January 16, 2016 — For all of its simplicity, WordPress requires many pieces to come together to end up with a functioning, complete web site. This talk will take attendees through a visual roadmap that acts like the photo on a puzzle box to help you pull it all together. We will review a series of diagrams of the environment in which WP is installed as well as visual guides to find the right place inside WP to make the changes you need.

Many people who use or want to use WordPress are not web site developers. To beginners, the WP environment gives little hint about which option to pick to make a change on their site: Dashboard? Theme? Plugin? CSS? Hosting Control Panel? mySQL? Etc.

Even with 13 years of experience behind me in creating web sites, it took significant effort for me to learn WP and be able to handle its challenges and surprises.

This presentation gives participants a road map (available nowhere else that I can find) that helps them figure out what to change and where to make the change when their site needs something updated. Then they can either do it themselves or find someone to help.

Learning Outcomes:

– Get the big picture of how all the major pieces come together to create a WP-run site: hosting, WP, themes, plugins, CSS, HTML, etc.
– Know where to look to find the correct place to change the desired characteristic of the web site.
– Conference participants will have online access to download the slides and a cheatsheet for navigating the various tools supporting their WP web site.
– NOTE: This presentation will NOT go into detail about how to choose the options available in each supporting function. It’s meant to help people at least find the right place to make the change because they’ll have a good idea of the keywords to use in a search.

Presentation Slides »

January 16, 2016 — WordPress has built-in support for storing location information on posts, but no real way to make use of it. The Geo Mashup plugin enables deep, powerful geolocation in WordPress, letting you easily add geolocations (coordinates) to almost any content type.

It also displays locations on maps you can embed in your theme, posts or widgets, with a dizzying array of options for what to show and how to display it.

This talk will start with the default geolocation system in WordPress and how Geo Mashup integrates with it. We’ll then cover the basics of setup and adding locations on posts, then the different map types and situations where you’d use them. We’ll finish with some dev considerations for displaying maps as elegantly as possible.

Prerequisites:
This talk is aimed at anyone planning a site and considering geo integration. There will be developer speak (PHP/HTML/CSS) at times, but there will be lots to consider for anyone building custom WordPress sites.

Learning Outcomes:

– Understand the premises of geolocation and mapping as they apply to WordPress content.
– Identify valuable features in geolocation plugins.
– Grasp the complex feature set of Geo Mashup as a full-suite plugin.
– Identify content that makes sense to geolocate and/or map.
– Plan out ways of collecting geodata and displaying it using various types of map.
– Be ready to overcome the initial platform and design hurdles specific to Geo Mashup.

Presentation Slides »

January 16, 2016 — Many new users of WordPress are confused with and when pages are used and when posts are used. Are posts made to pages? Are posts pages in a site or blog? It’s such a mystery. In my session, we will solve the mystery of pages vs. posts with the help of Scooby Doo and the gang from Mysteries Inc.

Well go through step by step what each are and why and when they should be used. We’ll uncover clues and put those clues together to solve the mystery once and for all. We’ll even enjoy some Scooby Snacks along the way. Zoinks! Totally not kidding.

Learning Outcomes:

– Attendees will have a clear understand of what pages are for, what posts are and do and when either should be used and how.

Presentation Slides »

January 16, 2016 — The introduction to using WP-Cli, including: How to get it setup. Some helpful basics about the shell/command line. Some of the very useful things you can do with WP-CLI. Audience is Power users or administrators.

Presentation Slides »

January 16, 2016 — Writing blog posts without a clear direction is typically a waste of time for bloggers and businesses that are trying to grow their audience. If you aren’t sure how to reach your ideal audience and need actionable tips to gain traction, this is the session for you.

You may already be engaged in content marketing without even knowing it. It’s a great way to increase readership, brand awareness, search engine visibility, social media networking opportunities, and sales. During this session, the concept of content marketing will be explained and attendees will discover key concepts and learn important tactics which they can implement right away to reach their ideal audience.

Find out who wants to consume your content and how to beat the competition at figuring it out. Topics such as search engine optimization (SEO) and social media marketing will also be touched on. Relevant plugins and other online tools will be highlighted.

