June 6, 2020 — We cover a few different things that have to do with web accessibility.
1. Why web accessibility is important for WordPress developers to understand.
2. What WCAG 2.1 and Section 508 are.
3. Then we offer our 11 easy steps that you can take immediately to help your website be more compliant.

June 5, 2020 — In this panel, we assessed the business decisions media companies face when considering migrations. We talked about the choices that our panelists have had to make, tough lessons learned, along with some practical considerations for executing a well-run migration.

June 5, 2020 — We all want fast sites, but what is fast? What is performant? We may know it when we see; yet quantifying and communicating about web performance effectively is still a challenge.

In this talk, we discussed our ever-evolving set of standards for what comprises a fast site. With special attention to the problems that ads and analytics present for publishers, we also discussed how antiquated notions of web performance are a ripe environment for abuses by 3rd party code.

Finally, we reviewed techniques for improving performance monitoring as a tool for institutional change.

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June 5, 2020 — This lightning talk was an exploration of the operational and technical journey behind editorial commerce for the Airstream Supply Company.

June 5, 2020 — Last year, Google incorporated the Lighthouse tool into its PageSpeed Insights API for mobile. This tool checks a web page to determine how optimal the mobile experience is a for a visitor. As more than half of Internet traffic comes through mobile devices, these are the visitors that need to be prioritized.

Earlier this year Mediavine began developing a WordPress theme framework built for speed. The goal was to achieve a perfect score on Lighthouse, while maintaining all of the basic WordPress content creation functionality.

This session focused on the individual aspects Lighthouse analyzes, and how Mediavine was able to optimize that framework for each of those areas during the development of a theme. The purpose of this presentation was to supply insight on how organizations can achieve a higher Lighthouse score and improve their own search engine ranking, while providing an optimal experience for their readers.

June 5, 2020 — With the introduction of the block editor, the WordPress ecosystem and editing experience has shifted, particularly for teams who were deeply familiar with the Classic Editor and had workflows and tooling designed around that. With editorial under pressure to continue producing content, it can be tough to put together a plan to move your site, especially if it’s a large site, over to the new editor.

In this talk, we explored the migration path to Gutenberg at a high level and some strategies for making the transition as seamless as possible. We also drilled down and got tactical, with tasks that development and editorial can work on together. These included an audit of existing components and workflow and making a plan for how these might be implemented in the new editor.

By the end, everyone had some strategies for helping their team transition to the new editor and take advantage of all Gutenberg has to offer.

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June 5, 2020 — This lightning talk was on identifying opportunities to return to advertising aimed at audiences based on context, that don’t require 3rd party data, tracking users across the web, or sharing first party data out to others.

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June 4, 2020 — This lightning talk was a focus on building a culture of experimentation for large publishers.

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June 4, 2020 — This lightning talk was a review of current resume practices with a master resume writer with 19 years of experience.

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June 4, 2020 — We know WordPress is a great foundation for most publishers, but the modern web is becoming more and more demanding of our publishing platforms. Building more dynamic and complex web experiences are putting pressure on WordPress to deliver, especially at scale.

In this talk, Ben discussed and featured some work The Code Company did to build best of breed WordPress publishing platforms for their clients. Specifically, how their team work in a microservice architecture approach, native within WordPress, while resisting the urge to introduce additional technologies.

At the end of this talk, people left with some different ideas around how to architect and build more advanced services for high traffic WordPress sites without going over the top and some examples of what can go wrong.”

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