So I went to San Francisco Wordcamp this past Saturday. Tons of great speakers and upcoming news about WordPress. One of the announcements Matt Mullenweg gave during his ‘State of the Word” address was that WordPress and WPMU will be merging. He didn’t give a date as to when this is going to happen, but it’s pretty great! Hopefully it will be out with the new 2.8 version (which is currently in beta right now…but more about that in a later post), but who knows.

If you’re not sure what WPMU is, it stands for WordPress Multi-User. This is so you can have multiple versions of WordPress running on a single installation- which is great for a company site with individual bloggers. What this means for you if you don’t need multiple blogs running? Well, it should make the installation of BuddyPress that much easier! If you’re not familiar with BuddyPress, it’s basically a set of plugins that allows you add what Matt Mullenweg calls “facebook in a box” to your site. You can now allow your users to create profiles, pm each other, add friends, groups, blogs, forums and more! You can read more about BuddyPress here.

So I went to Reno/Tahoe Wordcamp yesterday….and it was FABULOUS!!! A little tired today, but it was SO worth it! We (a friend and I)- headed up to stay at my parents the night before (they’re about an hour and a half closer than I am to Reno), got up early Saturday morning and drove up to the Universtiy of Nevada. We got there and checked in with about 20 minutes to spare! And grabbed a few WordPress goodies at the registration table (stickers, pencils and rub on tatoos! ).

While we were waiting for Wordcamp to begin, they had the twitter stream up on the screen with the hashtag #rtwc running…….oh how I love social media!  We were going over the schedule for the day when Matt Mullenweg got there (as in the creator of WordPress).  It’s always great to get to see someone you’ve read about and put an actual personality to the name and face.  Matt went over a few things he thought WordPress fans should be “hip” to. Here they are:

The first thing he mentioned is something called P2. I hadn’t heard of P2 before yesterday, but the short version is that P2 sort of looks like a twitter stream that runs on the front page of your website. You never have to visit your Dashboard – it’s almost like a real time chat! It looks pretty cool……you can have categories, tags and can even edit your posts right there!!!

And another thing he mentioned of course is BuddyPress. Matt describe BuddyPress as a facebook in a box…for WordPress. It’s a plugin (or rather a group of plugins working together) which allow you to have groups, albums, pm, and post all your social profiles on your BuddyPress profile as well! You can of course use all or these or use them individually……I think he said “a la carte”. I’ve looked at BuddyPress and will definitely be taking a more in depth look this week! It is officially out of beta now.

I’ll post more from Wordcamp as the week goes on…. but if you get a chance to attend a Wordcamp near you, I highly recommend it! I’ll be sharing more about the great people I met and all the great things they’re doing with WordPress.