Armchair WordCampers Now Have Their Own Site

Not sure if anyone was using the term “Armchair WordCampers” before me, but I’ve been using the term on Twitter when there are WordCampers you can monitor online. Monitoring WordCamps online isn’t close to being at the event, but some conferences have great coverage. Both pictures and useful/humorous tweets. Monitoring a conference via hashtag is ok, but not the best experience for many conferences. You might miss some action happening on other social networks, plus watching TweetDeck make my eyes go nuts.

So I keep working on my “wparmchair” theme, which had it’s beginnings as the WordPress 10th Anniversary site. It existed prior to that in various forms too.

In any case, I bought wparmchair.com and hosted WordCamp Seattle’s social presence (with blessing from organizers) this year. Now i’ve upgraded the theme a bit for WordCamp San Francisco. Here’s the site.

Here’s the improvement, in case anyone cares or is watching:

• Instagram Video: If you shoot video on Instragram, you can see the video on the site now just like Vine videos.
• HTML5 fullscreen added. There’s a link below the “status message” if you have a sharp eye. Fullscreen is nice if you want to project the live stream of items on a large monitor or projector.
• “View Only Photos” – See all the Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, and user-submitted photos in a nice gallery.
• Featured Posts Slider – I normally don’t like these, but it’s a nice way to see the best of what you’ve missed in the last hour or two. It might change in the future, i’m not completely happy with it.
• Retweets – Retweet button allows you to do an oldschool retweet. It’s convenient enough.
• Livestream Support – You can show a livestream video instead of a featured posts slider (however WCSF live streams are paid only so of course those won’t be on this site).

This site or concept isn’t meant to replace live streaming – mainly those already glued to their social media streams. I encourage anyone not physically attending WordCamp San Francisco to buy a live stream sticket. And maybe drop in on Armchair WordCampers too.

Note: Keep in mind things are in “beta”. At times, i’m wearing a pink sombrero. I can see the site fine (minus nav bar issues) on an iPhone. Don’t judge.