DigitalFanGirl

To read/view the entire liveblogging stream from #wordcampmidatl, look in the above coveritlive box. Below are a few summaries from the Thesis Theme Customization Hack session and Wordpress SEO session and some videos.

• Thesis is a simple hook system that is essentially an API
• there are a ton of avalable thesis hooks #wordcampmidatl (now up to 48 total)
• Brad says the multimedia box is one of the coolest features. He is explaning how to customize it
• Thesis Resources (just a few)
  http://diythemes.com/thesis
  http://thesisthemehq.com
  http://thesisgallery.com
  Brad will provide Wordcamp w/ the entire presentation for wordcamp attendees to download.
  
• led by Brad Williams of WebDev Studios
  twitter.com/williamsba
  blog: www.strangework.com
  brad@webdevstudios.com
• They’re talking about the Open Hook plugin now.
• Thesis OpenHook will allow you to fully customize your Thesis installation without touching your custom/custom_functions.php file unless you just really want to!
• More information about Open Hook at http://rickbeckman.org/thesis-openhook/
• Thesis does work with Wordpress MU. Exps www.thesisterproject.com and www.awaytogarden.com
  

WordPress SEO

• SEO is not linear
• SEO Ranking Factors: keywords, technology, content, off-site promotion
• Should use Google Adwords Keyword tool before you write a blog post.
• U want 2 make it as easy as possible for spiders to crawl your blog.
• Technical SEO:Make sure code validates,things load fast, proper redirects, no broken links, 404 pgs checked
• Sitemaps are very important. it makes engines aware of all the pages on your site.
• DON’T BLOCK THE SPIDERS from crawling your site
• On-site/On-page:optimize all pgs,META tags,etc./keyword rich urls, review semantic structure on pg template
• Update content &pgs based on engine updates and changes.
• Off-site/Link development:get links from relevant authorities sites,make sure links have right anchor text
• ensure links get authority to your site,internal links spread them
• Don’t use generic text like ‘click here’, ‘view more’, etc
• Starter SEO tips:
  1. use your own domain name
  2. enable friendly urls
  3. redirect domain.com to www.domain.com and use www.domain.com in settings
  4. use robots.txt
  5. use a personal favicon
  6. create xml site maps (plugin), update it monthly
  7. add site to Google Webmaster Tools
  8. Domain vs sub-domain (sub-domains can be treated as separate domains)
  9. update your tag line and incloude your most important keyword

• Difference between Google Analytics and Google Webmasters. Analytics just allows you to see the “people” who have visited your site where Google Webmaster shows you what the spiders see. Very powerful stuff.
  
• Title Tag SEO Tips:
  1. place a blog name at the end of the title, NTO at the beginning
  2. customize w/additional keywords for display only on your homepage
  3. override title tags w/custom one (“SEO title tag” plugin)
  4. place important keywords in the beginning
  5. Don’t exceed 60 character

• URLs
  1. rewrite to contain keywords, hyphens not underscores
  2. 301 redirect from yourblog.com to www.yourblog.com
  3. maintain legacy URLs even after swithcing blog platforms

  [There are certain plugins that keep track of the history of your blog post urls]

• Internal Linking Architecture
  1. pages/tags/categories (don’t overlap names on these three parts)
  2. tag clouds & tag pages (check out UltimateTagWarrior plugin)
  3. related posts (check out Contextual Related Posts plugin)
  4. Top 10 posts (search a plugin that shows this)
  5. Next & previous posts
  6. Add Technorati tags to your posts (must claim your blog first)
  7. get onto bloggers’ blogrolls

• Internal Linking Architecture
  Tags:
  1. consistent
  2. lower case
  3. plural (ie iphones over iphone, but do a keyword search to see which is more popular-Sri recommends always using plural for ranking purposes)
  4. names, events, organizations, subjects and locations
  5. don’t use tags similar to your categories

