Brad Williams Blog» WebDevStudios

CollabPress v1.0 beta Has Been Released!

Brad — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 14:00:17 +0000

CollabPress v1.0 beta, the task management plugin for WordPress, has been released and is available for download! The plugin was rebuilt from the ground up by my company, WebDevStudios.com. We utilized custom post types to make the plugin fully optimized and compatible with the latest version of WordPress (including Multsite!). We also hardened the security and added more features!

Be sure to read all about the new version of CollabPress and download the beta.

WordCamp Philly 2010 Was A Huge Success!

Brad — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:02:50 +0000

WordCamp Philly 2010, the inaugural Philadelphia WordCamp, was last Saturday and was a huge success! I was lucky enough to be one of the organizers, along with Anthony Bubel and Marilyn Moran, and couldn’t be happier with how the event turned out.

We had an amazing lineup of speakers and topics for the event. We also had some awesome sponsors step up and help making this event a great success.

The event was held at Alter Hall in the Fox School of Business building. This building was absolutely amazing! The technology in each room was superb and made for a flawless day of presentations, slides, and even the official WordCamp Philly soundtrack!

The entire WebDevStudios crew almost attended (we were missing Scotty B), but the rest of the team was in attendence and myself, Brian Messenlehner, Chris Cochran, and Ronald Huereca all gave presentations.

There were also many of my WordPress friends in attendance including Ptah Dundar, Hal Stern, Michael Torbert, Steve Mortiboy, Jane Wells, Andrew Nacin, Doug Stewart, Jayvie Canono, Ryan Duff, Ted Mann, and many others I’m sure I am forgetting.

Check out pictures from the event below (photo credit to @tweetsfromchris):

WordCamp Philly is Tomorrow!

Brad — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 14:00:48 +0000

Tomorrow is the inaugural WordCamp Philly! I’m co-organizing the event and can’t wait to kick it off!

We have an amazing lineup of speakers for the event including Ronald Huereca of WDS giving a presentation on WordPress and Ajax. I’m giving a presentation with Brian Messenlehner, the other co-founder of WDS, on Spooky WordPress: Disturbingly Brilliant Uses of WP.

We have four tracks (two beginner and two advanced) and an unconference room running ad hoc discussions and presentations. We’re giving away some amazing prizes and even have a costume contest (with prizes!) for the after party.

This is going to be an amazing WordCamp, and hopefully the start of an annual tradition in Philly. I’ll be sure to post a recap after the event with pictures.

BlogWorld Expo 2010 Recap! What Happens in Vegas…

Brad — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 15:18:56 +0000

Last week I attended BlogWorld Expo 2010 in beautiful (and warm!) Las Vegas with April, Brian, and Robin! This was my first visit to Las Vegas so I was very excited for the trip. My Company (WDS) redesigned the BlogWorld.com website and also sponsored the event.

I was lucky enough to record LIVE episodes of the SitePoint podcast at the event! Kevin Yank flew all the way from Sydney, Australia, along with Shayne Tilley and Luke Cuthbertson, to represent the launch of the new SitePoint venture Learnable! Patrick and Stephan, the other two hosts, were also there so we recorded a bunch of one-on-one interviews with attendees and also did a live recording with all four hosts! It was awesome hanging with sitepoint and podcast crew.

We also hung out with some great WordPress friends! Josh and Sally from Page.ly attended (and had a killer house party!). John Hawkins of 9seeds was the resident “local” giving us tips on places to check out and eat. Syed Balkhi of WPBeginner.com was also there and did a great interview with me. We also hung out with Andrew Powers and Adam Munns of PageLines.com

We had a WordPress dinner Saturday night with Lisa Sabin-Wilson and her husband Chris, Grant Griffiths and Clay from Headway Themes, Cory Miller and Matt Danner from iThemes, and I even met Brian Layman (who mentioned WDS in his presentation!), and Tracy Childers of Wishlist Member.

I was also invited to a few hotel suite parties by Darren Rowse of Problogger.com and SitePoint/Learnable. There is nothing quite like a Vegas hotel party!

Overall I had an amazing time! Can’t wait to attend next year! A photo gallery from the adventure is below:

I’m Speaking at WordCamp Montreal!

Brad — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:51:52 +0000

Next stop on my WordCamp Tour is WordCamp Montreal! I will be giving a presentation on WordPress Security at the event.
My presentation will cover how to keep your WordPress powered website secure from hackers and exploits. I’ll show examples of hacked sites, share tips and plugins for keeping WordPress secure, and talk about my experiences with WordPress and security overall.

WordCamp Montreal will take place in Montreal, Quebec on July 11-12.

I’m taking the scenic train ride from NYC to Montreal (12 hours!) and also plan on attending the Jazz Festival while in town. WordCamps are awesome and so is traveling so I’m really looking forward to this event, aye!

I Survived WordCamp Chicago!

Brad — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 21:23:35 +0000

The WebDevStudios team survived WordCamp Chicago 2009! We flew in Friday night, after a much delayed flight, and arrived just in time for pizza and drinks at Lou Malnati’s. During dinner we met Lisa Sabin-Wilson (author of WordPress for Dummies), Jeff Chandler (WP Weekly host and WPTavern.com owner), and a few other WordPress enthusiasts.

