Do you want to show the user registration date in WordPress? Often popular membership sites and forums display the user registration date on profile as “member since 2015”. In this article, we will cover how to show user registration date in WordPress.
Where and How You Want to Show User Registration Date?
Some of you may just want to display a user’s registration date in the admin columns of the Users page. This will give you a quick overview of when a user joined your website and allow you to sort by registration date.
Another usage scenario is to display a user’s registration date on the ‘Edit Profile’ page. This will allow any administrator and the user themselves to see when they joined your website.
Last but probably the most popular usage scenario is when you want to display the user registration date on their public profile on the front-end of your website.
Let’s take a look at how you can do all of them.
Adding Registered Date Column on Users Page in Admin Area
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Admin Columns plugin. Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » Admin Columns to configure the plugin.
Under the admin columns tab, click on users and then click on add column button.
Next select ‘Registered” in the Type drop down menu and click on store updates button.
You can now visit the users screen where you will see a new column labeled ‘Registered’ showing the date when a user registered on your WordPress site.
Save your file and then upload it to your WordPress site.
Finally you can connect to your WordPress site using a FTP client and then go to /wp-content/plugins/ folder. Select the membersince.php file from your computer and then upload it.
Now you can go to your WordPress plugins page and activate this plugin on your website.
That’s all. Verify everything is working by editing a user profile on in your WordPress admin area, and you will see the user registration date.
Showing User Registration Date on Your Website
In this method, we will be using a simple shortcode to display any users registration date on the front-end of your WordPress site.
If you’ve bought anything recently on Amazon or eBay, you’ve no doubt used faceted search. It’s a technique that allows users to narrow down what their searching for using “facets.”
For example, if you’re searching for a new solid state drive you might check options to specify the size you’re after, your price range, and whether shipping is available to your country.
According to design and development website A List Apart, faceted navigation is arguably the most significant search innovation of the past decade. For eCommerce websites, faceted search has become an essential feature, and one that users have come to expect.
While WordPress doesn’t offer faceted search out-of-the-box, FacetWP is a fantastic plugin that lets you add this feature to your site. In this post, I’ll run through some great examples of faceted search online and how to set it up on your own site.
Faceted Search and Navigation
Faceted search and faceted navigation are useful ways of enabling users to filter what they’re searching for by different criteria.
It’s an incredibly handy way of handling search options for large data sets, and you’ll see it in use on the majority of large e-commerce sites – Amazon and eBay being classic examples. It’s a slick way of enabling users to narrow down their selections quickly while still being able to search for very specific items.
“Facets” are essentially categories which objects can be grouped and filtered by in the context of search results or general display. This will usually involve accessing metadata fields under the hood, as in the RAM options highlighted on Amazon below.
Amazon’s faceted search shows the facets to the left of the page and selected facet values at the top.
The actual implementation of this in terms of UI can vary considerably – you can expect to see checkboxes, drop-down menus, range selectors and sliders all deployed on various sites. Another common option you’ll see is real time filtering of results in response to your actions – a nice touch designed to speed up your overall search.
As Creative Bloq points out in its excellent article on faceted navigation, a couple of key advantages come with this approach:
The successive nature of faceted search matches the way people tend to naturally approach looking for something – i.e. gradually drilling down to the thing they’re actually after.
It keeps people on sites longer as they they’ll naturally want to browse within filtered results for the purposes of, for example, product comparison.
Examples of Faceted Search Online
The e-commerce site of fashion giant Prada implements super-speedy, responsive, faceted navigation to help customers find exactly what they’re looking for in a hurry. Click on a facet and the page instantly rearranges itself to show you what’s available. It’s a great example of how faceted options can really excel in an e-commerce setting.
Faceted navigation in action at Prada’s e-commerce store.
Zappos kicks things up a notch when it comes to faceted options. Browse anywhere on their site and you’ll see a huge range of category options displayed next to actual product listings, covering everything from brand, color and occasion through to highly specific choices such as heel height for boots.
