February 10, 2020 — GROW YOUR MEETUP!
This workshop will cover how to grow an established meetup and will cover popular main topics:

Marketing: Tactics for how to grow your meetup size and how to advertise/attract potential sponsors and other surrounding meetups.

Formats & Creative Ideas: What formats and ideas have some meetups successfully used to avoid getting themselves into a “rut”?

WordCamps: How to use meetups to set up those who are interested in volunteering for organizer or speaker roles at the local WordCamp.

A wide variety of general tips will be shared that will be applicable to all meetup organizers and volunteers – even if you are just beginning to start your first meetup, this workshop will ensure you are starting off on the right foot.

December 24, 2019 — Performing theme, plugin and core updates on your site can be intimidating and overwhelming, especially for older and more complex sites with many interconnected plugins – WooCommerce, I’m looking at you!

The solution is simple: use a staging site – a private copy of your site where you can safely test updates and resolve problems before your users ever experience an issue.

I’ll guide you across a number of ways to create a staging site depending on your specific needs, performing these updates, and then applying these updates to your main site. You’ll leave with a concrete plan for how to set up your own staging site, and will fear the update process far less!

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July 13, 2019 — Performing theme, plugin and core updates on your site can be intimidating and overwhelming, especially for older and more complex sites with many interconnected plugins – Woocommerce, I’m looking at you!
The solution is simple: use a staging site – a private copy of your site where you can safely test updates and resolve problems before your users ever experience an issue.
I’ll guide you across a number of ways to create a staging site depending on your specific needs, performing these updates, and then applying these updates to your main site. You’ll leave with a concrete plan for how to set up your own staging site, and will fear the update process far less!

December 1, 2017

August 31, 2017 — Ever think of using WordPress to manage a project, be a private communication board, or even have a forum? This presentation looks at novel and unique ways to use WordPress beyond a simple blog or website by using BuddyPress, bbPress, and P2. We’ll cover these and more uses that truly push WordPress to its limits.

August 6, 2017 — Plugins are what lets WordPress power so much of the web – all kinds of customizability in only a few clicks! Let’s talk about the WordPress Plugin ecosystem, learn how to identify good plugins from bad ones, and compare paid versus free plugins. I’ll also share my top list of awesome plugins to push WordPress way past a simple blog.

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December 16, 2016 — It’s known that WordPress is open-source and community-built, but how exactly one can get started contributing can be a bit of a mystery. In fact, many people aren’t aware that one can contribute to WordPress without being a master of code! Documentation, translation, teaching, infrastructure, design, and yes, Core – there are many different ways to contribute to the WordPress.org Project. My presentation will enlighten audience members to the world of open-source contributing and make it easier for them to connect with the Make.WordPress.org community.

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December 1, 2016 — Genuinely helpful money advice from veteran WordPress designers and developers. Save yourself a ton of hassle, time and money by learning what these experts had to learn the hard way. Topics will include: how to price your work, how to plan for scope creep, how to detect and avoid time sinks in advance, red flags with new clients, common pricing pitfalls for newbies, how to get paid ahead of any other vendors. Format: a series of lightning talks (5 mins each) followed by Q & A. For all skill levels and anyone new to WordPress.

June 17, 2016 — You’ve designed it, you’ve built it, you’ve launched your new website – job done, right?

Nope – your adventure has only begun!

In this session we’ll review what “website security” really means, why it matters, and how exactly to implement basic security best practices such as:

– Controlling user access to your site,

– Using (and managing) strong passwords,

– Applying updates to Core and Plugins,

– Installing and configuring security plugins,

– & How to back up your site easily, effectively, and automatically!

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September 16, 2015 — Did you know the average user will wait only 2-3 seconds waiting for a webpage to load before abandoning it forever? Having a fast website is critical to its success. How do you ensure your site loads fast and reliably, to all kinds of users around the world? In this presentation we’ll discuss seven strategies for increasing your WordPress site’s speed. Covering caching, content delivery networks, image optimization, file optimization, database cleaning, and hosting and theme choices, you’re guaranteed to leave this presentation with concrete next steps for improving your site’s performance.

Prerequisites:
Most of these strategies can be accomplished through plugins!

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