After several successful WordCamps in Vancouver, Kulpreet got the wheels in motion for the next event, coming this winter. Last night on Twitter something magical also happened – the idea of having the event in Whistler was hatched and so planning for WordCamp Whistler is now underway.

Read Duane’s blog post for a preview, view the Facebook event, and feel free to sign up on the wiki. More details to come in over the next little while. sixty4media will once again be involved as an organizer as well as presenting.

WordPress is an open source blog publishing application powering millions of blogs worldwide.

During this year’s BarCampVancouver on Granville Island we had a sidetrack that featured WordCamp as well as PhotoCamp in the afternoon. In case you missed it, I have a small recap up on my site and here are some of the featured talks:

Andy Peatling – BuddyPress
Keith Murray – WordPress for Newbies
Brad – WordPress as a CMS
Tris – SEO tips
Lloyd Budd from Automattic – The Business of WordPress
Greg from Donat – sni.ps
John Biehler – FAlbum plugin

John also shared his top 3 most-recommended WordPress plugins, which include FeedEntryHeader, WordTwit, and Quicktag Manager.

So far I’ve had a great time at all of Vancouver’s WordCamps and we’re looking forward to the next.

It’s been a busy few weeks in between when WordPress 2.6.2 was launched and now, but it’s worth mentioning nonetheless. The main reason is because this release is a critical security upgrade, vital at keeping your site safe from anything malicious being done to your content.

If you are unsure about the status of your WordPress install or need help getting it upgraded, contact us.

We’ve been running some installs of WordPress 2.6.1 on various sites and can report that everything seems tip top. There hasn’t been any major issues with plugins, and performance on the latest version of WP seems a little more snappy.

This falls on the heels of WordPress 2.6 that was released a few months ago. The upgrade brought much needed improvements to security, but there were a variety of tweaks done to the back end administration. Many elements have been improved when it comes to managing posts, comments, and plugins, saving time when you need it the most.

2.6.1 brings many international enhancements to the core of WordPress, making it more accessible to users around the world.

If you are behind on WordPress upgrades for your site, feel free to contact us for some assistance in bringing you up to date.

There have been a few WordCamps in Vancouver and the Fraser Valley over the last year but none have compared to the scale and grandeur of San Francisco’s master gathering of WordPress enthusiasts. Duane from Brave New Code attended this year and is bringing back all sorts of ideas for the city’s next WordCamp, which sixty4media will be co-organizing with him at BarCamp Vancouver.

BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos and interaction from attendees.

All attendees are encouraged to give a demo, a session, a presentation, or help with one. All attendees are expected to be participants. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall.

Presenters are responsible for making sure that notes/slides/audio/video of their presentations are published on the web for the benefit of all and those who can’t be present.

Anyone with something to contribute or with the desire to learn is welcome and invited to join.

If you have any suggestions about what you would like to see at WordCamp during BarCamp feel free to drop us a comment. We’re hoping to incorporate some elements from San Francisco as well as bringing in experts to share their thoughts and knowledge on all fronts. This will be a learning session for rookies and veterans, all celebrating our favourite blogging platform.

As we have been slowly molding sixty4media into shape, we have recently made our very own Twitter account open and available to the public.

Twitter is a popular social media site that combines micro-blogging and instant messaging to an international phenomenon of letting people know what you’re doing. Sounds insignificant to some, but there are more ways to use it other than telling people that you’re hungry or doing the laundry.

For instance, we use a great plugin for WordPress called WordTwit. This was made by our good friend Duane at BraveNewCode, and the whole purpose of it is to make an update to your Twitter account when you publish a new post on your WordPress site. Combined with any other updates we do on the account, you can get the latest news from our site as we publish it.

In the age of iPhones and Blackberries, what better way to connect to your audience directly?

Apologies for not promoting this event sooner, but WordCamp Fraser Valley is going on right now. In fact, Raul is up in the front of the room and giving his presentation on switching to WordPress from Blogger, so we are in full swing out here in Langley.

Rebecca is doing her best to live blog most of today’s event, so head over there to get more information.

It’s worth noting these types of events for being great places to meet other WordPress users. There is also a wealth of ideas that we find by attending gatherings like this. Whether it’s finding your voice as a blogger or discovering new tools to make your postings better, finding events like these are worth your time when it comes to wanting to find out more by what you can do with your blog.

