This past weekend I went down to Orlando to attend the WordCamp there. You’d think for a long time WordPress guy like me WordCamps would be old hat but this was my fist one.
I picked up tons of little tidbits. Here are a few in no particular order.
Forward Looking
The WordPress core development team seems to be very forward looking. While there was some talk about where WordPress has been, the focus of the presentations was definitely on where the platform is going. On the technical side the big focus seemed to be “WordPress as a CMS.” Some of the features that are either planned or were talked about included.
Custom Post Types – To allow custom options beyond the current post, page and attachment. Some examples I can think of could be photo galleries, or data entry forms.
Improved Media Handling – WordPress 2.9 will have built in oEmbed support so you can just paste the url of the content you want embeded (from supported sites) and WordPress will automatically detect the content on that linked page and display the it on your site. Not a good explanation but it will make embedding videos, etc. much easier.
Better Main Navigation Control – There was some discussion about improving the main navigation controls to make it easier to exclude pages, reorder links, and including links to non-page links (on and off site.) Matt Mullenweg asked the users which plugins they were using for that functionality. He said that one big way WordPress adds functionality to the core code is by getting with plugin authors for plugins that already do it.
Google Wave For Collaborative Note Taking
There were two tracks at WordCamp Orlando. Jesse Peterson and I were going to be attending different sessions but wanted to share notes so we could get the most from the conference. I suggested Google Wave might be a good way to do that so I shared an invite him.
In one of the early sessions Matthew Simantov saw us using Google Wave and took it a step further by creating a wave for everyone to share their notes on. It was a good idea and made it easy for folks to have collective notes from the event.
Matt Mullenweg is a Nice Guy
As the founder of WordPress I image Matt Mullenweg gets pulled in lots of different directions. Even so, he manages to do a good job of being a nice guy. I’m glad I got the chance to shake his hand and thank him for all he’s done to steer the WordPress ship. Without him doing what he’s done my company here, SuccessCREEations, Inc. wouldn’t exist.
Not bad for a guy just 25 years old!
We even got him on Google Wave Saturday. 
(photo credit: seanosh)
Orlando is a Nice Town
The more time I spend in Orlando the more I want to move there permanently. Everyone I ran into this weekend was uniformly nice. This includes the folks from Voce Communications who sponsored the event and carried through to the ladies at the front desk of the hotel I stayed in Friday night.
Even getting a full dose of the notorious Orlando traffic on I-4 wasn’t enough to dissuade me. I found a radio station that is playing non-stop Christmas music through the holidays to keep my mood up. Turns out they even stream their broadcast too! I’m listening to Christmas music while I type this. 
I fully intended on attending the after party Saturday night but in one block walk to my car I realized I was really tired and still had a 4 hour drive back home that night. I decided to plead not-as-young-as-I-used-to-be and just head home rather than to the party first. It was a rainy drive home but very much worth the trip.
All in all it was a wonderful weekend. I can’t wait until I head up to WordCamp Atlanta next month!
Having worked in social media for quite some time, I always encourage clients to use WordPress as their CMS tool. It is by far the easiest platform for SEO purposes, and developers are constantly making it easier and more functional for a variety of marketing and networking purposes.
You have right Carolyn. WordPress is a good CMS to organize your site. It has also lots of plug-ins especially built for optimizing your site
Wordpress is great for blogs. When compared to Joomla it’s much easier to use and less resource-heavy for your server. Cheers for sharing.
Wordpress is good but dont count joomla out, its getting better and better as a blog platform that can expand into a major site out of the box
I wouldn’t reccomend Joomla! myself. Every experience I’ve had with it has led to nothing but tears and frustration.
Wordpress though. That’s a system I can’t help but love.
Yes and what’s more there are now so many WordPress resources easily available online and with many themes and styles.
This is definitely going to stay for quite some time.
As a newbie to this game i have to say that wordpress is the way to go. The plug ins are awesome. There are templates for any niche. IMO you cant beat it! As far as people from Orlando being friendly its because its home to “the happiest place on earth!” Great blog. Thanks!
I am so jealous – Orlando WordCamp sounded like so much fun! I wish I could have attended this year!
its all bout web 2.0 isn’t it! – wordpress, blogger etc. its the way forward.
I went to Wordcamp Phoenix a few weeks back and it was very informative – learned alot of cool tricks and new plug-ins to use on WordPress. Thanks for the post!
Wordpress is awesome when it comes to blogging.
It really easy for any starter and professionals as well
I agree, wordpress is awesome. I read the guide in this blog and it’s really good. Mae
Excellent post, going to send this to a freind of mine thats really into this
thanks
Usally i use Joomla for my Sites, but for Blogs i use WordPress its very friendly.
Wordpress is the best Content Managment System to organize a blog or a site!
Best regards
It’s amazing how much functionality is built into a free platform like WordPress these days. All the free (and some very cheap) themes make it possible for anyone to start a functional, good looking site for less than a hundred bucks.
I’m just learning how joomla works but i’ve read about drupal and wordpress and also think that for blogs wordpress is ideal. For general websites I think joomla would be better.
I use Joomla for other website tools, but keep my blog on wordpress.
I’m excited to see the improvements coming to wordpress. From what you say about WordCamp perhaps I could learn a few things by going when it comes around to LA again.
We build all of our sites in WordPress – it offers so much flexibility and we love the SEO features out of the box. Once you start adding plugins – the ability to extend features is almost endless.
