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Last month we went to WordCamp Kochi, the first WordCamp in South India. Apart from WordPress, this trip will be remembered for food. Our journey started with this tweet https://twitter.com/thecancerus/status/832455323138953216

Day 1

We started our journey from Pune to go to Mumbai as our train to Kochi was starting from Mumbai. It was 24 hours train journey from Mumbai to Kochi, and we made the most of it.

Day 2

We reached Kochi, checked into the hotel and quickly got ready to go to the volunteer's meetup.  At met the volunteers and some organisers of Kochi WordPress meetup group for the first time, we were given our responsibilities for next day. We enjoyed our dinner with other speakers and sponsors then we were back to hotel.

Day 3

We left the hotel early to reach the venue of WordCamp Kochi in time, we did our registrations and started visiting sponsor booths to collect the goodies before they get over :) Amit was volunteering at the Happiness Bar helping attendees with WordPress related problems, he was also giving a talk on Creating MVP with WordPress and shared the case study of Ask Careers who had successfully used the MVP approach to validate their idea. https://www.slideshare.net/teamphp/building-minimal-viable-product-mvp-with-wordpress WordCamp Kochi had some great line-up of speakers, we learned few things from them and we are making some changes at WPoets based on what we learned at Kochi. Hari introduced the youngest volunteer at WordCamps in India, he started blogging at age 8, and now he is just 13 years old and now builds Android apps. Afterparty of WordCamp Kochi was made special by cutting a cake for Wappu and lots of talk, but the best part was the after-after-party trip to Pai Dossa. We eat dossa after having full dinner at 12 AM in the night. I think this would the highlight of WordCamp Kochi.

Day 4 & Day 5

We went around Kochi and visited Fort Kochi & Abhayaranyam, before flying back to Pune. At Fort Kochi we had a chance to check out some of Kochi Biennale event Nithin and Abhilash helped us with sightseeing and some great suggestion as to where to go, how to and most important connecting with locals who could understand English. Here is a small list all the variety of dossa and other food items we tried at Kochi and remembered to take a click before we finished them. You can check out all the photos of the event in our facebook album. Let's thank all the organisers and volunteers for organising such a wonderful WordCamp Kochi and maintaining the high standards. We are now looking forward to WordCamp Mumbai, which is in its 5th edition and happening on 25th & 26th March 2017. If you attended WordCamp Kochi then share your experience or comments here.

Last month we went to the first edition of WordCamp Udaipur, our 5-day trip started with this tweet https://twitter.com/wpoets/status/824593025938653184

Day 1

We started from Pune to Bandra in the afternoon and reached Bandra Terminus around 9 PM. We had two-hour stay at Bandra before our train to Udaipur arrived and around 11:25 we left Bandra.

Day 2

We had awesome Poha for breakfast and for lunch we had fruits and Channa. We reached Udaipur at 3:55 PM, and were checked it at the hotel by 4:30 PM. Since both Amit & Nisha were speaking at WordCamp Udaipur our team was invited to the speaker's dinner. After a refreshing tea, we were ready to explore Udaipur, and the first place we went for was Gangaur ghat. We met with Abhishek, Vachan and rest of the gang, after spending some time with them we decide to go towards the Rass Leela hotel for the speaker's dinner. It was nearby, so we decided to walk, and for the first time, our reliance on google maps failed us. We reached somewhere in the vicinity of the hotel and we had to basically fall back to old ways of asking for directions to finally reach the venue. It was a cold night, but the lakeside view made us all forget all about the cold. We had fun eating and mingling with other speakers, volunteers and sponsors. We had a hard time finding an auto to take us back to the hotel, but overall, it was great first day intro to the city of Udaipur.

Day 3

The day of WordCamp. Amit left early for the venue, as he was volunteering and was responsible for swag distribution. While Amit was busy with swag distribution, Savita and Nisha were attending talks. Anyone coming for the WordCamp Udaipur can be forgiven for thinking if they have come for WordCamp Pune ;) as registration desk was also managed by volunteers from organizers of WordCamp Pune. During the day we also had some fun with Wappu Sa. At WordCamp Udaipur, Amit talked about rapid prototyping with WordPress, and Nisha was part of Panel on Women in WordPress. Here are the slides from Amit's talk. https://www.slideshare.net/teamphp/rapid-prototyping-with-wordpress Nisha talked about the importance of family support in her career, you should also read her heropress story. As the WordCamp came to an end, we were once again stuck with a situation of not getting any Uber or Ola to the hotel, and this time Vajrasar came to our rescue and he dropped us back to our hotel. We collected lot's of goodies from the sponsors of WordCamp Udaipur. Next, from our hotel we went to after party, we had some great discussions and dinner.

