Last year’s WordCampUK was the first and went really, really well. I got to speak at the event, I met some great people, and for me, it was a life changing event — literally! Having listened to and spoken to a number of people who earn all or part of their living with WordPress, I decided to give up my job and work for myself.

I can’t promise it will be quite so significant for you, but I do promise you will hear some great speakers, and meet some really nice people. Some who are experts, some who are beginners, plenty in between, all of whom are fans of WordPress.

We all work together to make it a great couple of days from which everyone can learn something, be inspired, and maybe, just maybe, it can change your life too.

I have volunteered to speak again, but don’t let that put you off.

This time I am bringing the family along a day early and I’m looking forward to seeing some of what Cardiff has to offer. I’m especially looking forward to the Dr Who and Torchwood exhibitions

Tickets are now on sale, with a discount before May 31st. We are looking for Sponsors too.

Come along, all are welcome. Please book early, as places are limited.

This is not a general purpose tool. It is particularly specialized and only useful for people using the DITA Open Toolkit to generate web content.

Other developers might be interested because it does import static XHTML files and pick apart the content, extracting info, removing unwanted parts, and change others, as well as importing the body of the page into WordPress.

Take a look if you are interested on the plugin page (yes, I know an importer is not a plugin). Please leave feedback in the comments on that page.

However last year, Matt held a birthday party for WordPress’ 5th in May. May 27th to be precise, which is the anniversary of the first WordPress release.

If the birth of WordPress was the first release, then I guess I’ve been celebrating the conception. 

Regardless, WordPress has come a long way. The baby  has grown into a world beating piece of software. It’s so good I’ve bet the house on it (more of that soon).

Anyway “Happy Conception” to WordPress and I hope there are many more to come.

This year I hope we can top that and make it bigger and better. The details can be found over at Tony Scott’s site.

Note, there is a deadline for submissions of midnight GMT on Sunday 25 January 2009 so that’s less than two weeks!

A reminder of some of the new features:

• Comes with six built in ’skins’ (including the old Blue, Sand, and Winter)
• A new administration interface to configure the theme.
• Support for widgits, tags, and Gravatars
• Can be configured to have 1, 2, or 3 columns.
• Supports custom header image, including in the background
• and many more…

Go get it now!. As usual, leave feedback on the theme page please.

The theme includes support for WordPress 2.7 features, but is backwards compatible with WordPress 2.5 and 2.6

Just some of the new features:

• Comes with six built in ’skins’ (including the old Blue, Sand, and Winter)
• A new administration interface to configure the theme.
• Support for widgits, tags, and Gravatars
• Can be configured to have 1, 2, or 3 columns.
• Supports custom header image, including in the background
• and many more…

Go check it out and let me know what you think. (Leave feedback on the theme page, not here)

I forgot to mention that I am also on the Code Surgery panel on Sunday too. If you have any coding problems there is still time to submit your questions to the surgeons.

There are still a couple more hours to buy tickets. Please come along, I look forward to seeing you there.

The current running order has the panel on just before lunch, but I don’t think that’s finalised yet.

Tickets are still on sale and it’s a ticket only event. No ticket, no getting in.

Check out the all new WordCamp UK 2008 blog.

The new venue is The Studio, it is still in Birmingham, and in fact quite close to the previously planned venue. The Studio has a directions map and their main web site lists all the features. The event will be hosted in ‘Atrium Bar’ and the adjoining ‘Open’ room.

Someone kindly set up a Google Maps directions page.

For full details go to the WordCamp UK wiki.

WordCamp UK is an informal gathering of WordPress bloggers, podcasters, designers and developers based in the United Kingdom.

When? – Saturday and Sunday 19-20 July 2008
Where? – Aston University Lakeside Centre, Birmingham

I’ll be there, will you?

Find out more