-jeff
Hi guys. I also agree that WordPress is the best platform for blogging. However, I must disagree that it is a true CMS. WordPress is designed to be light, fast loading and SEO friendly. On the other hand, if you need complete management, i.e. user management, multiple writers able to post articles with specific rights, proper links and menu management – then you still need a real CMS like Drupal or Joomla.
For those of you who haven’t tried Joomla lately, you may want to. There are now some pretty slick components and plug-ins that allow you to draw your word press blog directly into Joomla and the new SEF plugins being releases are on par with those being released for Word Press.
I am not trying to persuade anyone to use Joomla or dissuade anyone against Word Press.. Just throwing in my two cents. With that said, very interest and thought provoking post.
Jessi, you are welcome to disagree here.
However everything you mentioned there, “user management, multiple writers able to post articles with specific rights, proper links and menu management” can very easily be done with WordPress. WordPress isn’t the best choice for every single web application, though I happen to think it is the best choice for about 90% of small business websites. I’m even seriously considering Drupal for a project, as much as I hate to admit it.
No one platform is right for every possible need. That said, WordPress is still a very powerful CMS. The key is to match the requirements of the website with the capabilities of the platform.
I choise to work with wordpress because it’s very friendly with new users but also due to it’s easy and effective way to organize the articles. A great platform!
Yes. WP is the best
When I think about blog, WordPress comes first. Thanks to Matt for creating such a great stuff.
Wordpress quite literally opened up my world to web development in a whole new way. It’s handed me a career on a silver platter and the fact that they are so great with support and that developers keep the plugins fresh, friendly and up to date makes it even better.
I can’t wait for a Wordcamp to happen locally, because I’ll definitely go!
I use WordPress for my blog. Its SEO capabilities are far superb to any competitors, even Google’s Blog Platform.
I normally used to refer blog as WP to my friends. I love it a lot. I tried other blog platforms but WP is the best.
I love wordpress very much… easy to use, and many plugin inside…:)
Matt Mullenweg… thanks alot…
I’m loving WP 2.9. After having problems with the more tags in so many versions, those problems are now gone.
Wp 2.9 is indeed better
Wordpress is my first choice, joomla i find is way too complicated to use…wordpress has thousands of great themes and tons of plugins. It is especially good for newbies like me
@Sara – i’m totally opposite . i actually think Word press is more complicated to use. i guess it just depends on what you learned first and actually studied. However, i do think that joomla involves much more editing of the program and template in order to get what you want.
I wanted to build a wordpress blog but ended up learning and learning and learning about wordpress with an endless journey to reach my target
Hi!
Where do you sign up for Wordcamp? Do you have to work in the industry or can anyone that’s interested sign up?
I’m from Norway so I didn’t even know Wordcamp in Orlando existed.
I have just started using WP. liking it so far but I find Google wave a bit hard to use. Can you write something on that? It could be so helpful.
Wordpress is my first choice, joomla i find is way too complicated to use…wordpress has thousands of great themes and tons of plugins. It is especially good for newbies like me
Hi, Chris!
You made some good points here! WordPress 2.9 has an in-built Image editing option that allows you use a lot of photoshop properties. Now for any type of Image editing, you don’t’ have to entirely depend on Photoshop or hundred other tools, WordPress has a lot of those features.
I think WordPress is preferable becaus it is clear cut to use, you know where you’re at thorughout the process. I use CMS and find this ok, but some of my friends have advised against relying on this because you do not have as much control. The plug-ins for Word Press are really cool though and the sustem is constantly being updated, so you know it’s always fresh, especially when it comes to security measures.
Looking forward to earing about WordCamp Atlanta!
I’m scheduled to attend that Wordcamp last December but something really important came up that lead me to canceling my trip to Orlando, hope this year I can attend the next wordcamp.
I think image handling was one of the big plusses with 2.9…security improvements aside
I see you are thinking about WordPress as a CMS. I was wondering if WordPress MU would be better for CMS. Do you have any experience with it? I am concerned that some of the plugins will not work. I would sure like to hear your thoughts.
It completely depends on what you are trying to do. WordPress MU is designed for multiple different blogs. It can be a great way to manage several different sites so that you only have to maintain one data base making upgrades and maintenance much easier. However if you only have one site then regular WordPress is probably the better option, even if it is a huge site with thousands of pages.
Of course the code bases for MU and regular WordPress are merging in the next major release, version 3.0, due out sometime this summer. That will make things easier for folks all around.
When that merge happens expect to see the WordPress MU brand go away. Instead they will probably switch to calling it WordPress multi-blog or some such. When you really get down to it, MU wasn’t the best description because it stood for “multi-user.” That is confusing because you can have multiple users on a regular WordPress site. Really what they meant was “multi-site” or “multi-blog”.
Thanks for the post, I enjoyed it. I use Joomla but I have thought about using wordpress. Has any one out there used both?
Yes WordPress is very good to use at making of a website. Joomla is also now gaining popularity. I use only wordpress now but I am thrilled to use Joomla as well to see if there is a large difference between the two.
WordPress – the most popular platform for independent blogs. I use it on some of my projects. All good, but only at a high attendance begins terribly slow.
I have used WordPress for about 3 years successfully. I love the fact they are forever adding and expanding. I have also used Joomla, but find that WordPress is able to reach every aspect of my marketing. The plug ins and the versatile customization has made it my favorite platform.
Megan
When it come to being loved by googe wordpress takes some beating, the last wp blog I made was showing in the index within an hour, ive never seen this with any other cms.
Too bad Google shut down Wave. I’ve just started to really learn it, and was hoping more people would follow…