December 16, 2015 — This is a ‘sequel’ to the talk I gave at WordCamps last year; taking the principles I spoke about and putting them into practice, I will talk about how in Parsec, I made images responsive, lightened load time, and introduced Sass. While earlier talks focused more on design decisions and planning, I will talk about coding, implementing, and testing!

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December 16, 2015 — Whenever a post is saved, a page is loaded, a comment is created or a template is loaded, WordPress fires off events that, as developers, we have loved and cherished. These events are hooks. While hooks have been the quintessential building blocks of WordPress for over a decade, they come with a cost. Often times, developers will hook functionality into the save_post event, for instance, to fire off a notification to an external service or perform some sort of background task. The more of these tasks are hooked into WordPress, the slower WordPress becomes.

In this talk, I will show you how to alleviate these bottlenecks with asynchronous hooks – hooks that can be used to perform the exact same tasks, but not block the rest of WordPress from running. Through a library created by 10up’s Eric Mann and John Bloch for TechCrunch on WordPress VIP, the overhead of running actions can be reduced to a negligible amount.

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December 16, 2015 — This talk will give a view of how blogging with WordPress fits well with Scottish education’s ‘Curriculum for excellence’. Some loose linkage of Community, Connections & Openness in software and education. How Glow blogs, a set of 32 multi-sites with a total of >160,000 blogs are used and are developing. Some notes of the ‘Product Owner’ role and working at large scale to fit the needs of stake holders from a wide range of ages and needs.

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December 16, 2015 — Having a website that loads fast is important and we all know that. It can have a major impact on user engagement, conversion, retention and even SEO but for some reason, websites on the web continue to get bigger and slower. Why is this the case and what can we do about it?

This talk will primarily focus on the tools and techniques that can be used to create faster websites. Some topics that will be covered during this talk include performance testing, automations, mobile, design decisions and dealing with clients.

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December 16, 2015 — Design is everywhere: including in the films of Baltimore’s filthiest person alive, John Waters. Chris Ford explains what Divine, Domino Sugar and dog poo can teach you about becoming a more confident, creative and effective designer. Let your freak flag fly!

December 14, 2015 — I’ll start by showing you how to set up a contact form in under five minutes. In fact, you can time me! Then, I’ll show you all the options for making much more complicated, multiple-page forms. I’ll talk about using Gravity Forms as a simple shopping cart solution or a way to register users on your site. I’ll show just how flexible it can be by integrating it with Paypal, Stripe, Mailchimp, Zapier and many more services. Even if you’ve been using Gravity Forms for a long time, I’m betting that you will learn something new during my presentation.

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December 14, 2015 — You can stand in line at the store or stand in line online to get your hands on this “hot” New York pastry. This session will discuss the lessons learned in building an ecommerce site for James Beard Award-winning Chef Dominique Ansel’s Cronut. Learn how WordPress stands up to the crowds when we sell out of hundreds of pastries within 15 minutes every Monday morning. We’ll discuss things to consider when planning an ecommerce site and things we failed to consider until we were faced with overwhelming demand.

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December 14, 2015 — As designers we’re searching for the best – the best method, the best look, the best font. We have a continuous battle to create brands that are unique but that have a longstanding presence. We make tough decisions constantly, question our instincts, and settle. We fight and we strive to make long lasting beautiful, smart and informed design. How do we get there?

In this talk, seasoned Creative Director Sara Cannon is going to dive deep into the designers struggle. She’s going to share different processes that can make our work better. We’re going to discuss philosophy, methodology, and execution from the creative mind stand point. Hopefully by the end of the talk, you will be inspired to push your own creative limits and learned some tips on how to get there.

December 14, 2015 — Are you doing all you can before your website becomes accessible to billions of people? This talk is an overview of major elements to take into account before launching a successful WordPress website. Topics discussed include functionality, responsiveness, search engine optimization, speed, security, and backups.

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December 14, 2015 — Take your WordPress blog content to the next level when you re-purpose it into a digital eBook! eBooks are the new hot trend in marketing your website’s content, and you can assemble one easily using tools you likely already own! Learn about free vs. paid distribution options and how each style can benefit your website promotion strategy!