Day 4

We started the day with simple breakfast, and then we went to explore the Udaipur city, we visited a Car Museum. https://twitter.com/thecancerus/status/825557136163868672 We went back to Gangaur Ghat and had awesome lunch of Dal Batti with WordCampers from Pune and Mumbai. We took a boat ride in lake Pichola to get the awesome view of Udaipur. Finally, we went to city palace and we walked for almost 2 hours and we meet almost everyone from after party again during the tour. After city palace tour we were so tired, we called it a day and back to our hotel, this time it was easier to get a cab. Our fun filled stay at Udaipur was over. https://twitter.com/wpoets/status/825727493055328256

Day 5

We reached Bandar in the afternoon, and back to Pune by evening. Our trip to WordCamp Udaipur was longest WordCamp trip that we had taken as a team. We came back with the bunch of learnings and managed to attend all talks we were looking forward to.  It's time to thank all the organizers and volunteers of WordCamp Udaipur for making it rock, and raising the bar of organising WordCamps in India. Leave your feedbacks and comments on our facebook post.

2017 is an awesome year of WordPress community in India, for the first time in years we are going to have at least 4 WordCamps that are confirmed and at least 3 more are planned to happen in a later part of the year. Here is a list of upcoming WordCamps in the first quarter of 2017. We are excited to see the growth of WordPress ecosystem in India, are you?

In November we attended  WordCamp Kathmandu, It was the usual one day, two track event. It was one of the first WordCamp events we have attended that actually started on time. It started with Sakin, the lead organizer for this year's edition recounting the history of WordCamps in Nepal, and why they renamed this year's edition to WordCamp Kathmandu and ended with a panel discussion on career in WordPress. You can check out rest of the photos of the event at our Facebook page. Amit talked about his pet theme of being able to assemble websites, check the video of his talk below and you can watch other talks at WordPress.tv. http://wordpress.tv/2016/12/07/amit-singh-stop-coding-start-assembling-your-websites/ We hope he was able to convert at least few people to stop thinking about code, and instead start thinking about solutions. Overall WordCamp Kathmandu was an awesome experience for us, and we would like to thanks all the organizers and volunteers for putting a great show. In case you still don't know, WordCamp Pune is around the corner and WordCamp Udaipur is right after.

Last weekend we went to WordCamp Nashik, it was the last WordCamp of 2016 in India. Our experience can be summed in one word 'awesome'. It was first time that a WordCamp was being organized in Nashik, but they still managed to set a standard for upcoming WordCamps in India. WordCamp Mumbai had set the high bar on content then Nashik has set the high bar for execution. Amit was part of the business panel as well as volunteer at the Happiness bar. Even though it was a single day, single track event they managed to cover the needs of everyone. They had advanced and long talks, they had basic and lighting talks and they had panel discussions on contributing to community & starting a business. The best part was networking area, that actually facilitated the discussions, and during various breaks, people took full advantage of it. We would like to thank all the Organizers, Volunteers and Speakers of WordCamp Nashik, they have raised the bar for WordCamps in India further. For us the WordCamp ended the next day with a visit to Tapovan, MilesWeb office and awesome veg thali at Nashik coffee house.

Last weekend we went to WordCamp Bhopal, it was the second WordCamp of 2016 that happened in India. This was a rush event for us as we reached there early morning on the day of event and left by night, so we could to see Bhopal. Next year we will plan it little better :)

In most ways it was the usual WordCamp, except that it was organised by students(from Oriental and LNCT) & for students, which reminded us of WordCamp Jabalpur and we had to keep reminding students not to call us Sir. 

Another thing worth noticing was that venue sponsor for the event Laxmi Narayan College of Technology not only provided the venue but they also provided the students with a dedicated room for future WordPress user group meets.

Two of the most popular talks were by Rahul  who talked about building high quality WordPress Agency and Nirav who talked about how to become better developer, while Saurabh in his usual style become the most popular person for the day.

In true spirit of WordCamp's all the speakers were seen interacting with students during breaks and I believe attendees got most out of this event during these discussions.

