March 16, 2017 — Unfortunately WordPress has reputation of weak security and the web is full of guides and plugins to enhance WordPress security. Unfortunately some advice is misleading or just false sales pitch. Understanding what is truly essential for security and what is irrelevant can be difficult. In this talk I explain, based on my experience of maintaining hundreds of WordPress sites, what I don’t consider relevant and what you don’t need to worry about, and what are the actually important things you need to care for.

March 15, 2017 — No matter what the purpose of the site you’ve built, it’s likely you’ve included a standard contact form as one of the first (or last) items on your pre-launch task list.

Name, email, reason for contact, submit: BORING!

In this session Adam will look at some creative ways to use forms in WordPress with the goal being to better engage and convert website visitors. Whether convincing potential clients to make first contact, grow an email subscription list, or streamline the guest blogging submission process, website contact form(s) are a key part of the communication process.

Adam will share several different contact form approaches and what plugins and/or services work best for each.

March 15, 2017 — As a site owner, I wanted to have more flexibility and control over my content so looked towards custom post types and custom meta fields. This is the journey of how a non-developer learnt to structure post types, custom meta fields, the plugins and libraries I’ve used to create my sites with and some tips for making the editor more user friendly so all the extra fields don’t feel overwhelming.

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March 15, 2017 — Four months after the UK voted to leave the EU, where are we in terms of its impact on the web profession? How is our work going to change? What new rules might we have to follow? In fact, whose rules might we have to follow? Learn what’s ahead for the next few years, Brexit or not.

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March 15, 2017 — More often than not, support requests aren’t actually requests for support, but an attempt to get a website on the cheap. So what can you do to manage our customer’s expectations and ensure your business remains profitable?

The answer? Stop selling support and start selling updates.

March 15, 2017 — Recruiting new supporters and encouraging them to take part in campaigns and make donations is crucial for charities and non-profits. In this talk I will talk about how a few charities I have worked with recently, ShareAction, Positive Money and Refugee Action, have managed to achieve that using their WordPress websites. Through a mixture of strategic use of plugins and optimising the sites to encourage people to sign up or donate at the right time, I will go through a range of case studies and practical tips to show how other people can get similar results.

March 15, 2017 — Imposter Syndrome affects people across all ages, genders and vocations. A high rate of people in tech experience imposter syndrome as they progress their skillsets and have few to no coping mechanisms in which to overcome feelings of inadequacy. Rough outline: What is imposter syndrome? My own journey. Famous “imposters” Why you aren’t less than. How to overcome feeling like a fraud.

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March 15, 2017 — Fitting user focussed design methodologies into a development process needn’t be difficult. Our objectives as UX practitioners, as designers, as developers, as product owners etc are the same – to build the best possible thing in the time we have and within budget. The difficulties that surround projects are often much more to do with communication and process than they are about the differences between the disciplines. As well as adding weight and dimension to UX discovery, thinking about what we are building as separate and connected objects, and particularly the exercise that I share in this session, can be really helpful in building a foundation for better communication and collaboration across team, discipline and organisation(s).

March 15, 2017 — WordCamps are really a great place/event to get a lot of learnings, meeting new people, know more of WordPress and many more. All the attendees make the investment of their time and money to attend different WordCamps and therefore they are always very curious to know about ways they can get the most out of the WordCamp. Through all my personal experience attending different camps and interactions with other WordCamp attendees, I have compiled a checklist of things that would be very useful to all attendees of the WordCamp – for this one as well as all the future WordCamps.

March 15, 2017 — 10 Step Guide to doing your own thing (with WordPress) I’ll share the 10 most important things I’ve learned since I started to use WordPress and the experiences faced in starting a WordPress-focused web development agency. I’ll share stuff on how focusing on a single path and managing your ideas, risks, fears and failures will make you better at what you do.

I’ll also include my own personal mantra about why I chose to go 100% WordPress, quite simply: “You’re either a genius or an idiot if you build your own CMS, choose wisely”. My hope is that everyone can take something away from this talk. In the spirit of open-source and WordPress I feel that we should always be open and share our career paths if only to inspire the next generation not to make the same mistakes!