As one of the world’s most successful online retailers, they’ve clearly identified the extra value faceted navigation brings to their customers and decided to go all-in on it.
Faceted search options galore at Zappos.
Just as we saw with Prada’s implementation, any changes made in selection are reflected instantly on the screen to minimize hassle for the eager shopper looking to get right to their purchase.
What About WordPress’ Default Options?
As we all know, WordPress can be made to do pretty much anything you can think of with a little custom coding. Straight out of the box, though, support for faceted navigation or faceted search is pretty much non-existent.
The ability to categorize content is certainly there in the form of creative combinations of categories and tags. Custom fields can also be added to content if you are going down the coding route yourself. There isn’t really an easy combination of these options that gives you the power faceted functionality provides, though.
Options such as categories and tags are navigational devices, but things aren’t great when it comes to default search either. If you’re dealing with a decent amount of content you want users to be able to pull from quickly, you’re usually looking at improving search options via plugin or rolling your own.
Introducing FacetWP
FacetWP implements faceted search and navigation for WordPress sites.
FacetWP is a premium plugin that offers advanced filtering options for WordPress sites and true faceted search. Basic licenses cover you for three sites and a year of support and cost $79. A professional license covering unlimited sites is also available for $199.
The software also offers a range of add-ons which enable you to integrate with other search plugins such as SearchWP and Relevanssi, and add additional functionality such as filtering by color and alphabetical listing. Integration with the popular multilingual plugins WPML and Polylang is also available.
As you’d expect from a premium plugin, FacetWP also offers solid documentation and a range of hooks for developers to tap into if they are looking to customize. Let’s move on now to actually using the plugin.
Getting Started With FacetWP
After you’ve purchased, installed and activated the plugin, you’ll see a new entry in your admin menu at Settings > FacetWP.
Activating FacetWP.
Once you’ve popped in there, select the Settings tab and input your license key in the appropriate box. All being well, you should receive a message saying “All done, thanks for activating!” after the plugin has successfully phoned home.
There are two key concepts to get your head around before we start using FacetWP:
Facets: These are the UI elements themselves that will be used to sort through your data. You can add them via shortcodes or PHP to widgets and pages.
Templates: These are the contexts within which the facets are used. You have full control over how the content elements will be displayed via templates.
To take a concrete example, if you had a music site, you would set up individual facets to cover different types of categories you’d like users to be able to search by – genre, artist, price and so on. This is where you control the data integration and decide what the UI options will be.
You’d then set up a music template page where results would be displayed. The template controls the initial selection of content, lets WordPress know that this is content that can be faceted, and enables you to control how items are displayed. In the case of our music listings, we might just decide to show an album cover thumbnail and some artist metadata to keep things simple.
Setting up Facets
When you browse to Settings > FacetWP > Facets, you’ll see that there is a demo facet already set up called Categories. Hover the mouse over the item and you’ll see the shortcode as pictured below. We’ll be making use of that shortly.
Default categories facet.
Once you pop inside the facet, things are nice and straightforward. You’ll see a label field and options for selecting the facet type (the nine options we mentioned earlier) and data source. Down below, there will be further settings available that vary according to which facet type you’ve opted for.
If we click into the Data Source field, you’ll see that there are a huge amount of options to pick from and that all custom fields are being picked up so you’re free to get as specific as you like here.
Facet data sources.
Once you’ve made your selections, click Save Changes and Re-index to trigger the magic behind the scenes that makes it all possible. If you’re dealing with a very content heavy site, re-indexing may take a minute or two but a handy progress bar is there to keep you updated.
In terms of adding facets into the system, that’s really all you need to do. A couple of clicks is really all you need in order to set up a new facet and connect it to the right data. Now let’s move on to actually displaying and using the facets.
