WordPress conference WordCamp UK 2011 – our impressions

Our team visited and sponsored this year’s WordCamp – an annual conference about all things that are WordPress.

Here is the summary of the best moments:

1) Community

It was great to meet the community of WordPress developers, designers and business owners from all over the UK. We’ve met some rockstar WordPress designers, hardcore corders and enthusiastic WordPress fans alike.

2) Technology

WordPress constantly evolves. Only a few weeks ago, WordPress upgraded to version 3.2. The main improvements have been talked about at WordCamp and we have also described them in our previous blog post. The popularity of WordPress is proven by the number of downloads that version 3.2 has already had, not to mention the fact that around 13% of all websites on the internet are running on WordPress.

3) BuddyPress

BuddyPress is a social network based on the power and flexibility of WordPress.  We can build a social network for your company, school, sports team or niche community as easily as we are building your WordPress websites at the moment.

4) Mobile WordPress websites

While there are some clever plugins for WordPress that can render your WordPress website on mobile devices with decent results, nothing compares to a custom mobile website. The bespoke mobile version of your website, as opposed to using a simple mobile plugin, will only load the information that your mobile users want to see on their portable devices. This results in faster browsing and greater user satisfaction.

If you want to check some of the WordPress mobile plugins that were mentioned at WordCamp 2011, here they are:

WordPress Mobile Pack

WPtouch

Jigoshop

and more….

5) SEO for WordPress

WordPress is SEO optimised out of the box. However we still have some great plugins that can enhance WordPress’ default features. All in One SEO plugin is just one of them.

A few SEO tips for WordPress that we’ve collected:

Tip1: Use SEO Friendly Images plugin http://bit.ly/JrN6P

Tip2: Pagination can be an efficient way of passing page rank across a site

Tip3: Use Google Related Links tool http://bit.ly/2j0XfX

Tip4: Do as much online PR as you can: write blog posts, articles, forum replies, and interact on Social Media sites

Tip5: Use Google XML Sitemaps plugin http://bit.ly/10O1wo

Tip6: Use the following sites for automatic updates of your Social Media accounts: RSS Grafitti http://bit.ly/a0OYZC and TwitterFeed http://bit.ly/UB8sD

6) The future of WordPress

The future of WordPress seems to be bright. More and more enterprises including government organisations and non-profit companies have started to recognise the immense benefits of WordPress platform. Considering that WordPress is still relatively new, we believe that we have just begun to scratch the surface of what WordPress can become in the near future.

7) Portsmouth

Porstmouth is a very beautiful seaside city and we’ve had great pleasure exploring it while attending the WordCamp UK this year. Some photos that speak for themselves:

8 ) Conclusion

Visiting WordCamp UK 2011 was an amazing experience. We highly recommend that everyone who is interested in WordPress, should attend one next year.

Archive of  #wordcampuk twitter stream is available here.