• Optimze Your blog
  “sticky” posts
  • always appear at the top of the page
  • a way to add a keyword-rich inro copy to a category page or tag page
  • e.g. adhesive plugin
  • ping your blog (Sri uses Pingomatic)
  • don’t use permlink as a text link, use the actual title

• Summary
  
  • keyword research
  • select 1 primary keyword and 2-4 secodnary keywords
  • place your primary keyword early in your headline
  • use keywords early in your copy and throughout the post
  • use keyword alternatives and varinat formats (change word order, use long.short forms, use plural/singular, use semantic relevant keywords)
  • your posts should be 250 words at least
  • always include an image (image should include a keyword)
  • use bolded sub headline
  • use lists and indented quotes
  • use internal links
  • multi-media content: images (flickr, etc)

• Feeds
  • Feedburner
  • partial text feeds vs full text feeds (Sri prefers full texts)
  • number of items in feed (10 or more) (Sri prefers 20)
  • propogate deep links thagt drive traffic and “search engine juice”
  • allow separate feeds for each category (very important)

• Plugins
  • Google sitemap generator
  • related posts
  • customize the feed
  • handle 301s
  • manage META data
  • social bookmarking & create tag clouds
  • retweet this
  • internal links
  • SEO title tag

• More plugins: CAVEAT-don’t just keep adding plugins; choose them wisely
  • all in one SEO pack
  • paginated comments
  • Wp-PageNavi2.31
  • WWW redirect

• Tools
  • RSS feed footer http://yoast.com/wordpress/rss-footer.com
  • Pingomatic
  • 55 RSS directories
  • Twitterfeed.com
    

• FINAL THOUGHTS
  Keep the MOJO Going
  • engage with your users
  • reply to comments

  SEO is a process not a one time event
  Practice and patience are the key
  Do it often and keep up wih the engines

  Great SEO Resources:

  www.searchengineland.com
  www.seomoz.org
  www.seoroundtable.com

  Contacts:
  twitter/john_shehata
  twitter/srinagubandi

WordCamp Mid-Atlantic – Art Can Save the World Ignite Baltimore 5min Presentation from DigitalFanGirl on Vimeo.

WordCamp Mid-Atlantic – Twitter, Friendfeed and Social Tools session from DigitalFanGirl on Vimeo.

WordCamp Mid-Atlantic State of the Word Presentation from DigitalFanGirl on Vimeo.

TECH Cocktail 5 is coming back to DC and I think I’ll actually be able to make it this time. Photos from TECH Cocktail 4 looks like everyone had a blast. So I am really looking forward to this one. I’m actually excited because I see some folks on the registered attendees list  whom I’ve talked with via email, DCWW listserv and Twitter that I’ve yet to meet. So, this should be a fun event; putting faces to names.

I suggest you register fast; before tickets run out…

When: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 – 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. EST

Where: LeftBank in Adams Morgan (venue photos)

What: A “cocktail of TECH people”

Straight from the She’s Geeky blog…..

The DC Area She’s Geeky is Postponed until Fall.

We are pleased to announce She’s Geeky #4
Northern Virginia on Saturday April 18th at LMI’s facilities.

PhotoWalkDCJune2009 will take place on Saturday, June 13, 2009 at the National Zoo. (location update)

We have not yet finalized the details for the day, but we are working on it. If you would like to join the planning group, click this url http://groups.google.com/group/photowalkdc-june-2009.

Join the PhotoWalkDCJune2009 Facebook group http://www.facebook.com/groups/create.php?customize&gid=58723619946#/group.php?gid=58723619946.

She’s Geeky is coming to Northern Virginia – the DC Area.
April 18th McLean Virginia (Tyson’s Corner).
http://www.shesgeeky.org/
Early bird admission is $40 until April 1 – $45 regular until April 11 and $50 after that.
Student admission is $20

REGISTRATION IS OPEN

Online Event Registration –
href=”http://www.eventbrite.com/”>Powered by www.eventbrite.com

*INVITATION*

She’s Geeky is coming to Northern Virginia – the DC Area.
April 18th McLean Virginia (Tyson’s Corner).
http://www.shesgeeky.org/
Early bird admission is $40 until April 1 – $45 regular until April 11 and $50 after that.
Student admission is $20

We are inviting women from a divers range of industries together for a day of interactive learning and industry cross pollination.

