August 5, 2015 — This talk is my personal story of how I rebuilt my life with a freelance WordPress career. In June 2011 after battling a crippling drug addiction most of my adult life, I was out of options. I stumbled into WordPress by accident and realized that it represented an opportunity to rebuild a name for myself and a business. I found in WordPress something that combined what I was good at with something that I enjoyed and got paid to do. For the first time in my life, I felt like I was delivering something of value to others, and I loved teaching people how to use a platform that gave them a voice.

This talk is the story of how battled my inner demons, fell in love with WordPress, built my business, and became involved in the WordPress community, both online and in person.

I cover how to quickly build technical skills, how to find mentors, how to become involved in the WordPress community, and how to keep moving forward without looking back. I talk about my inspiration for my WordPress educational business and organizing the first WordCamp in Connecticut. My hope is to inspire freelancers and anyone looking at WordPress as a career choice and a life choice, a platform that has introduced me to so many amazing people and allowed me to create a life only a few years ago I could have hardly dreamed.

August 5, 2015 — Learn how to leverage psychology in boosting conversion rates on your WordPress website. What makes a site visitor click? What makes a site visitor frustrated and leave? In this session, you’ll uncover key insights into the intersection of human psychology and user experience (UX) and learn to tap into your site visitors’ subconscious to spur them into action.

August 5, 2015 — Many software companies and freelancers are able to build fantastic websites, but they have no idea how to decide what to charge. Unfortunately, poor pricing decisions can destroy a company’s financial future and mean the difference between owning a successful business and being forced to live in a van down by the river. In this presentation, Adam presents techniques to determine the most appropriate pricing strategy for your WordPress projects.

August 5, 2015 — Are you using a theme on your blog or website that is almost what you’re looking for but that could use a bit of customization? Don’t want to look like everyone else using the twenty fifteen theme? Child themes let us inherit the functionality of an existing theme, while adding our own custom functionality and style to suit our tastes and needs. In this session we look at how to create a child theme and some ways which we can make that baby our own.

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August 5, 2015 — This presentation gives an in-depth look into how to extend or modify core functionality without touching core files. Learn how to use actions and filters as well as create their own custom hooks. We also take a look at some core hooks, and the best practices when it comes to using them.

August 5, 2015 — Let’s say somebody built you a WordPress site and then left you in the lurch to fend for yourself. Maybe they told you how to add content, use headings, and add images. But you forgot that stuff pretty quickly.
Get past the fear of breaking the internet. You CAN do this! This session will help you figure out what you think you can’t.

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August 5, 2015 — We all know about Responsive Design. But most mainstream techniques rely on the browser to call the shots and determine what and how the content gets displayed, typically using media queries. This reliance can be taxing to poor, overworked devices. Doesn’t it make more sense to let the server, with it’s beefier processors, compile the page and send the content to the device so that the page is lighting fast regardless of the device? This is where RESS(Server Side Responsive) steps in. Learn how this is different from what you thought of as responsive design as well as techniques that you can use right away to significantly reduce your render time.

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August 5, 2015 — This talk will initially showcase a few examples of using 3D environments in WordPress. I’ll then go over helpful tips about WebGL and the relevance to WordPress, and discuss frequently-used JavaScript libraries that make our lives easier, followed by how to use them properly within WordPress. I’ll then provide an example – along with links to more thorough guides – on how to pull in data from WordPress into JavaScript as globals, and make it available for use in your 3D application.

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August 5, 2015 — Learn about the 19 plugins that I think are essential to having a well functioning (and even fun) website! Learn more about some plugins that give your website more functionality and help make client’s websites pop.

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August 5, 2015 — Theme security is an intimidating topic for both new and experienced developers but ignoring the issue will make you a target and leave your site vulnerable to attacks. In this talk you’ll learn theme security best practices, the common types of attacks, and many of the functions that WordPress and PHP provide to keep your site safe.