Tony Matthews

Tony Matthews may have started his web site design career with Dreamweaver, but once he used WordPress for a website makeover, he recognized a truly powerful tool. “It’s an open source content management system so no software like Dreamweaver is needed. It’s highly extensible with a huge number of plug-ins for everything from contact forms to event registration, and it’s easy to teach someone how to edit the site.”, Tony says.

In Tony’s session, Creating Your Website with WordPress, you’ll learn how WordPress works from the ground up. Topics include:

1- Why WordPress and what is a CMS? /.com and .org differences

2- Installing WP (using Bluehost control panel on my Mac)

3- The admin page: overview of the Dashboard features such as Settings, Themes Pages, etc.

4- Editing photos for the web (if the audience needs that)

5- Creating pages and custom menus

6- Themes and Frameworks

7- Plug-ins: show how to install and configure a couple of common plug-ins like Contact Form 7 and NextGen

8- Resources for learning more such as w3schools, lynda.com

Attend this session and get even more WordPress awesomeness at WordCamp Raleigh 2012 on Nov 3-4. Tickets are only $40 and you can register online now!

Syed Balkhi

Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner.  He is known for his aggressive marketing skills, creative designs, and expertise in SEO.  Syed has been in the industry for over eight years, and he has worked with some of the top brands in the industry.

A serial online entrepreneur and professional blogger, Syed will share his practical tips and tricks that will help you create a passive income out of your blog in his session How to Monetize Your Blog (A Crash Course for Beginners).  This presentation will go in-depth about the available tools and plug-ins for WordPress which can help a blogger generate a passive income through their blog.

“I think the user-interface of WordPress is fairly easy to use and understand.  It is superior to anything else that exists,” says Syed.  “Aside from ease of use, the WordPress community is the driving force for the fast growth of this platform.  With tons of amazing plug-ins and more coming out every day, this is a platform of choice for us.”

Because it can cut so much of the development time in creating a website, Syed loves the amazing plug-ins that can be leveraged with WordPress.

“Attendees will get practical advice on how to monetize their blog or any other online business by using the best available tools and plug-ins.”  Syed plans to share his own business tactics and how he has managed them successfully.

Attend this session and get even more WordPress awesomeness at WordCamp Raleigh 2012 on Nov 3-4. Tickets are only $40 and you can register online now!

Andy Stratton, an animal and arts loving dude from Maryland, is an intense web builder who specializes in WordPress and other front-end developments.  He has transformed a diverse variety of business sites into cutting-edge impressions on the web.  In his presentation on 50 Shades of WordPress, Andy opens discussion on the dark truths of their product, zeros in on what issues can potentially arise, and gives advice on how to interact within the community.

WordPress is the best platform, says Andy because “[it] has the best community, hands down.  Tons of eyes on every aspect: user-experience, security, design, functionality.  It’s an extremely clean, basic piece of software that is focused on being extended by its community.  It’s built to be flexible for its users.  I can’t think of a project for which I wouldn’t use WordPress.”

One of Andy’s favorite aspects of WordPress is “being able to leverage the administrative UI to quickly build strong, stable, extendable custom features for my clients.”  Says the web developer with an expert eye, “I’ve been able to use core API’s to quickly build and extend functionality with a better, more familiar experience than I could with any other software I’ve worked with.”

In his session on WordPress, Andy will reveal the different shades of its community/marketplace(s), some of which he says can be scary.  He will then enlighten you on how to stay aware and to be loud within the growing world of WordPress.

Attend this session and get even more WordPress awesomeness at WordCamp Raleigh 2012 on Nov 3-4. Tickets are only $40 and you can register online now!