To us Geekiness is self defined – from those with advanced degrees in mathematics, science and engineering. To skilled programmers who are in large enterprises, government or startups. To women who have taught themselves how to code the PHP on their side bars on their blog or just super enthusiastic users of technology.

Each city has a different mix of technologies – DC has a variety of fields
* the nonprofit and advocacy sectors,
* government, defense, aerospace, and intelligence
* Web portals – like AOL
* startups innovating

The range of topics discussed is diverse – in California you can see the list of sessions.
http://shesgeeky.org/wiki/Sg2009wc:Notes

————-
*How does the unconference day work?*

The sessions are put forward by the women who attend the event – and are diverse. They include expert topics about their particular expertise, hosting conversations about issues of interest both technical and personal (like how to balance work and family), exploring start-up ideas, introductions or deep dives to different programming languages or frameworks, sharing stories about what it was like to work in the early days of the industry, introduction to public speaking and many others.

Beginning at 9 AM each day, we start with a blank wall and, in less than an hour, through a highly participative process, create a full day, multi-track conference agenda that is relevant and inspiring to everyone there.

From there, we go to separate areas or rooms assigned to each topic. The session can be a presentation, inquiry about a question or discussion about an issue or technical field. or. One participant volunteers to record the proceedings.

The notes from each session are collected in the newsroom, then a book is compiled with all the notes from the conference and distributed to everyone who attended.
—————–

Sponsorship opportunities for both small and large companies are available too.

If you have questions you can e-mail us at info@shesgeeky.org

The CREATE South Conference will be held April 25, 2009 in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and I am so excited. I went last year and I had a great time, met some great people and participated in some great sessions. I blogged about my experience and posted some video I took of a few of the sessions at CREATE South. Check it out http://www.digitalfangirl.com/2008/04/24/create-conference-recap/.

Last year was the very first CREATE South Conference and I was amazed at how organized everything was. I mean, I was really impressed. All of the organizers were also super friendly, which I truly appreciated. The sessions planned were right on point as well. So, I am looking forward to attending the 2nd CREATE South Conference.

The conference registration is free for the attendees and we plan to
always keep it that way. If you haven’t already registered for this
year, please do at http://www.createsouth.org/register.php so that we
can accurately plan for the size of the turnout.

That said we have set aside today, March 19th 2009 as “Donate Day.”
We are still looking for donors and sponsors to help us meet the costs
of presenting it. If you can spare a few dollars, there is a donate
button in the sidebar of every page on our website. If your company
would be interested in sponsoring the conference or you know of one
that might, please drop a note to sponsors@createsouth.org .

Also, today in honor of March Madness we are putting on the “full
court press” for getting the word out about the conference. If you
have a blog, we’d appreciate greatly if you’d post a short note
referencing the conference. Likewise, for those of you who are users
of Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed or any other social media sites,
please make a quick post about the conference. Our goal is to get as
many interested people in the room for mutual education and
edification. We’d love it if no interested party misses out just
because they didn’t know about it.

I’m already registered…. ARE YOU???

Mark your calendars. Free Comic Book Day is coming to a local participating comic book shop near you on May 2, 2009. I cannot wait!! I’m already excited and full of glee.. The 2009 Gold Sponsor Comics were announced today.

The list:
* Archie Comics- Archie Presents: The Mighty Archie Art Players
* BOOM! Studios- Disney/Pixar’s Cars
* Bongo Comics- 2009 Free For All
* Dark Horse Comics- Star Wars: Clone Wars
* DC Comics- Green Lantern: Blackest Night #0
* IDW Publishing- Transformers Animated/G.I. Joe
* Image Comics- Savage Dragon #148
* Marvel Comics- The Avengers
* Oni Press- Resurrection #0
* Viz Media- Shonen Jump Presents: Ultimo

Don’t forget to mark your calendars!

