If you’re thinking of starting a blog, or are transitioning from another platform, such as Blogger, this session will help you move from WordPress novice to quasi-geek in about an hour. You’ll learn how to get up and running, not only writing posts, but categorizing and tagging them, customizing their display on your site, and styling your theme in prime Web 2.0 fashion.

WordPress gives you the most flexibility, control, and style for publishing your blog content. With a passionate developer community, WordPress has enthusiasts worldwide writing WordPress plugins and themes and helping each other in forums. The open architecture of WordPress allows you to completely dissect the code, and rearrange and manipulate (and often break) your blog’s content in dozens of ways.

This session focuses on the technical aspects of using WordPress. You’ll learn how to install WordPress on a web host, add plugins (and what plugins to add), apply themes, write posts and pages, style your sidebar, create categories and tags, integrate multimedia (such as videos, podcasts, and screencasts), and syndicate your feed.

Additionally, you’ll learn best practices for setting up your WordPress site, such as how to choose a theme, grow your reader base, make your blog more usable, create search-engine-optimized content, and write appealing posts.

Finally, you’ll be exposed to more advanced techniques, such as adjusting your theme’s style through CSS, how the theme files interact, and how to alter PHP tags to control the display of your database content. 

All participants will receive access to their own, individual test site they can explore and play around in, as well as some step-by-step help materials and videos.

There is no ‘right’ way to use a wiki. The fantastic thing about wikis, and the reason they have been so successful, is that they are built from the ground up by the people who use them. That way, the structure of a wiki, and how it is used, comes to mirror how the people using the wiki want to structure it, how they want to use it.

On Wikipatterns.com, a growing community is using the wiki to document the patterns of wiki use present in their own wikis. The site contains a toolbox of patterns and anti-patterns, and a guide to major stages of wiki adoption that explores patterns to apply at each stage. Applying these patterns can help coordinate peoples’ efforts and guide the growth of content on a wiki, and recognizing anti-patterns that might hinder growth - can give a wiki the greatest chance of success.

This workshop/presentation will give an overview of Wikipatterns.com, explore some patterns from the site, give practical guidelines on how to apply patterns to a new or existing wiki. Attendees will also learn strategies for wiki adoption from a range of organizations, like Sun Microsystems, Johns Hopkins University, LeapFrog, and more.

Get a glimpse of the many facets of wikis. “What is the wiki, the source or the deliverable?” You may ask yourself and your teammates this question as you begin to explore wiki implementation ideas. Wikis have many content management-style aspects, so wiki as source repository has definite advantages, until you try to figure out how to slice the wiki into deliverables that resemble a book, a training session, or a user assistance file that is shipped with a software product. If you already have an admirable structured authoring environment, is a wiki then another deliverable? What about round-tripping?

Learn about intersections of blogging, information development and architecture, and just plain technical writing from writers who are producing blogs with technical communications in mind. In this panel discussion, several bloggers talk about web logs, subscription feeds, and RSS, describe blogging from their perspective, and discuss the organic growth of user communities and documentation. Each blogger has a different view point and all come from varied backgrounds and job titles. Hear stories about blogging and connect with the people whose posts you read. Ask questions about writing, content wrangling, being barefoot, or wikis.

This session will be facilitated by Anne Gentle, a tech writer and blog specialist who regularly blogs about technical communication at JustRightClick. Joining her are Tom Johnson of I’d Rather Be Writing, Darren Barefoot with the ever popular self-named blog, Darren Barefoot, The Content Wrangler himself, Scott Abel, and Scott Nesbitt and Aaron Davis who write a group blog at DMN Communications Blog.

Panelists will address these and other questions:

• I find that I have to remember that not every one has read every single post I ever wrote. So when I get a question that I’’ve already answered, I’m guilty of thinking, “Didn’t you read that in my blog?” What types of things do you think everyone should know about you that are related to your blog?
• How risky is blogging? How do you mitigate the risks?
• How has blogging helped you explain technical information to customers?
• How has blogging helped you have conversations with customers?
• What’’s the most sticky technical issue you’’ve had to resolve for your blog?
• Do you believe in the “build an online brand” concept of blogging? How have you done an online brand? What has your online brand done for you?
• How important is Search Engine Optimization when blogging?
• What is the relationship between blogging and journalism?
• Do you make any money as a direct result of your blog?
• What are some of the indirect results of your blogging?
• What was your biggest mistake with your blog and what did you do to correct it?
• And finally, what’s after blogging?