Creating a Facet Template
You’re not going to be able to use facets without using a facet template – they’re the mechanism by which FacetWP recognises that there is content there to be filtered. In terms of using them, you have two options:
CSS class method: If you’re integrating with existing search or archive pages, you have the option of simply adding the CSS class facetwp-template to a container element surrounding the Loop. That isn’t the road we’ll be going down but you can find more info on it at the FacetWP help pages.
Shortcode method: With this option you use FacetWP’s powerful built-in Query Builder to take full control over the output of your content. This is the option we’ll be looking at.
When you navigate to Settings > FacetWP > Templates, you’ll see a demo template called Default is already set up. As with our previous facets example, hovering over the item will tell you what its shortcode is. The real action is inside, however.
Templates in FacetWP.
You’re tackling two problems with your template: which data will be retrieved and how it will be displayed.
The Query Arguments field is based on WP_Query and controls which list of content will actually be retrieved. If you’re not 100% comfortable with constructing these types of queries off the top of your head, a handy Query Builder is also included.
The FacetWP Query Builder.
As you can see, you’ve got a solid set of options for retrieving posts here and can add in checks for taxonomies and custom fields if required.
The Display Code part of the template screen enables you to control exactly how the returned results will be displayed. Using this effectively does assume that you have some experience with using templates and aren’t terrified at the thought of breaking out a little PHP. Being comfortable with using WP_Query will be to your advantage here also.
The basic principle is straightforward, though. If we look at the sample code from the default template below, you’ll see it simply outputs a linked title for each result.
Now let’s look at actually adding all of this to a site.
Adding Facets to Your Site
Actually getting the facet options into your site is pretty straightforward. We need to do two things:
Add the facets themselves via shortcode to a widget.
Add the template into a page via shortcode.
I’ll begin by popping the shortcode [facetwp facet="categories"] into a text widget on my sidebar. I’ve then created a custom page called My Facets and added the template shortcode [facetwp template="default"] to it as pictured below.
Adding templates via shortcode.
A quick visit to the page and I can see my faceted category search options displaying in the sidebar as checkboxes and am able to quickly flick between different views of content on the page itself.
Checkbox facets displaying in the sidebar.
It’s not a search setup that will be giving Amazon sleepless nights quite yet but it shows just how simple getting up and running can be. For a more complete overview of the type of options available to you, be sure to check out the FacetWP demo pages where you’ll see the individual facets in all their glory.
A more complete range of demo facets in action.
Wrapping Up
Adding faceted search and navigation into the mix is a no-brainer if you’re running a content heavy site or any kind of e-commerce site with more than small set of products. The option is proven to boost site stickiness and sales and will give your audience a substantially more intuitive way of getting at the best of your content.
Once you’ve understood its core concepts, FacetWP is nice and straightforward to set up while giving you an enormous amount of flexibility in terms of how you can best leverage its power. You’re really only limited by your imagination with this one.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on using faceted search and navigation elements on sites. Are you currently doing it or do you plan to? Let us know in the comments below.
Hey buddies! How's it going? Well it's just about to get even better thanks to this amazing round-up of themes and plugins for WordPress that you will just not help playing around with, just as a spoiler, among the themes you'll find amazing highlighting beauty and fashion ones, and also ones regarding breathtaking tourism, neat and creative editorial and photography, minimal style for business, health and fitness, material multi-purpose, and cute blogging.
Moving a site to a new platform can be scary. One false move could trigger a site-killing domino effect. And when your business is online and only online, that just won’t do.
I recently worked with the WP Engine Onboarding team and BrainPOP®, a creator of educational resources, to bring its professional development arm – BrainPOP Educators (educators.brainpop.com) – onto WP Engine’s managed WordPress hosting platform. (I’m a developer for SlipFire, the agency BrainPOP used to build BrainPOP Educators™ several years ago). I had been using WP Engine for more than four years and never had a bad experience, so I expected the transition to be smooth.
My biggest concern was with a particularly finicky plugin that had the potential to run incredibly heavy, overload the database, and cause the site to timeout and crash. There was lots of legacy data associated with this plugin, so switching to another would not be easy.
