Rocking a WordPress Network Marko HeijnenWordCamp NYC 2012

Marko Heijnen

• WordPress and mobile "developer"

• Working with WordPress for six years

• WordPress contributor of 3.0, 3.3 and 3.4

• Founder of WP Rockstars

My first non-dev talk

So i do hope you will enjoy this talk

What is a network

• It's like WordPress.com

• One WordPress installation with multiple sites

• Control all sites from the network admin

• Easy to update itself, themes and plugins

Will default plugins work?

• First answer will be yes

• It still works like you expected

• But plugins are often not build for network

• The whole control will always be on site level

• So the long answer would be no in some cases

• In my case custom plugins make sense

What is my talk about?

Building cool sites for artists

One of the problems

• Artist don't have the money for a cool site

• Their current site isn't that fancy

• They want to be in full control over their data

• They just want more possibilities

• They are on MySpace

The solution

• Create a network installation like WordPress.com

• Build default themes for them they can use

• Build all the expected functionality that a artist need

• And share this with all the artists

• Little bit like MySpace 3.0

Our goals

• An easy to use tool to create awesome sites

• It's targeted for artists who want to share their experience with their fans

• Change their content in an easy way

• That the artists are more in touch with their fans

Artist goals

• Be more in touch with their fans

• More fans to their concerts

• Sell more songs through offline and online

• The ability to change their site without any help

The process started

Cleaning up WordPress and starting create awesome features

Cleaning up

• It's important to remove features that aren't needed

• We removed a lot of menu items to make the admin area clean

• We removed almost all the meta boxes on the dashboard

• Also removed a lot of default widgets

A just installed WordPress

How it looks after the clean up

Let's start building the features

Their music

• Several options to able for artist to share their music

• In begin YouTube orientated

• They can manage this from out WordPress

• Later on linking it with Spotify and iTunes

Tour schedule

• Artist can create a new tour schedule

• Add dates/places to it

• It doesn't have to be a tour, a single performance is also possible

Social

• Their will be a Twitter and Facebook connection

• Ability to send Links when the artist published a post

• See some basic statistics in how they use the social media

• Show the tweets/messages on their site

Slideshow

• Show new happenings in a cool way

• Ability to have multiple slideshows

• Can be in content, widget or default position

• Manipulate a certain image to be grayscale

In-site support

• Giving great support is very important

• Working with desk.com to make it happen

• They can create and respond to tickets

• See in the toolbar if they got new feedback

• When they do use mail they will also see the feedback there

The main site

What about that, WordPress.com also has one

The main site

• The goal is to make users explorer the content we have

• Browse to all the artist in several ways

• Not just boring lists but meaningful content

The main site

• Show their tour schedule in one big overview

• Show some highlighted stories that the artists wrote

• Of course also an explanation about what it is

Ow yeah, two more last things

We do live in 2012 you know

The mobile app

• There will be an app for iPhone and Android

• Artist will be able to be faster in touch with their fans

• Share music and be able to give them a discount

• Also a plan to have an overhaul app with basic information of the artists

E-commerce functionality

• This will be one of the coolest features

• No more the need of a separate platform

• They will be in full control over their products

• Still be able to process them to another company if needed

Coolest thing is that this will be a new plugin

and we call it SalesPress

What about other e-commerce platforms

• First of all, we think we can build something really awesome

• Trying to build something for the community without wanting to make a profit

• And we do think no other plugin will fit ArtistPress the way we want

Questions

MarkoHeijnen.com - @MarkoHeijnen - info@markoheijnen.com