August 19, 2026 — The standard toolkit for custom WordPress theme development is undergoing a generational shift. Legacy bundlers, bulky frameworks, and guessing games with AI code completion are being replaced by lightweight execution environments, composable architectures, and rigid, deterministic code scaffolding. In this immersive, hands-on workshop, developers will dive into the future of theme development using WP Rig, the open-source progressive development starter theme and build tool system tailored for modern WordPress theme development. Participants will strip away development friction by moving into a completely automated local development environment powered by Bun and Lightning CSS, unlocking instantaneous feedback loops and hyper-optimized assets. We will dive deep into native WordPress Block support, exploring how to structure high-performance layout systems and map them cleanly to global styles. Next, we’ll unlock the true power of modern development: AI-Native Engineering. Attendees will discover how WP Rig’s structural blueprints interact seamlessly with AI coding agents. By leveraging codebases intentionally architected to minimize model hallucinations, you will learn how to turn your AI coding agent into a reliable pair-programmer for complex theme features. Finally, we’ll touch on the future of building “a la carte,” demonstrating how open-source component library paradigms allow developers to inject community-driven, plug-and-play features instantly into their projects without introducing theme bloat and increasing deterministic AI theme enhancements. Bring your laptop, leave legacy tooling behind, and discover how to write cleaner code faster while remaining fully aligned with modern WordPress standards. 🎯 What Attendees Will Learn (Learning Objectives) Directory-First QA Pipelines: How to leverage WP Rig’s native automated check suite to identify and correct code violations against official WordPress.org Theme Review guidelines. Modern Block & Hybrid Scaffolding: Safely integrating standard PHP-based code with block architectures, including flawless generation and testing of theme.json. AI-Guided Architecture (Agentic Workflows): Utilizing AI coding assistants alongside WP Rig’s structured structural blueprints to build error-free, custom block patterns rapidly. Blazing-Fast Tooling: How to bypass legacy configurations using an integrated build tool system designed for instant compilation feedback loops. 🛠 Prerequisites & Requirements Attendees should have a foundational understanding of PHP, CSS, and localized development. To participate in the coding portions, they will need: A laptop with a local WordPress development environment (e.g., WordPress Studio or LocalWP). Node.js/Bun and Composer installed locally. A code editor equipped with an AI programming extension (optional, but recommended for experiencing the agentic workflow elements). Directly Supports the Open Source Project: One of WordPress’s biggest needs is getting more developers to submit high-quality, block-compatible themes to the official directory. This workshop removes the intimidation factor of theme submissions and directly trains attendees to become directory contributors. Aligns with Core Innovation: The session balances the historical PHP strength of WordPress with modern Block paradigms and automated testing frameworks, providing a masterclass in how hybrid development should look in 2026. Solves the “Review Loop” Pain Point: By showing how the framework mimics the validation logic of the Theme Review Team, this workshop solves a massive developer pain point (waiting weeks for code-review feedback only to get rejected over basic formatting rules). It introduces an automated safety net.

August 19, 2026 — Every mature WordPress site accumulates plugins the way a garage accumulates boxes… one at a time, each for a reasonable purpose, until the whole thing is load-bearing and nobody wants to touch it. The problem is not that plugins exist. The problem is that most teams have no repeatable method for evaluating what they actually have, what is redundant, what is risky, and what can safely go. This talk walks through a practical audit playbook developed across enterprise WordPress sites with 40, 60, even 80+ active plugins. The presenter will cover how to inventory a plugin stack against actual usage rather than assumed need, how to score plugins for maintainability and risk, how to identify consolidation opportunities that reduce surface area without losing functionality, and how to sequence removals so the site stays stable throughout the process. Attendees will leave with an audit template they can run on their own sites the following week. Attendee takeaways A repeatable plugin audit method that goes beyond “”check the last updated date”” How to score plugins for real risk: maintainability, overlap, dependency depth, and data exposure A sequencing strategy for simplifying a plugin stack without breaking production Concrete examples from enterprise sites where plugin consolidation reduced maintenance cost and improved stability

August 19, 2026 — For years, WordPress engineers have lacked a globally recognized, professionally governed credential—an unusual gap in an ecosystem that powers a significant portion of the web. Employers have likewise struggled to reliably identify qualified WordPress engineering talent for mission‑critical work. To address this need, a small team at Automattic spent a year designing and building the new standards‑based Advanced Professional WordPress Developer Certification for WordPress developers, in partnership with Kryterion, a global leader in secure testing and assessment design. This session offers a behind‑the‑scenes look at how this credential was created, validated, and how it is structured, governed and delivered. We’ll explore what value credentials deliver to engineers and employers, and how they can expand access, equity, and diversity within open source communities. We’ll also discuss what additional credentials could emerge in the future. This session is ideal for engineers, employers, and anyone curious about the role credentialing can play in strengthening the WordPress ecosystem.

August 19, 2026 — If you’ve heard of the Abilities API at all, it’s probably in the context of AI in WordPress. That’s a valid use case and is what drove the development of the Abilities API by the Core AI team, but the Abilities API has a lot more to offer than just AI integration. This talk will help you understand those pieces and how they create a new fundamental architecture for the platform so you can start building with the Abilities API today.

