Meetup: Tampa Bay (formerly St. Petersburg)

Featured Speaker: Jim True 

Are you still working on client websites directly on their host? When there’s an issue do you just FTP directly into the website and edit files on the production website? That’s what we call “Cowboy Coding” and while everyone has done it before, we want to help you work more safely, taking into account your client’s security and the safety of their website.

In this Open Q & A Discussion, we’ll go over the following:

• Best options for Local Development and a List of resources and tutorials for setting up and configuring your Local Dev Setup (for Free!)

• Overview & Discussion on Version Control with Git, also including free tutorials and resources and free software to make sure this is always part of your process.

• Dealing with Databases and Migrations, some common migration methods for getting the WordPress data from your local installation to the client’s server and several tools and resources to make this easier.

This will not be a hands-on workshop showing you how to setup your local environment, git or database migrations strategy as that could easily take up an entire day, but we will give you a large list of vetted resources and links and are prepared to answer any questions you may have on the process. If you’ve been wanting to work smarter with your clients in your theme development or website development with WordPress, you’ll find the information you need to pull in the reins on your Cowboy Coding practices.

This Meetup will take place at the Iron Yard St Petersburg in Downtown St Pete. Parking is free after 6PM, and there’s often plenty of on street parking behind the Iron Yard on 2nd. To get upstairs, look for the Brass elevator facing 1st Avenue South and take it up to the 3rd floor.