Learn how to use the command line toolkit Terminus to make deployments of Drupal, WordPress, and Backdrop sites on Pantheon faster and easier.

This was a very busy weekend. I spoke at WordCamp Orange County on how to use a debugger, and it went well. If you were there, or if you're just interested, you can view the slides here, and fork them on GitHub.

The Advanced WordPress LA meetup group met up on Saturday. This is a link dump of some things we talked about.

We saw a jQuery plugin to convert SVG in <img> tags to the source XML:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11978995/how-to-change-color-of-svg-image-using-css-jquery-svg-image-replacement/11978996#11978996

In the WordPress world, there are a lot of plugins. No really. As I write this, there are more than 36,000 free plugins available on WordPress.org. So generally speaking, almost anything you want to do with your WordPress site, you can find a plugin to help. They're not always good, but often they are, and hey, they're free!

WordCamp Las Vegas happened this past weekend, and while I wasn't in attendance, it caused me to find out on Twitter that a talk I gave at WordCamp Los Angeles this past fall is now available on WordPress.tv now. I called it "Be Braver, Make Better Mistakes", and it's a quick overview on why you should try using version control, even (especially!) if you're a designer.

WordCamp LA 2014 is in full swing. I gave a pep talk on version control this morning, advocating for people who are unfamiliar or otherwise resistant to it to get on board.

There aren't many slides, but if you want to see them, here they are.

Update: Video of this talk is available on WordPress.tv

Last month, SoCal WordPress and Hollywood WordPress joined forces for a meetup called "My Favorite Plugin". There were quite a few of us who gave lightning talks on a particular plugin we like. Video from the meetup was just posted. There were many plugins I wasn't familiar with, all coming recommended by folks in the LA WordPress community. Check it out below, or read the post on HollywoodWP.com.

You can also skip to my portion on WP Migrate DB and its powerful, commercial companion WP Migrate DB Pro, at 22:30 or so. As I said in the talk, I haven't quite needed to buy the paid version yet because the free one is well done and covers what I usually need, but I'll probably be buying the Pro version regardless just to say thanks to the developer.

I also hype the idea of writing your own plugin, which was something I went into in a little more depth at the Advanced WordPress meetup later that same week. Our March meetup is this coming Saturday at 11 AM. Come get your weekend WordPress on!

The all-powerful Jetpack plugin for WordPress is full of useful features, one of which is contact forms. It's a pretty good choice for this because it ties in with Akismet for spam protection, stores all submissions in the database (so your email account isn't the only place to look if one goes missing), and comes with a nice UI for creating the forms. Once installed, you get an "Add Contact Form" button on your Posts and Pages edit screens, with sensible defaults.

Last night, I spoke at a joint meetup of Hollywood WordPress and LA WordPress 101. I called it "Everything I Always Wanted to Know About WordPress (but only learned through experience)", but the main point was to give people who are new (or newish) to WordPress some tips and tricks on how to use it, and ways to proceed when they need to start customizing it.

This is my recording of the talk itself, basically a screencast of the slides. The organizers also shot video where you can see me, and if I get my hands on it, I'll update this post.

Download the slides here