North York Meetup site clinic notes from September 17

This September’s North York ‘fix-your-site’ Meetup had a great turn out of new and old faces with over 35 people RSVPing and over 20 WP’ers participating. Apologies for these notes being late; Our WPToronto.com organizing team has our experts review all posts for accuracy before they get to you and I have been busy trying to … Read more

WordCamp 2018 Topics Survey Processing Challenge

The above screenshot is the first results from processing the WordCamp Toronto 2018 Survey that many Meetup and Toronto WP users may have filled in. This survey is intended to help identify what are current topics of interest to WordPress users for the upcoming TO WordCamp 2018 but also to provide Toronto WordPress meetup organizers … Read more

WordPress Toronto North – Let’s Fix Your Site #11

We had a good turn-out of over 20 people at our monthly August Meetup. Drew Mathers led the session and our group, that was now full of new faces, really stepped up to help answer questions and offer suggestions. It’s great to see that when our resident experts are away that our community comes through … Read more

West End WP Meetup – Aug 15 Website Grading

The West End Meetup was moved  into a new room instead of the palatial City Council Chambers at Etobicoke Civic Centre. Unfortunately, your organizer was so busy figuring out how to work the electronics in the Main Lounge, he neglected to post a notice that the meeting had been moved to the front of the … Read more

Group Update: WordCamp Toronto 2018, open organizing, and a call for volunteers.

Hello WordPressers!

We’ve got a handful of exciting announcements this week. But first: congratulations to our friends in Niagara for hosting their inaugural WordCamp this past weekend. It’s great to see more local WordCamps popping up on the official schedule.

Now, speaking of WordCamps…

WordCamp Toronto 2018

We’re excited to announce that WordCamp Toronto 2018 (#WCYYZ) is a go. Join us for a day of WordPress on Saturday, December 1st at the North York Civic Centre, pictured above.

Local community is our priority, so we’ll be looking for speakers from around the GTA and neighbouring regions. Expect more details to come on that, and our call for sponsors and volunteers, in the coming weeks.

Check out the #WCYYZ 2018 website

A more transparent organizing team

In addition to running a leaner WordCamp with a tighter focus on community, we’re also taking steps to be more transparent & inclusive in how we organize events. To that end we’ve spun up a new P2 site at organize.wptoronto.com.

We’re using this site to discuss plans for WordCamp Toronto 2018, but it’s also the go-to site for WPToronto planning in general. If you’d like to get involved with our group planning, this is the place to do it.

Join the planning discussions on our new P2

A call for more volunteers

Previous updates have mentioned that we’re looking for volunteers to help with the meetups. We’ve just published a volunteer application form to collect more details about potential volunteers and what they’re interested in.

Our group organizers currently include Kristine Black, Alex Sirota, Robin MacRae, Kiera Howe, Dan Stramer, Jacques Surveyer, Jeremy Choi, and myself. While we’re a bigger team than in the past (yay!), we’re still lacking a diversity of views & experiences that reflects Toronto.

Help us make WPToronto even better. If you’re interested in joining us, fill out the volunteer application form. If you’d rather give us feedback about what we can do to improve, please send us a message.

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Group Update: WordPress 4.9.8 released

Hello WordPressers!

It’s a civic holiday, our summer is in full swing, and the heat is very much on. So there’s not a whole lot happening in terms of local events. That said, there’s a lot to share from around the web this week.

First up, in WordPress: 4.9.8 just dropped, bringing us a new Gutenberg prompt in the dashboard. If you’re not ready for Gutenberg yet, use the Classic Editor plugin to keep the existing editor, or use Gutenberg Ramp to enable Gutenberg for specific post types. If you haven’t tried Gutenberg yet, the official info page on WordPress.org now includes a front-end demo.

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Group Update: New volunteer opportunities + getting ready for Gutenberg

Hello WordPressers! Our revived weekly update continues with a slight tweak to the format. We’re now incorporating web & tech events alongside upcoming meetups & WordCamps. Also this week: Our presentation meetups revive in September, but we need speakers; WordPress 4.9.8 is on the horizon, inching us closer to 5.0 and the new editor; more … Read more