The WP Engine Onboarding team ran a battery of tests before we went live, and sure enough, that plugin showed errors and eventually took the site down each and every time. Working together we were able to narrow down the issue and I was able to locate a filter to turn it off.
Though the code to remove it was simple, this was a huge discovery. It gave me, and my client, confidence that the site would perform as intended once it went into production.
With WP Engine, BrainPOP has a team of experts available 24/7 to help troubleshoot and fix any issues that arise. And the site is fast and on a managed WordPress hosting platform that offers a number of helpful tools, such as staging. We’ve found a lot of value in WP Engine’s staging environment, which makes it easy to develop and test a site before going live.
Overall, the move to WP Engine was amazing. It was a great experience, so much so that we were confident to go live in less than a week. And the launch was a success.
Want to read more stories from WP Engine customers? Each weekday in November we’ll unveil a new customer story as part of our WP Engine Customer Spotlight series.
Often websites show their terms of service and privacy policy before allowing the user to use their services. Recently, one of our users asked if it was possible to add terms of service agreements for WordPress user registration. In this article, we will show you how to add terms of service agreement in WordPress.
Who Needs to Add Terms of Service Agreement in WordPress?
WordPress can be used to create almost any kind of websites. In order to fulfill legal requirements, some website owners may need users to agree with their terms and conditions.
These terms and conditions may protect site owners from unnecessary legal troubles in the future. Websites that handle personal information, forums, eCommerce and membership websites, or websites publishing content intended for mature audiences can all benefit from this action.
One way to fulfill this legal requirement is by simply adding a terms of service page and adding a link to it in your website’s footer. However, in many cases, you may need users to agree before they can proceed.
Let’s see how you can easily require terms of service agreement in WordPress.
Adding Terms and Conditions Agreement in WordPress
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Agreeable plugin. Upon activation, you need to visit Settings » Agreeable to configure the plugin settings.
Start by providing an error message that users will see when they don’t check the agree box. After that, you need to choose your terms of service page from the drop down menu.
If you haven’t already created one, then you can head over to Pages » Add New to create your terms and conditions page.
Please note that the plugin does not generate your terms of service page. There are online tools you can use to generate a generic terms of service page based on your site’s requirements. However, we recommend that you hire an attorney to review your terms of service and privacy policy (see: 10 biggest business mistakes entrepreneurs make)
Once you are done, make sure that you publish your terms and conditions page.
After publishing your terms of service page, come back to Agreeable settings and select the page from the drop down menu.
Next, you need to enter the text users will see with the terms of service agreement checkbox under the message field. You also need to check the box to remember user’s agreement for 30 days. Doing so users will not be bothered to check it every time they visit.
Agreeable plugin comes with two ways users can read your terms of service page. They can simply click on the link, and it will open in a new tab where users can review the terms and privacy policy. You can also choose to open the terms page in a lightbox popup.
If you want to use the lightbox popup, then check the box next to active under the lightbox options. You can also choose text and background colors to be used in the lightbox popup.
Finally, the last section on the settings page allows you to choose where you want to display terms and conditions checkbox. You can choose to display it on login, registeration, and comment forms.
If you are using a front-end login page or widget, then the plugin will automatically show the terms agreement checkbox.
Don’t forget to click on the update options button to store your settings. You can now visit login, registration, or comment form to see terms and conditions checkbox in action.
We hope this article helped you add terms of service agreement in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to add age verification in WordPress.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
When it comes to judge about a website we usually take a number of factors into account. We look at its content, layout, speed, navigation, colors, images, font and readability, etc. These aspects do matter when we first come across a particular website, but there’s still one simple, yet very important thing, that we do pay very much attention to.
To say WordPress developers are excited about the WordPress REST API would be an understatement. It’s not uncommon to hear it referred to as “groundbreaking” or “game-changing.” It’s the subject of countless blog posts and articles; there’s even a 64-page ebook about it. And with its upcoming addition to WordPress core, the buzz will only intensify.
