This month we had two presenters: Chris Kiersch and Alex Rodriguez speaking about mobile apps and WordPress.

Chris Kiersch

Chris talked more at a high level about the difference between a mobile app and mobile website. When he sends his notes from the meetup I’ll post.

Alex Rodriguez

Alex talked about the different options you have for pulling information out of your WordPress website using APIs:

• JSON REST API (more useful for those using wordpress.org self-hosted sites)
• Jetpack REST API (more useful for wordpress.com hosted sites)
• Thermal API (just another api that Alex had found)
• Roll your own

Roll Your Own

Alex shared some code that he had created on making his own JSON API for WordPress (available on GitHub).

Presentation

The presentation is also viewable on slides.com.

Next Month’s Meetup

Next month will be more of an open discussion about plugins you’ve had problems with and how you overcame those issues. Originally it was going to be called “Plugins that Suck”, but we are hoping to find out the bad plugins and what you did to work around the problem. Did you find another plugin, talk to the developer, etc…

Other Cool Stuff

• JSON View plugin for Chrome – formats JSON into an easily readable view and adds collapse buttons on the different JSON nodes.
• AppPresser – a set of tools to help you build an app on top of WordPress.
• Aesop Story Engine – I never got to show this to the group, but it’s a plugin for creating rich, interactive experiences using WordPress to help tell a story. I’ve not used it, but it looks really cool.
• InfiniteWP – If you manage updated across multiple WordPress websites, this is a must. This is a separate product that must be installed on your server, but it monitors your WordPress websites and allows you to update plugins, themes and the core files all from one place. It’s free, but it has commercial add-ons.