Update: There was a question raised during Rebecca’s presentation that prompted me to make a quick blog post on my personal blog about “Designing drop down menus with CSS on WordPress“. This is something that we did for one of our clients, No Boundaries.org. If you are curious about this topic, please check out my post there.

A post made yesterday by Ryan Boren points to the next, major release of WordPress could be launched as soon as tomorrow.

Version 2.6 has more fixes on the horizon, but there are a number of new features as well. Some worth noting are built-in support for image captions, support for Google Gears to increase page load time, and better notification of plugin updates in the WordPress Dashboard.

I have had a little time to install WP 2.6RC1 and give it a little bit of experimentation. For the most part, it’s not a huge departure from the latest version, 2.5.1, but the addition of image captions will be an added boost for many users who are not the best when it comes to adding such things by writing HTML and CSS into their posts. See a post on my personal blog that I made a while ago about using CSS to attribute photos in your blog posts.

Granted that any other major bugs are not found in this release, watch for WordPress 2.6 to land as soon as Monday, July 14, 2008. We’ll be paying close attention for sure.

Pano from Trainharder.com contacted us a few months ago with great aspiration for his website which he wanted to grow into an all-encompassing resource for the outdoor community. He has been blogging on his WordPress-based site for the last few years and the overall design was something he wanted to rethink in the hopes of expanding his readership. Having the basic idea and concept of what he wanted to achieve, he looked to sixty4media to help him reach that next step.

The previous design of the site was a four column layout that had outgrown Pano’s vision of Trainharder.com. Cranking out great content relating to “an adventure resource and news site for people who like to get outdoors in B.C.” takes a lot of work, especially for someone who is getting outdoors himself on a regular basis. On top of regular posts, there is an events listing to create an on going hub of information relating to outdoor races or gatherings. Doing this on a small scale basis is a large task, to say the least so optimizing the content output and the flow of the site was key.

sixty4media’s custom theme cleaned up the overall design of the site, giving more focus on the content. The front page was revamped with a three column design while a two column design was applied to the individual posts and pages. The idea was to cater to two specific groups of audiences: those who are frequent visitors to the website’s front page for visual appeal and those who are RSS subscribers that tend to pay more attention to getting the raw information out of the content.

Elements were specifically tailored for this WordPress-powered site and by using the events calendar plugin, we were able to customize listings, which helped to make this portion of Trainharder.com more effective as a resource. Essentially, if there is a foot race or trail running event in B.C., there is a good chance that it will be listed here.

Last but not least, we brought the WordPress install up to the latest version of 2.5.1, a much needed upgrade to the back end of the site.

Feel free to visit Trainharder.com if you are interested in seeing how the plan came together. Pano is actively building a community based on this unique market, making this a very strong online portal for folks who get outdoors and away from their computers. It’s very cool stuff.

Bryan Tasaka from Mind Over Mountain Adventure Racing (MOMAR) contacted us a while ago about what it would take to get a WordPress blog integrated into an increasingly successful site for their outdoor racing events.

At the time, there was a blog page on the site however being hard-coded in HTML it lacked core blogging elements. Bryan realized a long time ago the effect a change of this calibre could have, but struggled to find something that would coordinate with his main site in terms of function and design. The goal was to integrate a fully functioning WordPress blog that would seamlessly provide more function and interactivity for readers.

When Bryan contacted us, he knew that he wanted to go with a WordPress install on the back end of his site. We did our best to not only give him the tools to easily update his site, but the custom theme we built for the WordPress blog slipped in smoothly among the main site infrastructure. The custom theme was enhanced with social media tools yet we preserved the existing Flash header as requested as it was a crucial part of creating fluidity with the rest of the MOMAR site.

Working with Bryan was a pleasure and he is very excited to begin using his new WordPress blog. We are proud that we could bring in additional functions for his site that are going to help him promote his organization, increase community, and be search engine optimized for potential, new, and existing audiences.

With the integrated blog, Bryan’s publishing productivity has been increased dramatically compared to the time it used to take to custom code each entry on the previous design. Our custom WordPress theme and install allows him to produce and publish content on the fly, from any location, and communicate with his audience while expanding his reach into and beyond the adventure racing community.

It was a lot of fun to design this site, and I know as John is a bit of a trail runner he was amazed at the level of commitment these MOMAR folks have when it comes to adventure racing. We think the work we did for them will only help make that community stronger. After all, you never know who might stumble onto his blog from a Google search and make the trek for one of the events from another continent.

Feel free to visit the MOMAR blog and see our work in action.