I’m helping out some fellow MacHeads in promoting their upcoming event:

Washington Apple Pi Presents Mac Master Series

Washington Apple Pi PresentsMac Master Series at 2008-05-26

Friday 10am – 5pm
TAMING LEOPARD
Enhance your productivity and creativity using the latest Mac operating system, OS X 10.5.

Saturday 9am – 2pm
LIVING THE iLIFE
iPhone/iPod Touch, iTunes, and Apple TV including Switching 101
Get the most from Apple’s newest life-enhancing devices and resources. Thinking about switching to the Apple operating system? Find out how (and why you should).

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?
Friday: Anyone who wants to Master Mac OSX and learn to do more in less time. Knowledge of OS X is not required.
Saturday: Anyone who owns (or plans to buy) one or more of these devices, or is considering switching to Apple from a PC.

Location: Rosslyn Spectrum, 1611 N. Kent Street, Arlington, VA
(just across the Key Bridge from Georgetown; 2 blocks from Rosslyn Metro)

REGISTER NOW – SPACE IS LIMITED!
Click here to register.
FRIDAY $139; $99 WAP members
SATURDAY $99; $59 WAP members
TWO-DAY DISCOUNT $189; $149 WAP members

Founded By Sarah Blow

Me and Jessica Moss are organizing the first Northern Virginia Girl Geek Dinner. This event is for ALL girl geeks in the MD/DC/VA tri-state area. We are an offshoot of the London Girl Geek Dinners, started by Sarah Blow. The aim of these get-togethers is to provide a welcoming atmosphere and a platform for learning in an informal environment, to make technology accessible and to be of interest to all age groups and all people, particularly women. It is an opportunity for like-minded ‘girls’ to talk about technology over food and drinks

We hope that every girl geek in the MD/DC/Va area will support this event. We just started planning this event. We are looking for a venue to hold the dinner and are also looking for sponsors.

Stay connected with us:

• follow us on twitter
• continue to visit our blog.
• visit our wiki to sign up for the dinner or to sign on to sponsor a dinner

Take a look at a video from the London Girl Geek Dinner

I went to Podcampnyc and it was my first time attending a Podcamp event. I had such a great time. I drove up to Brooklyn early Saturday morning and got to Polytechnic University just in time for registration.

There were so many sessions to choose from, I was overwhelmed. I especially wanted to attend Podcampnyc for a couple of reasons. One being I am a podcaster and I wanted to meet other podcasters and learn more about podcasting techniques (both audio and video) and how to market them while building a community.

The second reason being the fact I’m truly trying to put my master’s degree to work. I have a master’s in instructional technology and Podcampnyc was also focusing on education & technology this year. So I thought it would be a great opportunity for me to attend sessions that were related to education and the integration of technology into schools and curriculum along with other educators and technologists. Turns out I was right. It was such a wonderful experience listening and sharing ideas with other educators and technologists. It was also very inspiring.

Panel discussion on Issues Concerning Eduction and Web 2.0 led by Chris Hambly (all the way from London).

Quick Notes from the Panel Discussion:

• Hilary Mason (another panel member) is a computer scientist and considers herself an accident educator. At the university which she works she has developed and incorporated: using wikis for curriculum changes and has also created courses in Second Life such as introduction to entrepreneurship and virtual Morocco.
• Session attendees talk about how afraid teachers and administrators are of learning new technologies such as instant messenger, blogging, podcasting, etc to communicate with students and other faculty members.
• There is a also a control factor. Using social media tools in education means you give a little control and independence to the student and many are not willing to do so. The perception has such been; teachers and administrators talk and students listen.
• Is it a cultural divide or is it just fear of change or does it all boil down to school systems not wanting to give up their control over what teachers and students can and cannot do?
• We also discussed how these same fears of learning something new and giving up a portion on control is found in corporations with higher level executives.

