Weeks ago it was announced as the next hot topic for MSCC Saturday meetup: WordPress. Rikesh volunteered for a technical presentation. Last time, after Sun & Moz presented web stuffs, I started getting hands dirty with some Responsive Web Design. I initially didn’t like the concept as I always thought it wastes white space. However the presentations inspired me to try, which I don’t regret.

###Let’s see who made it today

Pritvi Jheengut, Nayar Joolfoo, Humeira Diljore, Collin Lo, Pascal, Mozammil Khodabachas, Darvin Moctaram, Rikesh Ramlochund, Sarju Dooly, Kishan Bhugul, Ratna Chikhuri, Heidi Pomanah, Yunus Aumeeruddy, Jochen Kirstätter, Pawan Babooram, Louis Oberlé, Vincent Pollet, Paul Schwarz, Johann Jenson, Sebastian Kippe, Caroline Chung, Sun RS, Sruti Jughdharree, Nadim Attari, Nitin Mutkawoa, Samiyah Peerun, Shamsher Khudurrun, Yannick Labonne and me.

13h30, the conference room was full. Jochen prompted for a quick intro of newcomers and then Rikesh started the presentation. He briefly described the project, its uses (not just as blog), cited W³Techs stats, and referred about the WordPress (Codex) official documentation. I had a look at the WordPress Codex a few days ago when trying to pamper myself with a responsive template. I initially got an HTML template from Zurb and followed instructions from the WordPress Codex to work it out.

The part when Rikesh explained about Hooks, namely filter and action caught my attention. WordPress Codex is a great resource but might appear bulky to a non-developer who only is looking for a couple of tweaks. So, this explanation comes handy next time I’m on a WordPress hack.

Oh! One more trick that grasped attention was the query parameter: ?s=keyword. Should be useful when making a custom search box.

The overall presentation was knowledge enriching. We should indeed congratulate Rikesh on the good work. I personally liked the demos & code snippets. He made the codes are available on GitHub.

Shortly before 16h00 the presentation was over and we had a Q & A session. Jochen then cited upcoming events and presentations. We spent some time exchanging words. Pritvi and I, we tweaked Kishan’s Android Studio installation on his netbook. I disabled Nitin’s firewall and enabled his public interface on darkxploit.us, which was down for a while. I’m sure Nitin will blog more about this experience and securing web servers. He’s been doing some intensive search about firewalls and all. All the best buddy & hope to see your blog post soon.

In the end, something to pamper us: stickers. Yup! One good fellow from 5apps.com, Sebastian Kippe, brought us the goodies. I checked 5apps.com a few days ago in a jiffy. Now, the sticker puts me under the moral obligation to build something on 5apps.com. Hmm, some caffeine and job should be done!

Photos, courtesy of Pawan Babooram.