Non-developers, however, may wonder what all the fuss is about.
In this white paper, Torque contributor Nick Schäferhoff takes a high level look at why the WordPress REST API is such a major advancement for WordPress and why less technical folks should be just as excited about it as developers.
In this white paper, you’ll learn what makes the WordPress REST API so important, even for non-developers. It will answer all of your questions about the WordPress REST API, including:
What is an API?
What do REST and JSON stand for?
What does the WordPress REST API mean for the future of WordPress?
At the rate WordPress is growing, it’s impossible to promote all of the awesome little bits and pieces it contains, which means that some features get overlooked.
In this post, I hope to show you at least a few things you don’t know about everyone’s favorite CMS. Get ready for awesome!
1. Paste to Make a Link
This one blows everyone away because so few people seem to know about it. When in visual mode in the post editor, you can select some text and paste to make the selected text a link. Usually, you would expect the selected text to be replaced with a link but not so in WordPress.
Time savings ahead!
Copy and paste to make a link
2. Delete the Post Name to Regenerate It
If you rename a post before it is published, you’ll generally want to edit the link to make sure the post name follows the post title. If you click edit and just delete the whole thing the post name will be regenerated based on the current title.
Stare in awe at the power of WordPress.
Changing the post name
3. Screen Options Are per User
Screen options may be something you already know about, but probably don’t take advantage of. They are not only saved in cookies and in the database but are stored per user, which means that you can set up a completely different layout for yourself than others would see.
The cookie-database saving means that you can set up a specific layout on one computer and then log in from a different device and still see your own layout. This isn’t very well-communicated in the admin, which is why users seem to be afraid to use it.
WordPress Screen Options
4. Markdown-Style Shortcuts
Since WordPress 4.3, you can use markdown-like syntax to make your writing a lot faster. Stars and dashes make lists, hashes make titles and so on.
Take a look at the announcement for more details on how to use this feature.
Editing Shortcuts
5. Multi-Page Posts
You can use the tag to split content into multiple pages. WordPress will take all of your tags and generate the pagination based on them.
That said, I personally really,really dislike multi-page posts. The option is there if you want to use it, nonetheless.
6. WordPress Has Image Editing Power
Just like magic, WordPress can perform basic image editing tasks like rotating, cropping and resizing. No filters just yet, but this feature is pretty useful if you need to rotate an image the right way up quickly.
Select an image and click on the edit image link near the image thumbnail in the details section and off you go.
Image Editing In WordPress
7. WordPress Has a Filesystem API
Here’s one for the developers out there. The Filesystem API was created back in WordPress 2.6 to handle the auto-update features.
This is not one of those systems you’ll use every day, but when you need it, it’s nice to know there’s something in WordPress core to help you out.
8. Terms Now Have Metadata
As of the latest 4.4 release of WordPress, taxonomies now have metadata. Awesome!
This includes a new wp_termmeta table complete with get_term_meta(), update_term_meta() and all the other usual suspects.
You can read all about it in the core developer teams 4.4 Taxonomy Roundup post.
9. Embed Third Party Content by Pasting a Link
WordPress uses oEmbed to allow you to embed Tweets, Vimeo and Youtube videos, Soundcloud and all sorts of other fun things in your content. In fact, you can just paste a link to the resource in question and it will be converted to an embed for you.
When version 4.4 is released, WordPress will become an oEmbed provider, so as long as you are running 4.4 and so is the blog you want ot target, you can even link to other WordPress sites’ content in this way.
Embedding Content With oEmbed
Do you know any cool hacks or obscure features in WordPress? Share your tips in the comments below.
One minute you’re sitting in your lounge room watching Peppa Pig with your three-year-old daughter while trying to manage 20 or so support staff from your laptop, the next minute you’re eating bacon-avocado ice cream somewhere in Arizona. When you work with WordPress in a distributed team, this is how you roll.
