How has WordPress changed your life?
The keynote address at WordCamp Portland is all about How WordPress has changed your life?
The Fairy Blog Mother aka Lorelle VanFossen, preached about the glories of WordPress.
WordPress lets you concentrate on expression, it allows you to actually blog without a ton of tweaking but plenty of things to tweak. Let’s talk themes and plug-ins! Crowd favorites here at WordCamp Portland included the DB backup, Askimet, Super cache, Related Posts, Maintenance mode.
In addition, WordPress helps the community by super fast blogs to address diasters such as Katrina and Gustav to a neighborhood responding to a catastrophic arson. The blog, in response to the arson, was up in less than an hour and raised money to aid the survivors.
Lorelle also gave lots of examples about the power of the WordPress community. Blogging community is not just about what you know but also who you know. This ranges from personal friendships to particpating in WordPress forums and networks, WordPress meetups and WordCamps like this one.
Matt’s WordPress philosophy is
- You give away your BEST work
- You just give it away
- The universe will reward.
Well although Matt doesn’t sell the WordPress software it supports him quite well. How many others are making income as a side effect of providing free consulting, themes and plug-ins? Quite a few hands rose in the audience.
Many testamonials, presented here live or videotaped previously at BlogWorld, talked about how bloggers had found income, respect and a voice. The one that touched me the most was Glenda Watson Hyatt, a woman with cerebral palsy who blogs with her left thumb. Practically non-verbal due to her disability, her life revolved around email. That changed when someone told her that WordPress was so easy that she could blog, even though she is limited to typing with just her left thumb. Known as the Left Thumb Blogger, she told her story about how people react to her so differently when they know her through her blog first. They already know that she is an intelligent woman with a lot to offer, who happens to have some disabilities. Her Do It Myself Blog and her story reminded me that I too can have a voice in the blogosphere even if I don’t have much of a physical voice any more.
Tags: Plug-ins, wordcampdx, Wordpress
It’s wonderful really to see the good that can come from blogging. From helping people in need to just giving a voice to people who normally might not be heard.
Since most of my readers seem to come from searches on Pineal gland tumors, I hope I’ve helped in some small way to at least put their worries to rest.
Anita
I’m so glad you were able to make it here for WordCamp Portland!
How has blogging changed my life? It’s pulling some of my writing from the journals dating back to forever ago into my consciousness. It’s reviving the dream to write for others as well as myself. It holds the promise of interactive community with people I like and am like from a mind-set-perspective. It challenges me.
I really want to get as much as I can from the program I have. I love Matt’s Wordpress philosophy. I want to give away my best, yet I want to profit from it as well. To me that’s always been something of an oxymoron, pragmatically, yet in the highest sense, it’s not.
I’m here to learn more… and more… about how to best do both, because for me blogging IS the best way to share and give away and encourage others to participate.
For now, I’m going to download those plug-ins mentioned above… maybe use them, maybe not, depending on my understanding of HOW to use them. Ha!
Glad you went to the camp, Bean. Thanks for sharing the benefits with us.
I’m so glad to have met you and learned so much from YOU that wonderful weekend.
Just a minor correction. That’s not Matt Mullenweg’s philosophy, though I’m sure he would agree with it. It’s my perspective on how the WordPress business model works – and it works really well that way. It’s how Matt has taught me and other WordPress fans how it should work, but don’t get me in trouble with the Matt-man for putting words into his mouth.
The neat thing about WordPress is that while blogging changes people’s lives, there is something about the people within the WordPress Community and just being a part of their energy that makes a difference. Any blogging platform can change lives, but WordPress is something very special!!!
Ooops! I must have read one of your slides wrong Lorelle or my swiss cheese brain was acting up. I corrected my error.
Thank you for the keynote speech that day. You are right about the special nature of the WP community. You were the epitome of it that day in coming to my rescue.
What did you learn from me that weekend? That I make one helluva a canary?