Amit was one of the speakers at WC Bhopal and he talked about how lot of things can be build without writing any code in WordPress and also talked about our initiative in that direction.
http://www.slideshare.net/teamphp/stop-coding-start-assembling-your-websites

During the panel discussion on "Career Opportunity in WordPress", Amit mentioned about our hiring process, and promised to share one of our hiring test online for everyone to try.
https://twitter.com/ethicaladitya/status/779592697325744129
Over all the organizing team did a great job in making WordCamp Bhopal happen, and we would like to thank all of them for putting up a great show.

Now that WordCamp Bhopal is over it's time to prepare for upcoming WordCamp Nashik. If you haven't yet booked your ticket you should do so now.

Last weekend we went to WordCamp Mumbai. This was first WordCamp of 2016 in India, and our experience can be summed by  this tweet from Nisha. https://twitter.com/iNisa/status/709241456742035456 Day 1 We reached the venue by 8:45 AM, and watched the volunteers arrange the registration desk and got our registrations done. First talk for the day was by Shilpa Shah which set the tone for the day, all the talks on day one were good, I especially wanted to mention two talks from that day, which I think stole the show for us

1. What Customer Wants by Shilpa - Where she shared her insights on understanding customer expectations. This talk made us think about our customer engagement activities.
2. WordPress accessibility by Raghavendra - He showed us the importance of accessibility, and pointed to resources. This talk forced us to re-evaluate the accessibility of modules that we are building for Awesome Studio , and we are going to make all of them accessible.

https://twitter.com/wpoets/status/708524522748530688 Day 2 We came little late, and almost missed the first talk by Ramya, all talks of day two were aimed at users of WordPress. Suggestions by Fairy Dharawat on researching the humor and keeping your mind open for humor helps in content writing, Vijay Nallawala talking about how WordPress enabled him in reaching out to more people for providing support group to people affected by bipolar disease. Naoko shared insights on how WordPress went on to cover 70% of CMS market share despite language barrier. Though best talk of the day was from Mahangu, where he talked about the Jugaad Way of starting with development, basically the way  many of us have learned WordPress development. https://twitter.com/wpoets/status/708974088451035136 We also suggested to those attendees who found this way of development  difficult to use to try Awesome Studio plugin for WordPress. https://twitter.com/wpoets/status/708976437991112705 We would like to thank all the Organizers, Volunteers and Speakers of WordCamp Mumbai, they have raised the bar for WordCamps in India. For us day two ended with a visit to Band Stand and Bandra Fort.

In September we had announced the private beta of our Awesome Studio plugin. Since then we have received lots of feedback from our users, and based on them we made many changes to the platform and added documentation. We now feel confident enough to make it public( internally we have been using awesome studio in production for more than a year), so go ahead and download the plugin from WordPress repository and start assembling you website today. To understand the flow of Awesome Studio plugin, start by reading our overview article and checkout the list of shortcodes that you can use. Now that we have released the platform, our next challenge is to add at least 250 modules by coming WordCamp Mumbai, so that you can actually start assembling the website instead of building it.

WordPress 4.4 "clifford" is here, lets check what all cools things we will get in this upgrade.

Responsive Images

Now no need to write extra lines of code in theme for the responsive images, WordPress 4.4 handled responsive image using srcset in img html tag. Using this Browser will figure out which image to load based on client's browsers capacity, so its browsers magic now.

 Embed Everything

Till now WordPress allows to Embed external videos, tweets using oEmbed, in WordPress 4.4 you can embed posts from other WordPress sites as well. Simply dragging and dropping the link of post will do the job, it will show title, excerpt and features image as well if set.

Twenty Sixteen Theme

WordPress 4.4 came with Twenty Sixteen. Beautifully design with Mobile first principal.

For WordPress Developer and Plugin Authors

REST API infrastructure into Core

WordPress 4.4 comes with REST API infrastructure into Core, now WordPress developer can create new API or use existing API in their own applications and can include Rest API in plugins by adding custom endpoints.

Term Meta

Terms now support metadata as well which was required in most of the complex WebApps is there. Can user add_term_meta(), get_term_meta(), and update_term_meta() to play with terms.

New Objects

WP_Term, WP_Comment, and WP_Network objects are now available for more powerful coding. Comment form fields gets rearranged, now comment first comes first and then name, email etc.