Session on How New Media Can Change Learning led by Chris Brogran and everyone else (Joel was unable to come and lead the session so Chris stepped up and did it)

Quick Notes from Session:

• Schools are still behind in technology. Many schools block services such as YouTube and Google related products like GMAIL, Google Docs, etc, which makes it hard for teachers who want to integrate these tools in their current curriculum.
• What can parents do to petition the need for the use of technology in the classroom? Many parents are willing to stand up and fight for this; they just need to know how to proceed.
• Although the challenge of using technology in the classroom to enhance learning is at the forefront, so is classroom management. Classrooms are still overcrowded, which makes it hard to manage the classroom. When teachers are spending majority of their time in class telling kids to be quiet, sit down, writing kids up and sending some to the principals’ office; everything else regarding learning gets pushed to the back-burner.
• With so many real estate developers building homes in neighborhoods and the state not building new schools to accommodate the number of new families that’ll be moving into these new homes; overcrowded classrooms will remain an issue.

Session on Podcasting Your Passion: if it works for sports fans (and it does) it can work for you led by Andrew Figgins.

Quick Notes from Session:

• We did an exercise where we broke into groups of 3, came up with a topic to podcast about and each group recorded a 1 minute podcast live on the spot. That was a blast!!!!! (tried to find the final recording of this, but no luck)

Session on New Media in the High School Classroom led by John Herman

• John is integrating new media technology trends into his media class.
• He has incorporated Google Docs where the students collaborate in research projects and write a thesis. John said using Google Docs takes away the “I can’t print my paper” or “I was absent so I didn’t do my work” factor.
• He is also using NING to build a classroom social network, which has been very successful thus far .
• His teaches 11th graders and he said they have really taken a liking to all of the new media tools he brings into the classroom.

References from the days sessions: (click on each reference to visit website)
Dana Boyd
Pew Internet: Teens and Social Media
WorldSavvy
Free Reading
Yugma
Globalgateway.org.uk
isquint
teachertube.com
iShowU
voicethread.com
Classroom 2.0
Having Our Say: Middle Grade Student Perspectives on School, Technologies, and Academic Engagement

I’m back from PodcampNYC and I am whipped. I had a BLAST though. I met some folks I follow on twitter, which was really cool. I thought the sessions were really good and I enjoyed them a great deal. There was tons to take in and I learned a lot. I did take some photos and video of some of the sessions and I have lots of notes and whatnot, so I’ll be getting all that in order over the next three days to compile all that stuff to post on the blog.

This was my very first podcamp and it was worth the drive from VA to Brooklyn. Was also my first in Brooklyn. The main thing I liked about podcamp was the collaboration and the meeting of the minds factor. There was such a high level of energy, desire to learn & share and openness that it was infectious. I can’t wait to finish compiling my photos, videos and thoughts so I can share it with you all.

I attended the CREATE Conference in Myrtle Beach, SC on April 19 and I must say it was well worth the drive. I was originally planning to go to Podcampdc, but when I saw Podcampnyc was going on April 25-26, I decided to go to that, skip Podcampdc and go to CREATE at the last minute and I am so glad I made it down there.

This was the first CREATE Conference and it was super organized. I was so impressed; with everything. They chose a really nice venue (The Myrtle Beach Train Depot), which had wifi and a very large room that didn’t make you feel like you were trapped in a jail cell. The organizers had a plethora of food for the attendees (which was absolutely amazing – super tasty), branded t-shirts, stickers, pins and these nifty little mini booklets on how to blog and create video (very creative and clever take-a-ways).

There were some really good sessions as well. I especially enjoyed the sessions on building your podcasting studio on a budget by Tee Morris, co-author of Podcasting for Dummies, social media and web 2.0 by Brian Carter of Fuel Interactive and vlogging, internet TV and video publishing by husband and wife team; Marcia Lynn and Warren Walker of DomainerTV.

The organizers did an excellent job putting this conference together and they deserve a loud attaboy. Before I left, one of the organizers said they’d be doing it again next year, so I’ll definitely be there.

Thanks to all the folks who organized the CREATE Conference.