So this is where the new Better Planet plugin comes in. Oli Dale went to work and created a plugin that not only offers up a fresh feed for your dashboard, but comes with a Twitter feed and an actual RSS feed that you can put into your content aggregation tool of choice. So how is it you ask? Worth your time I reply…it’s a relevant feed of WordPress specific content pulled from 30 different sources. your favorite WordPress related site not represented in that feed ( Cough, Cough)? Then you can nominate it for inclusion in the  feed and a vote will be held once a month and the top 2 sites will get included…it’s kind of like Thunderdome, but for WordPress sites.

This is a plugin worth checking out and you can download it from the repository here.

For this tutorial we are going to create a new user role called “Demo Role”. For the sake of this tutorial, all we are going to allow people with user role to do is the following:

• Publish Posts
• Edit Posts
• Delete Posts
• Publish Pages
• Edit Pages
• Delete Pages
• Switch Themes

So now that we have defined what we want the capabilities of this new user role to be, let’s get down to the business of creating this new role.Once you’ve downloaded and installed the plugin, you will see the User section in your WordPress dashboard has expanded a bit to accommodate the new functionality of the plugin. You now have the ability to not only create new user roles but edit the existing ones as well. We will stick to creating our new Demo Role for now.

When you click  ” Add New Role”  you are presented with the screen that you will use to create our new role. After filling out the required fields for the Role Name and Role Label, you then choose the capabilities the new role has by checking the corresponding boxes nest to the function you wish to enable. Based on our role definition above , your screen would look like this:

Once you have chosen the capabilities you wish to grant for this role, simply click the “Add Role” button at the bottom and your new role is ready to be applied to users.

If you wanted to test out the new role and make sure it works as you envisioned it, simply add a new user with that role and log in as them ( make sure you aren’t changing your admin account, otherwise you won’t be able to log back in as an administrator). As you’re setting up your new user, you will see the newly created role is now available in the drop down box where you assign roles to new users.

Now, Simply log out of your site and log back in as your new user. If all has gone correctly , you should now see a stripped down list of options available in the dashboard to this user as seen in this screen shot to the left. And just like that you have created your very own custom roles inside WordPress.

So whats the topic you ask?

Deconstructing the Loop- ask almost any beginner developer and one of the first hurdles they struggle with overcoming is making sense of this thing called ” The Loop”. What is it? How do I get it to work? Do i need to take a class in PHP before I can use it?

So in my presentation, which is geared to power users and beginner developers, I’ll explain, in plain English, what The Loop is, what it does and some of the basic things you can do with it. It’s a topic that could take the full time allotted and these types of sessions always seem to lead to all kinds of questions, so I’ll make sure to balance the time and get to all your questions, if possible.

I’m looking forward to seeing everyone out at the event, and hopefully I’ll run into some people Io met there last year for a drink!

here is the link so that you can download the slides from my session Deconstructing the Loop-WCVIC2013

A few times I have passed along the link to a great session to a student of mine or someone whom reaches out to me looking for some help in a particular area, so i thought why not share those links with my readers here at WPTeach!?

First up is a session presented by Ben Metcalfe, co-founder at WPEngine, on Optimizing WordPress for Speed and Scale, delivered at WordCamp Boston this year. there is lots of great info and tips on how to get the most out of your WordPress installation, regardless of who you are hosting with.

So sit back, enjoy and prepare to learn!

Seriously though, the call for speakers for both WordCamps happening in Toronto this year is now open and we are looking for Speakers of all types.

For the WordCamp on Sept 29-30 ( which we affectionately call ” end user camp”), we are looking for speakers to fill the following streams:

WordPress 101 (Working with WordPress Out-of-the-Box)
New to WordPress? Launching your first website? Jumping into the uncharted waters of blogging? The WordPress 101 stream is a crash course that will take you through the basics of WordPress. Participants in this stream will learn: how to navigate the WordPress dashboard; strategies for writing content; best practices for building a web presence; etc.
This stream is intended to serve both WordPress.com and WordPress.org users.
The focus is less on customization and more on how users can make the most of WordPress with minimal tweaks to the software.

WordPress 102 (WordPress.org, Plugins & Themes)
Participants will learn how to find a good web host, install & secure WordPress, install WordPress themes & frameworks, and how to customize themes.
This stream is intended to serve those who want to create a custom website experience, without learning how to write code!

WordPress 103 (Improving Performance & Using Analytics/Metrics)
Take your WordPress site to the next level with the WordPress 103 stream. Participants will learn about advanced web metrics, webmaster tools, page optimization (speed), premium plugins, WordPress multisite networks, and more.

You can submit your presentation idea by following this link:

WordCamp Speaker Submissions

If your looking to speak at WordCamp:Developers happening Nov4-5 in Toronto you can submit your presentation at this link:

WordCamp Developers Speaker Submission

On behalf of the organizing team for both WordCamps, we are looking forward to receiving your submission and your assistance in helping make our WordCamps a huge success!!!

Jetpack Comments have arrived!

Released this past Friday, Jetpack (an Automattic plugin) now features Jetpack Comments. This is a very positive step up from the default comment system that comes with WordPress as this allows site visitors who wish to leave a comment using one of their social networks as a registration, eliminating the need to create  yet another new account/profile. Visitors can now leave a comment as a guest, or can choose to use their WordPress.com, Twitter or Facebook accounts to identify themselves.

Great feature add to a plugin that is continually showing signs of improvement and helping WordPress users get the most out of their site!!

This released is named “Green” in honour of guitarist Grant Green.

• Like button
• Recommendation Bar
• Comment box
• Post to an Author’s Facebook Timeline whenever they publish a new Page or Post
• Mention Friends and Facebook Pages.
• Post all new WordPress posts and pages to a specified Facebook Page
• Facebook Comments, including full SEO support

This release will help integrate Facebook into the 16.6% of the web that is powered by WordPress. By using this widget, more sites will integrate with Facebook as this widget makes it simple to tie into Facebook and doesn’t require the user to write any code. You do need to set up a Facebook App, but the settings page walks you step by step through the process.All in all, this is pretty big news. The new plugin is available now on the WordPress.org plugin directory,

Will you be introducing your WordPress site to Facebook now?