For the past three years, I’ve headed up the support team here at WPMU DEV, working out of my living room in UK where my daughters (I also have twin two-year-old girls) and my wife (who watches cheesy soap operas) keep me company. Working in a distributed team is awesome – it can be diverse and enables you to connect with all kinds of people around the globe online. The downside is the isolation. If you’re a remote worker, you know what I mean.
It can be lonely, even when you’re surrounded by your family every day. Talking shop with family just doesn’t feel right.
So this year I decided to shake up how I work, or should I say where I work. For years, I told people my job allowed me to work from anywhere I wanted, but rarely did. I suppose you could say I became a prisoner in my own home, which is awesome… for a hermit! My solutions: random workcations.
Me with Michelle Shull and Michael Bissett from our support team in the US.
Back in JuneI joined some other WPMU DEVers at WordCamp Europe in Seville, Spain. It was a brilliant trip and I met so many great people, and since then I’ve migrated from working in my living room couch to working in coffee shops, McDonalds – pretty much anywhere with wifi or a decent 3G signal to tether on.
While these random work locations allowed me to socialize with people I’d never met before, I longed for a little more, and that’s what pushed me to start attending more than one or two WordCamps each year. Just this year so far, there have been more than 70 WordCamps held around the world, with another 5 or so to go, including the inaugural WordCamp US in Philadelphia.
To cut a long story short, this post is about how I got off the couch for a road trip across the south of America, hit up three WordCamps and met a whole lotta amazing and smart WordPress folks.
Hitting the US
On September 9, I loaded my bags into my car and was both excited and a little sad to leave my family for a three-week trip, taking in WordCamp Dallas/Fort Worth, WordCamp Las Vegas, and WordCamp Tampa.
WordCamp Dallas/Fort Worth
Dallas (#WCDFW) was my first stop on the tour. Touching down, the first thing I noticed, apart from the pointless automated machines in passport control!) was the heat – it was a scorcher!
I had the pleasure of meeting up with Michael Bissett, one of our support guys, for the first time in real life (IRL?). We spent the next few days working out of Starbucks and the Airbnb apartment we had rented. We also shared some great conversation whilst eating awesome BBQ, naturally.
On the morning of WordCamp Dallas/Fort Worth, I found a familiar and friendly face, Mendel Kurland from GoDaddy who mixes with WordPress folks as one of the company’s Evangelists. He quickly thrust a box of WordCamp swag into my arms, not for me, just to carry so he didn’t have to juggle or make multiple trips. Apparently he’s lazy like that! But seriously, Mendel is awesome. Not only did he give me a free drone at WordCamp Europe, he also single-handedly converted my opinion of GoDaddy. I know, crazy, right?
Our CTO Aaron Edwards and Michael Bissett from our support team.
We also met up with Aaron Edwards, our CTO, at the WordCamp. It’s funny meeting Aaron. For many new staff members at WPMU DEV, their first impression of Aaron is that he’s a little scary, when the truth is he’s like a big, soft, cuddly teddy, whom, may I add, I didn’t cuddle for fear of making things weird.
We signed in, grabbed our t-shirts, chatted with a bunch of great folks and then hit some of the sessions to listen to the speakers.
One thing I often find with WordCamps is that they don’t go technical enough, the presentations often cater to beginners. Where they shine for me is networking and just getting to know people. I like to find out how other companies manage support, how people perceive companies like ours, and how they like their call for help handled. Sometimes, I also bump into WPMU DEV members, which is both thrilling and kind of scary!
WordCamp Dallas/Fort Worth was only one day, which was slightly disappointing. It was too quick! I chatted briefly with Corey Miller from iThemes and only just managed to say hi to Lisa Sabin-Wilson from WebDevStudios. I had hoped for more time to chat with both of them, to try and pick their brains and pull from their experiences. Sometimes when talking to people of this caliber, you can get a fresh perspective on how to handle certain issues and experiences and get ideas of what might or maybe might not work better. I also love telling people about what we’ve done and are doing at WPMU DEV. For example, our support area looks like a forum, but behind the scenes it’s much more!
