August 19, 2016 — *This is a 15-minute Lightning Talk*

So many developers avoid the command line and they are missing out on so much power. With the addition of the WP-CLI to our set of tools, they are missing out on even more. In this talk I will go through some of the amazing things you can do with the WP-CLI to help work more effectively, efficiently, and automate your life as a WordPress developer. I hope to inspire you to jump into the command line, begin learning the WP-CLI, and start improving your life, today!
Take Aways:
1) Grok the CLI

Presentation Slides »

August 19, 2016 — WordPress 4.4 was a milestone release, with the addition of both responsive images and a REST API. In this session, I’ll demonstrate API endpoints and JavaScript I’ve written for using the REST API and AJAX to load responsive background images into sites.

This technique has several advantages: first, using the background-image property is more semantic and powerful than traditional s. Second, you can have a dynamic background on an otherwise cached page. Third, you have more information available about how your user is viewing your site than just their viewport width.

The session will include three short demos: First, a basic demonstration of the technique. Second, using array_rand on the server to pull in a random background image. And as a finale, using the ambient light API in OSX Firefox to load in “day time” and “night time” images.

Take aways:

The addition of responsive images into the WordPress core was powerful, but it doesn’t solve every problem and isn’t always semantic.
Using AJAX to load images has many benefits because you can know more about the client.
The WordPress REST API can be used for more than you realize.

Presentation Slides »

August 19, 2016 — Rewrite rules are how WordPress creates clean/pretty URIs from URL query parameters. When your new page or blog post automatically gets a human-friendly URL, this is provided by a rewrite rule, which itself is using WordPress’s Rewrite API. In this presentation Jonathan Daggerhart will go over the basics of the Rewrite API, create a few new rewrite rules as examples, and make use of the data the Rewrite API provides the global WP_Query object when it matches a rule’s pattern. Hopefully by the end of the class, you’ll have a good understanding of what the Rewrite API is, how it works, and some use-cases where it could be beneficial.

August 19, 2016 — I’ve gone from trying to hack plugins to do what I want to actually developing my own from scratch over the past year. It’s challenging but very doable. This session will touch on the process I went through to become a much better WordPress engineer and a better coder. The presentation will discuss changing your thinking process when approaching WordPress development. We’ll touch on WordPress coding standards, how actions and filters work, and why they are so valuable. We’ll end by actually building a simple plugin step-by-step, in under 10 minutes.

Take aways:

Attendees will leave knowing they can improve their skills and how to start that process.
An understanding of why it’s important to develop in WordPress using the proper methods and not hacking it together.
A live demo of how simple developing a small plugin can be.

Presentation Slides »

August 19, 2016 — WordPress’ built-in search functionality leaves a lot to be desired. A LOT! Why is the default search so bad? What are the options for making search on your site better? In this talk I’ll cover a range of solutions for improving the search results of your site and integrating with WordPress.

Take aways:

How WordPress’ default search works under the hood.
What are some ways to make WordPress Search better.
What are key features when evaluating different search technologies.

Presentation Slides »

August 19, 2016 — Opening Remarks / Keynote

August 19, 2016 — I’m going to be speaking about some of the more popular JS frameworks, Angular, Backbone, and React, and show some real-world examples of how easily they can interact with the API.

I’ll be showing (and possibly live-coding) basic examples with each library and fetching the 10 latest posts from the WP-API.

Take aways:

The WP-API isn’t that scary, it’s so easy to get/send stuff if you’ve got JSON skills (which aren’t that hard).
JavaScript frameworks all have different ways to do things, but similar stuff going on in the background.
At the end of the day, React rocks (it’s the best), but it might not be the best solution for your project …

Presentation Slides »

August 19, 2016 — In this presentation I’ll show how WordPress themes (and sites) can be built to achieve 100/100 Google pagespeed. You’ll learn about my process of using Gulp to concatenate and minify resources, along with intentional enqueues and dequeues.

Bonus: some ways to configure cache plugins to achieve a similar effect.

Take aways:

How front-end performance effects mobile users on slower speeds.
Tips on improving front-end performance.
Gulp basics and how to use with WordPress.

Presentation Slides »

August 18, 2016 — The days of ten blue links are gone. When people search by voice they may never see a screen of results. Google’s answer boxes may allow people to find what they are searching for without going to another website. What is driving all this and how do you optimize for it? How can websites, blogs or local businesses take advantage of these changes? This presentation is most appropriate for someone with at least a basic knowledge of SEO.

Why search is fragmenting
The different ways people get search results these days
How to optimize for the new SEO

Presentation Slides »

August 18, 2016 — How much money and credibility would you lose if your website went down for a week? A day? An hour?

Let’s take a look at some of the most common things that can go wrong with a WordPress site. This talk will outline easy plans and steps you can take to prevent website disaster. We’ll also share a downloadable action plan to help you get started.

Takeaways:

Create an action plan covering most common issues that could befall your site(s).
Know how to increase security by making it more difficult for hackers to break in.
Have resources available to help in case the site faces problems too big for a backup to fix ( i.e., hacked with no clean backup; host goes out of business and takes site down.

Presentation Slides »