UPDATE 2012-12-10: Now with links to slides!

Quick notes from WordCamp Developers Toronto 2012 Day 1. Enjoy! Click on the images to view a larger version. Please feel free to share them! © 2012 Sacha Chua, Creative Commons Attribution Licence

Creating Your First Plugin the Easy Way, Christopher Ross

Slides

Intro to the Template Hierarchy, Al Davis

Slides

User Centricity in WordPress Design, Taylor Dewey

Slides

Panel: Building a WordPress Development Business – Shannon Smith, Tom Auger, Brent Kobayashi, Dale Mugford, Trevor Mills, Marko Heijnen

Unconference: Women in WordPress – Hosted by Shannon Smith

WP Theme Frameworks: Speed Up Your Development Process, Chad Mohr

If you like these, check out:

Sketchnotes: WordCamp Toronto 2012 (End users) – Day 1

• Sketchnotes: WordCamp Toronto 2012 (End users) – Day 2
• WordCamp Toronto Developers – Recap
• Other sketchnotes

Click on the images for larger version. Please feel free to share these! You can credit it as © 2012 Sacha Chua – Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada.

Building Your Business on WordPress, Richard Martin

Malvern Red & Black Society, Shanta R. Nathwani

WordPress of 1812, Digital Duncan

Sketchnotes from WordCamp Toronto 2012 Day 1

Sign up for the mailing list at WordCamp Toronto 2012 to find out when the videos have been released, or keep an eye on wordpress.tv!

Click on the images for larger version. Please feel free to share these! You can credit it as © 2012 Sacha Chua – Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada.

Integrating Digital Marketing Into Your WordPress, Austin Gunter

Giving Back to WordPress, Mo Jangda

Options for a Multilingual Site, Shannon Smith

Securing WordPress, Victor Granic

Webmaster’s Toolkit: SEO & Web Analytics, Andy McIlwain

e-Commerce & WordPress: Navigating the Minefield, Jonathan Davis

WordCamp Toronto 2012 site, #wcto

Sketchnotes from WordCamp Toronto 2012 Day 2

Click on the image for a larger version.

Wes Bos talked about custom post types and custom fields, sharing plenty of tips on how to use Advanced Custom Fields to make the user interface much simpler. You can find his slides at http://wesbos.com/talks/wpto .

Like this? You might also be interested in another WPTO sketchnote (The Publishing Side of WordPress – Andy McIlwain). Check out my other sketchnotes for more. Enjoy!

One of the reasons why I like sketchnotes is that they’re easy to flip through and review. I’ve uploaded many of my sketchnotes to Google+, and you can click on an image there to start flipping through it.

I’ve also added a gallery view here on sachachua.com. https://sachachua.com/blog/sketchnotes/ is a quick slideshow of sketchnotes, and you can click on the selectors near the top to jump to a sketch or stay on one. What do you think? Are the transitions too fast or too slow?

(Click on the image to view a larger version.)

At today’s WordPress Toronto meetup, Andy McIlwain shared tips on brainstorming, scheduling, and sharing blog posts in WordPress. The lively discussion brought out lots of other tips, too.

The key thing I took away from the talk was that Evernote is awesome and that I should definitely look into it more. I’m also looking forward to checking out Content Rules for more writing tips and Plinky.com for blog post ideas.

After the talk, I had a fascinating conversation with Robin McRae and Ann Brocklehurst about information architecture and personal knowledge management. Lots to think about. Glad I went!

Check out Andy’s blog post below for slides and full notes. Looking forward to the next meetup!

Related links:

• Andy McIlwain’s presentation and notes: The Publishing Side of WordPress
• WordPress Toronto
• WordPress Toronto meetup page

As the de facto blogging geek in the family, I’m keeping an eye on my blog and three other (mostly inactive) blogs:

• My blog
• Friends of Manila Zoo
• The Business of Photography
• Adphoto Pressroom

I need to monitor comments that slipped through spam filtering, WordPress version updates, and so on. Fortunately, I don’t have to regularly come up with content for all four!

I wanted to make it easier to check comments on multiple sites. Instead of checking each site regularly or configuring them to send me e-mail (too much e-mail!), I used Yahoo Pipes to combine the blog comment feeds from each site into one main feed. Then I added that feed to iGoogle, along with gadgets for weather, calendar, and mail. Tada! Dashboard.

Do you manage multiple WordPress blogs? How do you stay on top of them?