October 7, 2015 — Time is money, and time wasted is money lost. It is time to start identifying points in your development process that can be automated or sped up. We will review all the time-saving tips, tricks, and applications that I have incorporated over the years as a front-end developer. Fear not, back-end developers, much of this will apply to you as well! Time permitting, there will be a bonus round of time-saving applications I use to help run our business regarding bidding, time tracking, and invoicing. This will be an interactive presentation – while covering all these items, I am interested in alternatives you use as well. Let’s get all the ideas out there!

October 7, 2015 — You read through WordPress for Dummies and thought, “I ain’t no dummy! I can do this!” Only to find out – you really didn’t LIKE messing with PHP files and you broke more than you built. But you love WordPress and really want to make a living leveraging your skills within the WordPress economy and/or community. Well, there’s definitely more to building a career in WordPress than stylesheets, hooks, and loops. From part time bloggers to full time CEO’s, WordPress offers a diverse array of options for the budding or seasoned professional. In this session we will explore different professional skill sets that are utilized by freelancers, small agencies and large WordPress companies. With an emphasis on investing in the community at large, we will cover how to network your way to the top! (Or, at least …. how to grow your career in WordPress!) This will be an informative discussion and I will open the floor for questions/comments at the end.

October 7, 2015 — WordPress has came a very long way since the first release in 2003. The publishing platform is now being used in a variety of ways. We want to take the time to display a few projects where WordPress has been used in interesting ways.

October 7, 2015 — Teamwork is a critical part of making your WordPress project a success. While defining a workflow and establishing development tools can help your team code together efficiently, it is equally important to establish processes for pushing content live.
This session is intended for developers and site builders looking to fine tune the tools they use to work better as a team and will focus on development environment, deployment, workflow and processes.

October 7, 2015 — In customizing WordPress, most people look first for a splendiferous and fancy theme. There are thousands of options, so we can usually find something that gets us 80-90% of the way there. But heavens to Betsy, that last 10-20% can be hard to find! That’s why it’s good to learn how to make a child theme, which lets you keep almost everything while adding to or removing from your original theme safely. Most of this talk with cover the creation and use of child themes. This is an absolutely essential (and pretty easy to learn) skill for any WordPress designer.

October 7, 2015 — Once you get the hang of the basics, it’s time to dive in and start getting work done with git. We will talk about staging your files, branching strategies and merge vs rebase. We will also touch on the topic of rewriting history – what it means, examples of doing it and when to avoid it at all costs.

Presentation Slides »

October 7, 2015 — An American turns 50 every 7 seconds. Those aged 50 and older represent 45% of the U.S. population. One-third of the internet users in the U.S., are adults aged 50+ representing the Web’s largest constituency. WordPress sites must be designed with this in mind. You will learn how to meet seniors’ needs from one of their own.

October 7, 2015 — “Web Accessibility is not just for developers, there are plenty of things people can do to get involved. This presentation will focus on the different ways you can contribute to Web Accessibility and how you can help spread the word. We will cover some Web Accessibility fundamentals and why it’s important. From there we will go over the various ways you can communicate and increase exposure to Web Accessibility using various terms and avenues. Next we will discuss WordPress Accessibility specifically and the different aspects surrounding it. Finally, we will go over the different ways you can contribute to WordPress Accessibility.
It’s well-known that there is power in numbers, so the more we can advocate the more we can evoke change.

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October 7, 2015 — WordPress upgrades, they bring us new features, faster sites, and better security. But pushing that upgrade button can be a scary moment, unless you’ve ensured your site is ready and compatible. I’ll show you the best practices for ensuring your site is ready including a simple strategy that works whether you manage one site or hundreds.

Learning Outcomes:

Understand the important of keeping WordPress upgraded.
Create a 5 step test plan to ensure their site is ready to upgrade.
Test their sites on beta and Release Candidates to provide feedback to the community.

Presentation Slides »

October 6, 2015 — How to make your responsive WordPress site render in less than a second.
A step by step walkthrough of how to reach this critical goal on a responsive WordPress based site.
Server side and front end key principles that you can put into practice on your very own WordPress site.