Learning Outcomes

– Follow clear steps to better content marketing.
– Implement actionable content marketing ideas.
– Find ideal content opportunities.
– Practice smart content marketing.

Presentation Slides »

January 16, 2016 — Think only coders can make a living using WordPress? Think again! There are a surprising number of ways to make a career using WordPress without knowing a single line of code. This presentation will tackle some of the barriers that discourage beginners from using WordPress professionally, like a lack of technical skill and feeling like an impostor.

Shed the fear and discover different career options and simple WordPress tips while learning to leverage your unique skill set for the tech industry.

Learning Outcomes:

– Participants will be encouraged to use WordPress professionally.
– Participants will be inspired to keep learning and pursue tech.
– They will be able to market their skills for the tech industry.
– They will have resources on how to learn to code and how to build up their knowledge and experience.

Presentation Slides »

January 16, 2016 — This is not a marketing presentation on how to get more conversions. In this presentation we’ll walk through best practices for integrating A/B testing tools and plugins like Visual Web Optimizer and Optimizely for WordPress. We will also look at how to properly setup template pages, embed tracking codes and how to manage your content and media for testing across multiple devices.

Learning Outcomes:

– Use WordPress to develop Landing Pages.
– Integrate 3rd party tools for conversion and landing page optimization.
– Turn WordPress into a marketing machine.
– Create A/B tests on posts and pages.
– Design pages and content with conversion design principles.
– Integrate WordPress with other marketing vehicles efficiently.

Presentation Slides »

January 16, 2016 — In my travels, I have discovered that there is not much documentation on using CSS3 specifically in WordPress. While not many of the new CSS3 modules have reached official recommendation by the W3C, support is very good across all of the latest browsers.

This session will aim to inform, enlighten, and delight attendees with the right way to include CSS in your WordPress theme using child themes or a plugin such as Jetpack, and we will also cover some of the best new features of CSS3 that you can put to work right away.You should have a basic understanding of HTML and some familiarity with CSS.

Learning Outcomes

– Use the Chrome Inspector to inspect HTML and CSS of existing pages
– Create a child theme and add your own CSS to it
– Install a plugin to add custom CSS to your theme
– Enqueue your own stylesheet the proper way in functions.php
– Use the new CSS3 features to create gradients and animations on your site
– Use the new color specifications to specify colors of elements on your page

Presentation Slides »

January 16, 2016 — The rallying cry for WordPress has become an Apple take-off “there is a free plugin for that”. So the premium plugins have to offer substantial value to win over developers. Here are two image grid plugins, Justified Image Grid and Essential Grid, that offer just such value.

Responsive image grids that work well on mobile and desktop screens.
Ability to incorporate portrait, landscape, and varying dimensions images in the same masonry layout image grid.
Add styled captions, links, and shortcodes to images.
Use a variety of image sources including WP gallery, NextGen, FaceBook, Flickr, Instagram, etc.
Provide an image grid of feature Posts based on taxonomy, category, or date.
Provide a variety of lightboxes for magnification of images with captions.
Allow for page or load more infinite image scrolling.
Provide filtering of images displayed in the grid with buttons along the top for All, Tagged, Category, Etc filters.
Provide a variety of styling options for individual images and the grid as a whole.
I compare the best of the free image plugins with these features.
(Disclosure: I am not now nor will be in the future be an affiliate for either of these vendors or their representatives. The motivation: several times for $28 or less these plugins saved my bacon by lowering cost of development by hundreds of dollars while delivering advanced and winning features to clients.)

Learning Outcomes:

– Outline the key uses of image grids in WordPress development.
– Demonstrate the advantage of responsive grids in mobile design.
– Show how image grids can display mixed size plus portrait and landscape images well in a masonry layout.
– Create a visual sitemap for a website.
– Create an instant shopping cart grid for an array of products.
– Help answer the question when to consider a premium plugin.

Presentation Slides »

January 16, 2016 — Migrations can be a scary thing with so many things to do and think about. I’m going to talk about the common tasks to have on your checklist before moving from one host to another. Also, I’m going to discuss how to migrate your site from a local install up to a publicly viewable server.

Learning Outcomes

– Migrate your domain name, WordPress install, database, media files from one host to another.

Presentation Slides »