My Experience As A Volunteer At Wordcamp Boston with Session Slides

14 Ways To Start Learning jQuery

Everyone learns things differently. As a designer, and more visually oriented learner, I have a hard time learning how to do things like programming. It took me a long time, a loooong time to wrap my head around Php, and even still I find that to be a challenge. I would love to learn it better so I could be one of those Php gurus out there, but it’s just not gonna happen people

A Fresh New WordPress Theme Design By Tweeaks

This is a new project I am working on, and it’s about time too! I have been meaning to start making Wordpress custom themes and designs for a while now, and never had the time to with all the other things I have going on. I had a reason to do it this time, and was motivated to make it the best I could, but within some requirements

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If you have your own website then you would be interested in promoting it as many places as you can on the internet. If you provide useful content, and want to get more exposure of your website, then this list is a good resource.

You can start submitting your links to is right here on Tweeaks, Community Links. Your links will show up in the sidebar as well as on the links page

How To Make A Dynamic jQuery Feature Post Slider For WordPress

I finally finished getting my new custom jQuery featured post slider working as you can see in the header of the site. It took some trial and error but I eventually managed to figure out how to get it working. I ran into issues because I was first trying to use to get the posts, but then learned about WP_Query() and that solved all my problems.

15 Stunning Manipulated Photos – Masters of Design

I can make a hundred of these lists just from the amazing images I have seen on Behance, and I just might. There are some unbelievable designers on that site that I have to really give a lot of credit for the work they do. I’d say I have better than average design skills, but there are some people out there that really push the envelope.

This list of photo manipulations is so breathtaking, I don’t know how else I can better describe them besides simply astonishing. I collected this list a while back in just one visit to Behance, and it didn’t take long to find all of these either. I know you will enjoy these amazing works of art, and creative design masterpieces

800+ Vector Tutorials For Illustrator Photoshop and Flash

Since I haven’t yet posted on this yet I thought it was about time I do. I have created other mega lists before, that are also worth checking out and bookmarking if you haven’t done that already. Since I’m not nearly as skilled with Illustrator as I am with Photoshop, I know this list will be a great resource for me personally. Once I find the time to learn a little more about Illustrator, and vector design, this list will give me more than I need to get started

How To Block Ads Effectively, Safely and Easily + Other Annoyances

adblocke Everyone gets sick of all the thousands of advertisements seen on the internet, on just about every website you visit, at any given time. Some advertisements are so annoying and sometimes you just want them gone. You may be one of the 58 million Firefox users that have installed the extension, Adblock Plus, or maybe you still use Internet Explorer for some reason, and have installed the AdblockIE. Otherwise you may use Safari, and have installed PithHelmet to block ads on your Mac. Another addon I just found out about is Adsweep, but like the others it can block a lot of ads, but not of them.

How To Use WordPress Excerpts On Your Blog Homepage

wordpress-hacks I recently came to learn how useful using the excerpt feature that is built into Wordpress. You can use excerpts if you want to show a short blurb for each post on your blog’s homepage, which I have been wanting to do on Tweeaks for a long time now I just didn’t know how to do it. Since I was doing some layout modifications, and tweaks FINALLY, I figured I should find out how to use excerpts, and I am happy I did. It’s so easy

Now that it’s over I wanted to write about how great Wordcamp Boston was. Check out #wcbos on Twitter, or #bestwordcampever if you need more proof. Or you can relive it on the live blog. I first found out about it a couple weeks before the tickets went on sale, and I immediately wanted to go. The next thing I heard was that tickets were sold out….bummer. I didn’t even know they went on sale and they were already gone. Luckily I happened to see they still needed volunteers, which I was willing to settle for even though I wouldn’t be able to see and do everything I wanted when I wanted, and I would have to do work. I just wanted to be apart of it, and I was one of those chosen to volunteer so I would be able to go after all.

Ok So What Do I Do?

I got to the Microsoft N.E.R.D. Center in Cambridge, Ma., where it was being held, at 7:00 am Saturday morning, and I was one of the people that couldn’t figure out how to get into the parking garage since it appeared to be closed until someone showed us that you just had to drive up, take a ticket and the door would then go up. The Microsoft building was completely automated apparently, and extremely cool of course. It was the perfect place to hold an event like this, and there’s probably not many places better for such a thing. After getting checked in and briefed on what we needed to do, I went to the info booth where I spent most of the morning helping people as they arrived.

The organizers for Wordcamp did such an amazing job, and were really on top of everything from what I could see. It made things for all of us clueless vollies so much easier. I couldn’t have had a better experience, except for maybe being able to see more sessions, but there’s always next year. The only real complaint I had was that my back was killing me from standing for so long at times, which made me wish I was back at the info booth helping out there, but that’s okay, I lived. I’m just glad I wasn’t one of the people who got locked in the stairway. Don’t take the stairs if you ever go to Microsoft, you won’t get out.

All in all, I’d say there was about 400 or more people who came, including attendees, speakers, sponsors and guests, all with one similar interest in mind, WordPress, and they all had a laptop, iPhone or some other device connected to the internet in hand too by the way at all times…nerds? It was really cool to see that many people who have the enthusiasm about WordPress as I do. I met and talked to so many interesting people, and got some cool swag including one of the blue Wordcamp Boston hoodies that so many people were jealous of. I might have been willing to trade them mine for the green Wordcamp messenger bags they all got, had I been offered, but I’m happy with the hoodie.

I did get to catch a few sessions during my break like Oh Oh It’s Magic: WP And HTML 5 and Lock It Up Security, as well as some others too. Overall it was a great experience and would totally volunteer again, that is if I’m unable to get a ticket. I can’t wait until next years Wordcamp Boston and would like to try and go to one before then wherever they may be held around the country this year. Until then, I will check out the slides from the sessions I missed, and continue using WordPress since it’s so awesome.

Wordcamp Boston Videos, Blog Posts, And Slides From The Sessions

Pictures From Wordcamp Boston

Here are a few shots I took, and some others posted on Flickr from event at the Microsoft Research builing. There are some really great photos that people got which you can see more of on Flickr here. I was only in 1, yes 1 picture out of the thousands that were taken by people.

Wordcamp Boston 2010

I’d like to thank @Amanda Blum and @Chris Traganos for your help, and the chance to be apart of Wordcamp Boston. It was really a great time.

Want To Learn More?

For anyone from Wordcamp who wants to learn more on how to do things or needs help with WordPress, a friend and I will be launching a website hopefully this week (if I can finish coding the theme in time) called New2WP.com. It will be a great resource to those that were in attendance there, and anyone else that’s looking to expand their knowledge of the best free open-source blogging software there is. Any requests are welcome, and we are willing to help with anything you may need. The site isn’t ready yet, but if you want to subscribe to the RSS feed, you will be one step ahead, and won’t miss a thing.

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