Saturday morning came very early, after staying up until 2am the night before, but we managed to wake up and make it to WordCamp Chicago! I met a lot of great people at WordCamp including Matt Mullenweg (founder of WordPress), Jeremy Wright (CEO of b5media), David Peralty (co-host of WP Weekly), Dan Schulz (Advisor on SitePoint), Erin Blaskie, and lots of other WP Enthusiasts.

The presentations at WordCamp Chicago were great. I would have liked to seen more of a focus on WordPress, rather than blogging and branding presentations, but I understand that users outnumber designers and developers at these conferences. The presenters all did a really great job.

If you have never been to a WordCamp, GO! These events are awesome and I can already tell I am starting to get addicted to them.

Next up, WordCamp Montreal in July (which I am speaking at)!

I’m Speaking at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic!

Brad — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 18:06:44 +0000

I’ve been given the opportunity to speak at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic 2009!

WordCamp Mid-Atlantic will take place in Baltimore, Maryland on May 16th from 8am to 5pm. I will be giving a presentation titled:

Advanced Thesis Techniques and Tricks

Thesis 1.5 was just released yesterday so I’m very excited to share some Thesis knowledge with other WordPress enthusiasts, including new features! If you are planning on attending WordCamp Mid-Atlantic drop me a line. See you in B-town!

The End of Nerd Week

Brad — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:38:28 +0000

This past week was an insanely busy nerd week for me.

On Tuesday I recorded the 7th episode of the SitePoint Podcast with special guest host Sarah Milstein. We dedicated the episode to talking about Twitter and the many uses it has, both personal and business.

On Wednesday my business partner and I attended the New York WordPress Meetup for a presentation by Johnathan Andersen on WordPress as a CMS: The Strategy of Content Publishing. Johnathan did a great job presenting how he utilizes various plugins and custom fields to transform WordPress into a CMS.

On Friday I joined Jeff Chandler on the WordPress Weekly Podcast to ask Dan Milward of the WP E-Commerce plugin some questions. It was a fun show and I’m looking forward to getting back to the round table discussions like the earlier days of the podcast.

I’ve also been pretty active on the WP Tavern Forums. WPTavern.com is a new site started by Jeff Chandler of WordPress Weekly with a focus on all topics WordPress. It’s a great site for sharing your experiences with WordPress and learning lots of valuable information. Get registered and get involved!

Oh and did I mention my company launched two new website redesigns in Thesis? MattBites.com and RetroRenovation.com. MattBites.com was migrated from TypePad and launched with WordPress and a fresh clean look provided by the Thesis theme. RetroRenovation.com was redesigned using Thesis with help from Kenneth Smith. Both sites look amazing and we are really excited to see them go live!

This has been an awesome nerd week and I hope to have many more like it!

New Jersey WordPress Meetup coming in January

Brad — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 01:11:55 +0000

By StrangeWork.com: New Jersey now has an official WordPress Meetup Group! My company, WebDevStudios.com, is organizing the event and working to build a fun group of WordPress enthusiasts.

The WordPress Meetup Group is meeting on

January 7th, 2009 in Belmar, NJ

This blog has been powered by WordPress since it’s launch over 2 years ago. Most of you know I’ve been a big fan of WordPress since then. We use WordPress on many different projects, some we can talk about, and some we can’t. Our goal is to create a fun group of WordPress users that want to come to the beautiful Jersey shore in January!

We plan on discussing a variety of topics including WordPress usage, designing WordPress Themes and styles, creating WordPress Plugins and Widgets, and using WordPress to its full potential. This is going to be a fun and informal way to meet WordPress fanatics just like yourself and share your experiences with the popular open source software.

We are also planning on learning about and working with WordPress MU, BuddyPress, and bbPress! Be sure to RSVP for the event on the Official New Jersey Meetup Group registration page. We’re looking forward to meeting all of you there for a fun evening of WordPress!

Getting Organized with FreshBooks Online Invoicing

Brad — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:03:19 +0000

By StrangeWork.com: Starting a company is hard, and staying organized is even harder. I started full time at WebDevStudios.com back in April of this year. At the start I was tracking invoices using a mix of spreadsheets and word documents. This method wasn’t too bad until I actually started getting more clients. I quickly realized this solution was not going to work for my invoicing needs.

Enter FreshBooks.com, the online invoicing system for small businesses and contractors. FreshBooks in a few words, is freaking amazing! For just a few dollars a month I can now track all of my invoices online and it’s completely themed to match my business, including our logo. All of my invoices are now sent through the FreshBooks web portal and can be scheduled to send automatically if needed.

FreshBooks couldn’t be easier to create, maintain, and track invoices, clients, estimates, projects, and time. Invoices are emailed directly to my clients, who can then gain access to their own FreshBooks account to track all of their invoices from my company. It provides my clients with an entire new set of tools they didn’t have before. They can view what they have paid to date, view open invoices, and can even pay current invoices online.

At the end of the day being paid if the most important part of any small business. FreshBooks is a no brainer for online invoicing, but if you haven’t checked them out yet do it today! You won’t be disappointed.