It’s best to read the notes in the “Notes on slide x” tab so that everything makes sense! I also link to some of the plugins I used at the end.

Amazingly, the presentation features on the SlideShare home page today along with a couple of other presentations from WordCamp UK! See the “featured” section in the right hand column. Woo Hoo!

I have still to finish my write-up of the weekend, but will hopefully get that done ‘real soon’.

As the tickets did not completely sell out, we are making the last few available on the door, as we did last year.

You must email me (mike at my domain ) to reserve a ticket, and then turn up on Saturday morning with your £30 cash.

To recap, WordCamp UK is this weekend, July 17th and 18th, at the Manchester Metropolitan University Business School which is in Manchester city centre, a few minutes walk from the main Piccadilly train Station.

There are four simultaneous tracks : General & user, Specialist & developer, Miscellaneous & spontaneous and a ‘Genius Bar’ (a range of WordPress experts available to advice attendees on a one-to-one basis).

I look forward to seeing you there.

Tickets are on sale now just £30. That’s £30 for two full days of meeting fellow WordPress users, publishers, designers, and developers.

The unconference is being held on the weekend of July 17th and 18th at the Manchester Metropolitan University Business School which is in Manchester city centre and just a few minutes walk from the main Piccadilly train Station.

There are four simultaneous tracks this year: General & user, Specialist & developer, Miscellaneous & spontaneous and a ‘Genius Bar’ (a range of WordPress experts available to advice attendees on a one-to-one basis).

I’ll be there, of course, and will be presenting on Sunday. I’ll probably hang around the Genius bar at times too. It will be a great weekend, if you are a WordPress user, developer, or designer, or are just considering using WordPress, you should come along.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Now WordPress is a grown up CMS capable of much more than just blogging, but I noticed that one of the key points of that release still holds true.

New Administration Interface — We’ve made it as simple as possible, and no more.

I’m eagerly looking forward to the 3.0 release, that is just around the corner.

In it,  Gurbir Singh of astrotalkuk interviews Matt and I.  We discuss the history of WordPress,  the open source philosophy behind it,  a little about our backgrounds, fame, and… astronomy.

Go watch the interview, it’s pretty cool.

It was seven years ago that I made the the comment on Matt’s blog that started the whole thing off.

These days WordPress celebrates its birthday on May 27th, the anniversary of the first WordPress release.

I’m really looking forward to the future WordPress, especially the new merged with mu version.

Update: I accidentally left this post in draft mode, so I guess it didn’t appear at the right time.

My own session got off to a poor start with technical difficulties. Eventually solved, but it threw me a little. I didn’t manage to fill my 1 hour slot, but it seemed to go down well enough. I got some good questions and feedback later.

It was great to see Matt again after so long. We were both interviewed and filmed after the last session by two different people, and I look forward to seeing the recordings.

I then went for a great meal with Matt, Westi, and a small group of people and it was really nice to just chat and chill with a fantastic bunch.

I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.

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.