close to the code they use at WordPress.com.

Initial import of the Twenty Twelve theme, by Drew Strojny. This time around we’re trying something different than the previous twenty-something themes, a much more minimalist approach that affords easy use as a CMS in addition to being blog-forward. More information will be on wpdevel soon. Props drewstrojny and lancewillett.

You can see a live demo, setup by James Collins: Twenty Twelve demo.

Please keep in mind that this is a very early version of the new default theme.

Many new features, changes and tweaks will be added in the next few weeks, while WordPress 3.4 is shaping up for its first beta.