I thought, never mind, I’ll catch them later at the afterparty for a chat. The problem was, the afterparty was loud, as most are, and people get drunk, so whilst the conversation is free-flowing, it’s not always the right kind. Plus, time ran far too quickly and it was all over before I knew it. I’m off to Philly for WordCamp US in December so hopefully I’ll get another chance to pick their brains then if they are going along.
Me and developer David Morefield.
I also love finding out how people who work remotely balance their work life, homelife, and social life, especially the workaholics.
There were lots of people from 10up, iThemes and Crowd Favorite at WordCamp Dallas/Fort Worth. I’ve noticed lots of 10up employees at other WordCamps and it’s great to see companies getting out there and socializing – it shows business confidence in WordPress and the future it holds.
WCDFW came and went far too quickly and during the Uber ride back to our apartment after the afterparty, we made friends with the driver. I like to talk, apparently! Over the next few days, I continued to hang out with Michael, Aaron and his lovely wife Keisha. Oh, and the Uber driver a couple of times, too! Those few days basically involved working and eating lots more BBQ.
I uploaded many, many photos to Instagram of delicious BBQ goodness.
WordCamp Las Vegas
WordCamp Vegas, aka #WCLV, was the second stop on the road trip for Michael and me. This is also where we met up with Michelle Shull, another support star at WPMU DEV. Again, the next few days involved work and BBQ, often at the same time. Are you starting to see a pattern here?
WordCamp Vegas was one of my most favorite WordCamps – it just felt easier to meet people and have a chat. The event was held at The Innevation Center and the location was awesome. Well, the tables were. I want one, no, I need one!
I met a whole bunch of people in Vegas, including Shayda Torabi (WP Engine), Ben Fox (Sidekick.pro, FlowPress and WP University), Michael Tieso (Woo), Clancy (GoDaddy) and Kari Leigh Marucchi (Found Art Photography). Like WCDFW, WordCamp Vegas didn’t have a contributor day, but there was a second day of presentations, which was awesome. Shayda’s talk on the first day was about biting the bullet and socializing with people and making lasting relationships. Maybe it was this talk that set up an environment to foster interpersonal relationships.
I hate to say that WordCamps are cliquey, but WordCamps do feel cliquey, especially when you’re on your own. After chatting with attendees at a few WordCamps I’ve been to, many people feel the same way and I can see why – you’re essentially meeting lots of new faces and sometimes the odd WordPress celebrity. When people are stood together, it almost feels like school again, ya know – you don’t want to approach the popular kids while they’re in a group.
My words of advice are to break free, just go stand with them (in a non-creepy way!) and say hello, smile and when the opportunity arises jump in and join the conversation, just don’t hijack it! It’s tougher than it sounds, I know, and you can feel socially awkward at times, but just remember that it’s not a dream and you are still wearing all your own clothes – I hope!
My favorite thing about WordCamp Vegas was getting to know people – forget the talks, make it your aim to connect with other WordPress people, other real life human beings who you might otherwise never normally meet. Okay, don’t completely neglect the talks, they’re important, too! I guess what I’m saying is that WordCamps are more than just the sessions you can attend and what you can learn about WordPress – they’re also about the people and the community, which we all thrive upon, and it’s important for everyone to take part in that, even if it’s just a small part or just at WordCamps.
With WordCamp Vegas done and dusted, Michael, Michelle and I set out for the long drive to Tampa, all 2320 miles of it.
Of course, we stopped along the way. One of our first pitstops was in Phoenix where we met up with another WPMU DEVer, Joshua Dailey from our video team. Josh introduced me to bacon and avocado ice cream. Yes, you read that right. It was… erm… different. I kind of enjoyed it in a weird way.
