August 16, 2016 — The GNU General Public License (GPL) is a free (as in freedom) software license that is used by many open source projects, including WordPress. While many of us are probably familiar with the GPL, there are also a number of misconceptions. It’s important, as WordPress professionals, for us to be able to talk about the GPL with our clients and coworkers — both in terms of what the GPL says and also what it doesn’t say. The GPL is based on some extremely powerful ideas, and it’s a shame that they are sometimes misunderstood. If you feel like you could use a refresher, or ideas about how to explain the GPL to people you’re working with, this talk is for you.

Target audience: Anyone interested in getting into GPL products or wanting to learn more about what they’re already doing. This can be building them, purchasing them, or modifying ones that already exist.

Take aways:

What does the GPL actually mean? We’ll cover several examples of what sort of circumstances are and are not permitted under the GPL (as well as the sort of obligations you have when working with GPL-licensed software like WordPress).
How do I make money from GPL products if people can just copy and distribute my work?
What are some common misconceptions people have when talking about the GPL and where can you get some clarification.

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August 16, 2016 — Windows and Mac tools to get sites built faster. From which code editors are snippet friendly to apps to speed us along in preprocessing a Gulp stack – I’ll offer a wide range of entry level to advanced tools, websites and apps to get things done.

Take aways:

If someone is new to web development of already advanced, they’ll have tools and resources they may not have heard about that can make their workflow faster, what to learn first.
One does not need to know javascript to get a gulp stack built for web development.
Plugins to code editors to speed up workflow.

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August 16, 2016 — *This is a 15-minute Lightning Talk*

It’s the bug report call we all dread: “the website is slow.” None of the code has changed in weeks and, other than writing a few new blog posts, the client hasn’t touched the site. The website has been running fine for months. So why is it running slow now? Is it the database? The web server? Is your server swapping? Does it have anything to do with your application or is it maybe a third party service that’s running slow, like DNS? Although we won’t be able to go over everything that might cause your server to behave badly, this talk will review the basics of profiling your server in order to diagnose problems. No prior knowledge of command line tools will be assumed, and the talk will be accessible to non-developers. The one thing that attendees should be familiar with prior to attending this talk is how to SSH into their server. It would also be a good idea for attendees to know how to install software packages using apt or yum.

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August 16, 2016 — I’m a digital marketer with a love for my community and the nonprofits that serve my community. Some friends and I set out to create a way to help marketing professionals and developers use their specific skills to help local nonprofits, and 48in48 (48in48.org) was born. We recently finished our first 48in48 event where a team of over 150 people built 48 WordPress websites for 48 nonprofits in 48 hours. This session will explore what I learned during the creation, planning and execution of the event and will give some thoughts on how the WordPress community can give back using their professional skills.

Take aways:

How we approached building a plethora of sites a short amount of time.
How we approached the volunteers.
What plugins we used that were essential for the success of the project and for the long term success of the nonprofits.
Overview of what we learned and what we plan to do next.

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August 16, 2016 — Version 4.6 of WordPress, named “Pepper” in honor of jazz saxophonist Pepper Adams, is available for download or update in your WordPress dashboard. New features in 4.6 make gets you where you need to go faster, whether you’re adding a theme, updating your site’s plugins, or navigating the WordPress Dashboard.

August 16, 2016 — Hooks give end users a chance to write custom code that safely alters the behavior of WordPress core, plugins and themes – all without modifying the core, plugin or theme code itself.

In this talk, we’ll go over basic usage of WordPress hooks, and we’ll explore ways to find the right hook when you have a need for custom functionality. We’ll also talk about how easy it is to create your own hooks, and how important it is to do so when creating plugins and themes.

Take aways:

Learn how WordPress is listening for you to run your own code at certain key points.
Safely alter or add to the behavior of WordPress core, themes, and plugins.
Give others a chance to expand upon your own code as they see fit.

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August 15, 2016 — There has been lots of discussion around using WordPress as an app framework. In this talk, we’ll take a detailed look at the ups and downs of using WordPress to build a web app (hireotto.com) with:

WP REST API Endpoints
OAuth Authentication with 3rd party services
WP Cron & Job Queues
3rd Party API integrations
Webhooks
User Registration & Account Management
Recurring Billing
An overview and look into how all these components work together, where WordPress saved development time, and where it caused headaches.

This talk is not an endorsement or condemnation of using WordPress as an app framework. Each project is different, and the goal is to openly discuss the tradeoffs so developers can make informed decisions for their own projects.

August 15, 2016 — SVGs provide designers, developers and users with an array of benefits including performance, styling and animations. In this talk, theme developers will walk away with the benefits of using SVGs in their themes, understanding the different approaches to rendering SVGs, and adding some styles and animation to help bring sites and applications to life.

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August 15, 2016 — 1.) Beginners: what a Multisite is; what they’re good for; what they’re not good for

2.) Intermediate: sub-domain vs sub-folders; network admin.

3.) Advanced: Caveats; domain mapping; quirks

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August 15, 2016 — I will walk the audience through the different caching options they might have at their disposal depending on their hosting needs and the hidden gotcha’s they might not be aware of.

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