On November 15, 2011 I was invited to the WordPress NYC Meetup to talk about how the WordPress initialization, or “boot” process works. Almost 100 of my fellow ‘pressers turned out for the event. The presentation was adapted from a previous post on the same topic.

The night was full of firsts for me. It was the first time I’d ever attempted to explain such a specific part of WordPress to anyone. It was the first time I’d ever covered such a highly technical topic. Most notably, for me, was that it was the first time I had ever spoken publicly to more than 10 or 15 people.

My goal was to cover as much of the information outlined in my original post as possible. This was probably the most difficult part for me. The nature of the WordPress boot process is highly non-linear. Moving from required file to required file and function call to function call can be extremely disorienting. I only hope I was able to pass along some structure and meaning to the whole process.

You can watch the video here or head over to wpnyc.org to watch it.

Below are some resources that either support and help explain the WordPress boot process or were specifically mentioned by me during the presentation:

1. Codex: Integrating WordPress Into an Existing Site
2. Codex: WordPress and SVN
3. Mark Jaquith Deploying WordPress
4. theme.fm Deploying WordPress with Capistrano Series
5. Otto on Actions and Filters
6. Codex: Must Use Plugins
7. theme.fm How WordPress Boots Series

Both the CSS based slideshow framework and my specific slides can be accessed from the links below. I’d like to thank @LeaVerou for taking the time to not only create this framework but also for sharing it with the rest of us. I highly recommend you check out her blog, she also does some really amazing things with CSS3 gradients.

• CSSS | CSS-Based Slideshow Framework on GitHub
• My WPNYC Slides GitHub Repo
• My WPNYC Slides

I’d like to thank everyone who attended one more time. I hope you all had as much fun as I did and I hope you learned a little more about how WordPress boots and helps us create such incredible websites. Please feel free to leave comments and constructive criticism below. 🙂