WordCamp Chicago 2010 – Sat & Sun (June 5th & 6th!) @ The Chicago Mart Plaza 350 West Mart Center Drive Chicago, IL

This post was originally written in December of 2009 for my personal blog @ JMedley.com.  It’s being reposted here because–nearly six months later–we STILL cannot say enough positive things about the revolutionary online publishing platform, WordPress, or its founding developer, Matt Mullenweg.

The other big reason is to help give a final publicity push in support of WordCamp Chicago 2010. The TWO-DAY event will be THIS WEEKEND–Saturday, June 5th and Sunday, June 6th.  If you have an interest in online publishing, blogging or anything Web-related, you owe it to yourself to check out this event.  For more details go to wordcampchicago.com.  This is only the second WordCamp Chicago; last year was totally off-the-scale!

Since DMA’s inception in 1993, one of the primary goals has been to demystify the process of creation, champion ground-breaking technologies and “pull back the curtain.” We love to debunk myths and openly discuss some of the “tricks of the trade” when it comes to dance music production, remixing, and promotion.

WordPress is the ONLY reason why Dance Music Authority has been able to get back on its feet.  No, we definitely don’t think “we’re ALL THAT.”  And, yes, we have a looooong way to go, but we also have an agile software platform that can do anything we need it to do…and a mammoth user/ development community “watching our back” and constantly pushing the envelope.

We hope you enjoy our WordPress story.  What’s yours?…  -J. Medley

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Dance Music Authority (DMAclub.com) Settles Into A Comfortable Groove With WordPress

Helping to bring a deceased print publication “back from the dead” is no easy task, but thanks to the brillant online publishing platform WordPress, Dance Music Authority is back on its feet and moving forward at DMAclub.com.

Even though this endeavor got off to a very shaky start, once we switched to the WordPress platform, we immediately started to get major traction.  Perhaps the funniest part of the story is the fact that WordPress is a free solution.

In our initial efforts to bring DMA back, there were a lot of false starts.  Several platforms were suggested, with several associated price tags–ranging from $2,000-$15,000!  During this initial phase, we always felt like we were at the mercy of the designer/developer, which was exacerbated by the fact that ALL of these developers ultimately became impossible to reach a one time or another.  From our vantage point, this was totally unacceptable.

Frustrated by myriad developer issues, we jumped on a drag-and-drop HTML publishing program.  The program had a lot of cool features, but it did not provide a way for us to easily showcase our primary content in an organized fashion.  For example, we always fealt that we were just throwing our pluggers up against a wall, with absolutely no organization whatsoever.  Moreover, the process was way too labor-intensive.  When we wanted to add a new item to a page, we had to manually push everything down.  This was definitely not the answer.

Fortunately, after the 2008 Winter Music Conference, several magical things started to happen once we got back in Chicago.  The most profound event was the switch to WordPress (April, 2008).  Once we made the move, we never looked back.  Blogging is a major joy, and we now have time to focus on music and video production…as well as learning as much as we can about in the inner-workings of WordPress.

Yes, WordPress has become a new obsession for us.  We love “getting under the hood” and messing around, and have learned so much more about the Web thanks to WordPress.  The WordPress user community is a massive collective where learning is encouraged.  We look forward to contributing to the community by helping to spread the word about this amazing product.

At Dance Music Authority, we have always been about passing along useful information.  Well, WordPress is more than an informational nugget; it is a robust total content management system.  I prefer the term content management solution, as opposed to content management system, because WordPress is just that–a solution, an answer.

Migrating to WordPress has been a TOTAL solution for us and we feel obligated to “share the knowledge” by helping to spread the word.

To be continued…

–J

WordCamp Chicago 2010

The Chicago Mart Plaza
350 West Mart Center Drive
Chicago, IL  60654

Tel: +1 312 8365000 Fax: +1 312 2229508