Mar 222009

What made the BCB8 website???

Muh Life Add comments

The answer to the question: “Wordpress”.

Well, thats about one of the main reasons why we moved away from the system of the Wiki that has always ruled the BCB systems till BCB8.



The other main reason why we felt that wordpress was better suited than Wiki is thus:

A wiki, is a collection of documents linked to each other.  There is only one hierarchy to the structure… and its FLAT.

Wordpress on the other hand is multi-leveled AND allows for a relationship that has always ruled the Barcamp like scenario:  A content provider AND the content provided.  Which when translated to the BCB scenario relates to:The Speaker and the content associated with the person’s talk / discussion.

So there goes, wordpress it was!  And then started the work of tweaking it to make the Content Management System manage the content and the content-providers and participants the bridge.  And what resulted at the end of it is what we have on the BarcampBangalore website currently.

The best learnings out of working on this whole thing, in my opinion is thus:

  1. Mixdev IS GOD!!! He is one of the most complete and most awesome of coders I’ve come across!!!
  2. There is a plugin to achieve every conceivable functionality in wordpress!!! <<  Tip from @mixdev and @the100rabh.  And yeah, I vouch for it!!!
  3. There is no touching the subsystem that has been done in making this website.  All that you see on the website is completely delivered by just the theme! <<KICKASS>>
  4. Following and achieving point 3 hence makes sharing the code that much easier!!! And that much less code to understand and modify.

The code of the barcampbangalore theme (for lack of a word for the theme name, thereof) has been put up for download and further work and development on Google code here.  There are some bugs, as there is always with very good quality code and since it is open to all please feel free to spread the word around and have people use it and do leave comments and tell us how amazing we are ;-)

And there goes 2 hits with one stone:  My first wordpress theme AND my first Opensource project! W0000t!!!

Posted by The Cruisemaniac Tagged with: , , , , , ,
  • Happy to read about the short 'behind the scenes' about BCB8 website. Do you or mixdev plan to write more about it?
  • Lakshman
    Wordpress ate it? ;)
  • errr... i dunno!!! ;-)
  • :-\ where did my comment go :-\
  • Wow. There it is. Thanks.
    TDO Mini Forms is just awesome ;)

    Planning to implement this for the BarCampKerala website. Will be given due credit :-)
  • Hey Aravind,

    Yes, the theme does most of the work that delivers content on the pages. The plugins support the theme. We did not touch the internals for two reasons:
    1. We were too tired.
    2. We didnt have time!!! ;-)

    The TDO-Mini-Forms plugin runs the page that you see when you add a session.

    The WP Role Manager plugin is not used in our case. We achieved hierarchy levels by assigning all participants the "Author" role in the General tab under Settings.

    I hope your questions have been answered.

    Chao,
    TheCruisemaniac.
  • I always wanted to know it, and was about to ask you guys about it. So, activating that theme will make it all work ?

    Is there some easy way to make it work with other themes ? Have you used "WP Role Manager" or "TDO-Mini-Forms" plugin ?
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