A long and tiring journey then ensued. We hit El Paso and camped out there for a while, journeyed on to Austin and hung with Ronnie Burt from our sister site Edublogs, chatted about life, politics and the usual, work. We also indulged in some tacos for breakfast. I really enjoyed the long hours of driving – it was so relaxing, especially at night when everyone in the car was asleep and I could simply think and occasionally sing – it was a road trip after all! That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the company of the others, but it’s nice to be alone with one’s thoughts.
New Orleans was the next stop on our journey, a place is famous for its food and I love food! I tried fried alligator for the first time and enjoyed it. It has a texture like squid but tasted almost like chicken with a hint of the typical fish experience.
WordCamp Tampa
Our final stop was Florida for WordCamp Tampa. The first thing I’ll say about Tampa is OMG… I didn’t mind the heat so much, but the humidity!
Me with contributor Richard Tape and CalderaWP developer Josh Pollock.
After making some good connections at WordCamp Vegas, and based on the fact I enjoy talking to people, I decided to make this WordCamp about getting to know the other attendees and letting them know more about WPMU DEV and me. We’ve shared our successes and failures as a company and how we dealt with them.
The WP Engine team were like paparazzi at both WordCamp Vegas and WordCamp Tampa! It felt like around nearly every corner I turned there was a camera – I have no idea how much footage they caught of me, hopefully little! In retaliation, I stalked them with my camera and the result was a few embarrassing photos and some funky dance moves.
After WordCamp Tampa ended, Michelle went home and Michael and I just hung out. We even went to Bush Gardens and spent a day having pure fun, no work. I love rides and he does too, now!
Coming Up: WordCamp US
The next WordCamp for me will be in December when I hit up the first ever WordCamp US in Philadelphia on December 4-6. Our CTO Aaron will be one of the speakers at the event. Can’t wait!
If you’re in Philly, come chat to me! Let’s hang out and talk about WordPress. In fact, if you’re there before and after the event, you might even want to join some of us to work, or maybe just grab a bite to eat – I’ll be updating my Twitter account to publicly invite people to come meet up. We (read: I) love to talk!
See you at WordCamp US!
Many WPMU DEV staff members go along to WordCamps around the world. If you see us in a WPMU DEV t-shirt, say hello! If you work remotely and have a similar experience to mine, share your story in the comments below. I’d love to hear from you.
Have you ever wanted to add an event timeline on your site? Recently, one of our users wanted to display a vertical timeline of events that has an interactive experience. In this article, we will show you how to add beautiful event timeline in WordPress without changing your theme.
When and Who Needs Timeline Posts in WordPress
As the name suggests, a timeline is a visual representation of time as a line.
In web design, it is often used to display a timeline of events with images, text, video and other form of content to provide a visually appealing and highly interactive user experience.
Companies use timeline to display their historical information. Personal site owners can use it on their about pages or even for their blog page. If you run a travel or photography website, then you can display your photographs in a nice vertical timeline that shows your journey.
If you run an event website, then you can use the timeline to live blog your event or add posts about past events.
How To Add a Timeline in WordPress
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Timeline Express plugin. Upon activation, you need to visit Timeline Express » Add New Announcement to add your first announcement or event.
Simply provide a title for the announcement or event, then select color, date and icon. Timeline express comes with beautiful Font Awesome icon font built-in.
Next, you can provide an announcement image which will be used as the banner. This image should be at least 650px wide or larger. Below that you will find the post editor where you can enter further details about the announcement. You can add images and videos as well.
Once you finish adding your announcement, you can publish it. Repeat the process to add a few more announcements.
Displaying Timeline on Your Website
After you have created a few announcements, it is time to display them on your website. Simply create a new page in WordPress and give it a suitable title. Add the shortcode [timeline-express] in the post editor and click on the publish button.
That’s all you can now visit the page to see the timeline in action.
We hope this article helped you add events timeline in WordPress. You may also want to see our guide on how to add Google calendar in WordPress.
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