'WordCamp North Canton' Invites Community to Learn Website-Building With WordPress

Local graphic designer Joe Rozsa invites the North Canton and surrounding communities to pack up and go camping. 

Don't worry; this kind of camping is far from "roughing it."

Rozsa's version of camping consists of all-day workshops to learn all things WordPress.

The WordPress camp, aptly titled WordCamp North Canton, takes place from 8 a.m.-4 p.m. May 4 at Stark State College. The goal is to teach about 200 people — young, old, techy and no-so-techy — how to navigate WordPress and manage their own free WordPress websites.

Rozsa, creative director at TrailerTrash Design, spends much of his professional time working with WordPress and says it's not as difficult to manage a site as it might seem; some people just need a little direction.

"I had, at one point, a 93-year-old writer of children’s books using WordPress," he said. "So, anyone can use it."

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Don't know much about WordPress or what it's used for? Rozsa can clear that up.

"It's an open source content management system, which means anyone can go to the web and grab WordPress and start using it for free," he said. "It started out as a blogger's tool, and really by virtue of popularity it started to become better and better and people were making improvements to it. It evolved into a system where you can build really complex websites without really knowing a whole lot of code."

He said even CNN, Mashable and Lollapalooza use WordPress. In fact, six out of every 10 sites are now using it.

Camp participants don't need to be a technology guru, company owner or website developer, either. The event is for all skill levels.

"It’s not just for business people. It’s not just for designers. It’s for everyone," Rozsa said. "It’s for your grandma who quilts and has a blog about it, and it’s for people like me who make a living using it.”

Rozsa, who's attended WordPress events from Columbus to Buffalo and Toronto, thought North Canton area residents and members of the business community could benefit from a WordCamp.

"The more I thought about it, the more I thought it would be cool to do it, since we have the Walsh University and North Canton Intelligent Community going on," he said. "I just thought it would be a good tie for North Canton to bring in something like this because we don’t have anything like it here in the area."

WordCamp North Canton costs $20 a person, and participants must register in advance. Rozsa said registration will begin in March (check back with North Canton Patch to see when registration opens). The event will be catered by Ermanno's Legendary Pizza.

There's more. Participants are also invited to an after party at the Barrel Room.

Want to know more about WordCamp North Canton? Check out the event website and follow #wcnc2013 on Twitter for up-to-date information.

Add the event to your calendar using our Patch event listing. From there, readers can export the event to iCal, Outlook and Google Calendar.

Anyone wishing to volunteer at the event can sign up here, and those wishing to help sponsor the event can contact Rozsa directly at joe@trailertrashdesign.us.