To get to the point of this blog post though I have written a plugin in response to a comment made by Rachel McCollin during her talk on WordPress and Mobile.

When designing for small screens every pixel counts. One of the common difficulties we face as web designers is how to reduce the amount of pixels some large (or potentially large) constructs like menus take up. One solution is to use a dropdown menu. For example in a responsive design like that seen on informationarchitects.jp or fivesimplesteps.com at smaller screen sizes the more traditional menu of links is replaced by a dropdown.

Rachel’s point was that there isn’t an easy way to make a menu that you manage via the admin panel into a dropdown. Because I’ve worked a lot recently with custom menu walkers I decided that it should be and couldn’t help myself…

So, here it is. A plugin that provides an alternative function to wp_nav_menu(); that will output the menu as a dropdown and also provides a widget that can be dropped into a widget space.

There are likely to be a few improvements and tweaks that can be made to awesome it up a bit but if nothing else it’s a start. You can find the dropdown menus plugin in the WordPress repository here. Hope it comes in handy for some of you.

To use it you either use the function dropdown_menu() in place of wp_nav_menu() or use the widget provided with the plugin.

There’s some more background on how to use this in a responsive design (as well as an alternative method using only javascript) here on Chris Coyier’s css-tricks.com.

In the meantime, a lot of times you hear the debate over whether or not it’s worth attending and speaking at this type of unconference.  They’re relatively casual affairs, full of quite geeky types willing to give up a weekend for the software they love.  It’s not like a ‘proper’ conference with paid speakers, high ticket prices and exclusive networking opportunities.  It’s grass roots stuff.  It can be good fun too.  You won’t get lots of free drinks from Microsoft, or a free development smartphone.  You may get a couple of USB keys and a pen knife, and often a nice t-shirt, but that’s it.

But there’s a very easy business case that we can present.

The Numbers

WordCamp Cardiff - every year a new, funky logo gets designed.

Our second, at Cardiff, we were a bit skint so we didn’t sponsor, but I gave two talks.  We generated some £15k of business directly in the following year, and around £15k since.

Our third, in Manchester 2010, we both sponsored and took part, with us giving two talks and a retinue of five interconnect/it team members getting involved in workshops.  We’ve so far directly generated around £30k of business for us and our business partners.

Our margins are decent enough, but let’s just say that so long as attending costs us less than £5k an event, we’re up on the deal. And as clients tend to stick around, it’s even better than that.

Not Just Sales

Any good company worth their salt is on the lookout for talent. We always need good people, and a WordPress event like WordCamp is a cracking recruitment opportunity. So even if you’re not talking, it could be an opportunity to find that perfect WordPress job, or to hire that fantastic WordPress enthusiast to help run your corporate blog.

So Go

But don’t just go – if you have an interesting story about how you use WordPress, you can generate interest about your company, you can find good people, and you can make sales. It’s amazing value for money, and don’t let the low ticket price make you think it isn’t a ‘serious’ event. It’s just not run for profit. It means it’s not exclusive, of course. And you won’t find many decision makers with multi-million pound budgets, but the community is all about efficiency.

So go, as soon as the tickets are available, book in. If you can help, even better – you’ll get more out of it.

See you there!

Be there to get the latest news and network with the leading lights of WordPress in the UK

Last year we decided to keep quiet at WordCamp UK, on the whole, beyond a spot of sponsorship – simply because we didn’t have that much to talk about that we felt could be exciting.  But a year has changed a lot – WordPress is becoming popular for large scale blogging platforms such as The Telegraph Blogs, and for use as a news platform such as at Telecoms.com.

Large companies are, inherently, going to be a little more conservative in their approach to new technology – but once they see others making a move a cascade effect tends to kick in.  This, we believe, is what is starting to happen with WordPress.

So, because of what is happening, we’re giving two presentations at WordCamp UK this year…

WordPress in the Enterprise

This presentation will cover how WordPress is starting to be seen in the enterprise space, its potential, the pitfalls, and the opportunities available to WordPress developers and designers.  The presentation itself should last around 30-40 minutes, with a further 15 minutes of open discussion and Q&A before clearing the stage in preparation of the next talk.

WordPress in News & Media

WordPress is starting to show signs of adoption within the news industry not just as a blogging platform, but as a full featured news platform.  We will cover the strengths and weaknesses, problems found, what WP lacks out of the box, and demonstrate some of the ways in which a comprehensive news site can be built using our Caribou Theme that we built for Spectacu.la.  We will also be demonstrating the back-end we built for Telecoms.com which allow them to run a far more flexible WP news site than ever anticipated.

Other Reasons to Go to WordCamp UK 2009

1. It’s in Cardiff, capital of Wales.
2. Matt Mullenweg is attending – he’s effectively the lead of the WordPress project and is highly influential in the community.
3. Other notables such as Tony Scott, Peter Westwood, Simon Wheatley, Simon Dickson and Mike Little (who sometimes does some work for us) are presenting – and they always have something interesting to say.
4. You’ll be mixing with some of the coolest and nicest people in the software community.
5. The afterparty is always good fun!

We really look forward to seeing everyone at the WordCamp.  Myself and James Whitehead (our technical lead) will be attending.  If you have anything you’d like to see covered at the event, just comment here.