August 19, 2026 — AI is rapidly changing the WordPress industry, automating repetitive tasks and reshaping what companies expect from developers. In this session, the presenter explores the skills that continue to create long-term value in modern WordPress careers — from performance, accessibility, and problem-solving to communication, systems thinking, and business awareness. Drawing from experience leading teams and working on enterprise WordPress projects, this talk examines how developers can adapt to AI-assisted workflows, stand out in a globally competitive market, and evolve beyond task-based development work. Attendees will leave with a practical understanding of how WordPress careers are changing and which skills are becoming increasingly important in 2026 and beyond.

August 19, 2026 — Walk through any enterprise procurement conversation in 2026 and one thing becomes clear: customers are no longer shopping for “WordPress agencies.” They are shopping for partners who can solve digital experience, content operations, governance, and editorial workflow problems at scale. Whether WordPress sits underneath is increasingly a technical decision, not a strategic one. This is not a problem for WordPress. It is a problem for how agencies in the WordPress space describe themselves. The argument of this talk is simple: the strongest agencies in the WordPress space have shifted from platform identity to outcome identity. They no longer come across as WordPress specialists. They come across as solution drivers. And that is what enterprise customers actually want to buy. The agencies that have already made this shift are having very different conversations. Different stakeholders in the room. Different scope and budget. Different competitive set. Customers stop comparing them to other WordPress specialists and start comparing them to other solution partners, which is a smaller and less commoditized pool to be in. None of this means abandoning WordPress. WordPress is still the substrate. Technical depth still matters. The shift is in how the agency is seen, not in what it actually does. Drawing from 17 years of enterprise WordPress engagements, this session explores what changes when an agency makes this shift, what stays the same, and why the agencies that look invisible from the WordPress side are often the most valuable to their enterprise customers. This is not a case against WordPress. It is a case for what comes next.

August 19, 2026 — AI is improving every day, giving us tools that surface security vulnerabilities in our software faster than ever before. But there’s a catch. Those same tools are available to everyone, including attackers. It feels like every day a new supply chain attack rolls across your feed. Bad actors are using AI to discover vulnerabilities, steal credentials, and inject malware into packages consumed by millions. After years of skating by on suboptimal dependency hygiene, many projects are now paying the price. So how do we protect ourselves from becoming the next headline? What does this shift mean for a massive open source project like WordPress, with its sprawling ecosystem of plugins, themes, and contributors? And what’s now non-negotiable on our security checklist in an age where AI finds the vulnerabilities first?

August 19, 2026 — In a lot of organizations, there’s one person who owns WordPress. They didn’t necessarily choose the job, they just became the person who knows the most. That means fielding every request, managing vendors, and fighting for every budget dollar while translating technical decisions for people who don’t speak your language. This session is for that person. We’ll cover how to communicate the value of your work to stakeholders who don’t understand it, how to manage agency and freelance relationships so you stay in control, and how to make a case for resources when leadership sees the website as a cost center. You’ll leave with practical frameworks, real language you can use with your team, and the reassurance that you’re not alone.

August 19, 2026 — [Joint presentation by the Agency Project Manager and Tech Lead, and the Client.] What happens when you hand a global industrial manufacturer’s website over to an AI and ask it to speak fluent German, Japanese, and beyond, all within WordPress? This session is a candid, data-driven deep dive into a real-world project for Standex Electronics, a precision engineering company operating across multiple international markets. We focus on integrating OpenAI’s translation capabilities into a multilingual WordPress multisite. We’ll walk you through exactly why the team chose to explore AI translation as a serious contender alongside well-known tools, and what the architecture of that decision actually looked like in production. We put the tools head-to-head, and we’ll share accuracy benchmarks comparing OpenAI against well-known translation platforms. The things that surprised us, the ones that didn’t, and the meaningful gaps that only revealed themselves when native speaking colleagues, not developers, were the target audience. Industrial and technical language is its own dialect, and machine learning doesn’t always get the memo. We’ll share a collection of our favourite “technically correct, and completely wrong” translations – the moments where a direct translation produced something that ranged from mildly confusing to a genuinely hilarious problem, and what each tool revealed about the difference between translating words and translating intent. Beyond the laughs, we’ll get into the operational reality: how long it actually takes to push translation updates, run human review cycles, and maintain consistency across a multisite at scale. We’ll share honest timings from the Standex project, from content change to live translated page, you’ll also hear how OpenAI was woven directly into a leading multilingual WordPress content management workflow, the integration decisions made along the way, and what the team would do differently if starting from scratch today. This session is presented by three people who lived it together: the Project Manager, the Developer who built the integration, and the client from Standex Electronics who commissioned it and trusted the output. They have the kind of candid working relationship that makes for an honest conversation – the kind you don’t usually get at a conference. Whether you’re a developer scoping a multilingual build, a project manager navigating client expectations around AI, or a digital leader wondering whether machine translation is ready for your audience, this session will give you the real picture, stats, stumbles, and all.

August 19, 2026 — Every WordPress agency lives or dies by the next contract. Outreach, follow-ups, qualification, proposals. They sit on the founder’s desk and have done so for as long as agencies have existed. That part is changing first. AI agents now run entire pieces of the sales process on their own, without supervision. In this session, I share examples from my own work and how I automate my processes and standards with AI agents. What runs reliably in production and what fails, with a path you can follow without losing your voice.