December 9, 2023 — Gutenberg has revolutionised WordPress theme development, paving the way for a future where creating themes requires minimal to zero coding. This talk will cover creating and editing block themes within the editor, using the design tools available in Gutenberg in combination with the Create Block Theme plugin. It will describe the features of both tools, showcasing the practical ways to leverage Gutenberg’s block library, layout options, customisation tools, and advanced features provided by the Create Block Theme plugin.

December 9, 2023 — We all dream of the Utopia that is a truly inclusive community or workplace. Somewhere where everyone feels valued and welcome no matter their background. The land where the dreams you dare to dream really do come true.

The WordPress community is hugely diverse, and represents people from all sorts of backgrounds and with a wide variety of skillsets. But is it also as inclusive as it could be, especially for the LGBTQIA+ community? Let’s discuss some of the challenges faced and how, as individuals, we can make small changes that could help to remove some of the barriers that prevent people from being open and true to themselves.

December 7, 2023 — Explore the fundamentals of domains and hosting. Acquire insights into distinguishing between these crucial elements, understand the strategic concept of bundling domains, and navigate the process of selecting the optimal hosting company by considering essential factors.

December 6, 2023 — Unlock the potential of WordPress. Define WordPress, explore examples, grasp open-source concepts, and discover the importance of themes and plugins.

December 1, 2023 — There have been a few quality-of-life improvements to the Create Block Theme plugin over the course of the WordPress 6.3 and 6.4 releases. This tutorial will give you a brief introduction to these improvements.

December 1, 2023 — In the dynamic world of WordPress product businesses, the significance of customer support reaches far beyond troubleshooting and issue resolution. This enlightening session delves into the pivotal role that customer support plays within WordPress product companies, be it themes or plugins.
While the conventional view of customer support focuses on assisting users by solving their issues and helping them in using the product more efficiently, this talk will unveil its broader implications. Discover how customer support transcends its traditional boundaries to collaborate seamlessly with various other segments of a business, including Marketing, Development, Testing, Content, and SEO. By doing so, it provides invaluable insights that empower these departments to optimize their functions.

In this session, I will share how you can make your customer support department go beyond troubleshooting and helping customers. I will share a lot of examples of how customer support can work with other departments and fuel the growth of the business.

November 30, 2023 — This panel discussion examines real and tangible examples of how AI is being used in WordPress today.

Learn more about active use cases of AI in the WordPress and how you can leverage it to make a difference in your life, your daily work and for the community at large.

November 30, 2023 — Once upon a time there was a Page that didn’t fit in with the other pages in a WordPress site… This Page knew it was different but just couldn’t figure out why. All the Page knew is that the other pages were very different. They just weren’t as dynamic. The Page knew it had to find a place where it belonged.

This is the story of the Custom Post Type that started as a Page and its journey to find its own place in the big World of the WordPress Admin and the Template Hierarchy.

Join us as we discover why not every page is a page.

Presentation Slides »

November 30, 2023 — With all versions of PHP 7 now officially EOL (end of life) any products you develop, or have developed, must support PHP 8. While WordPress does run on PHP 8, many plugins and themes still do not support it fully. In this workshop, we’ll look at how to can test your products for PHP compatibility, in order to get them updated.

November 29, 2023 — In this installment of Developer Hours, we explored how to extend core WordPress blocks and why this approach can be preferred over creating a custom block. Extension techniques also allow you to curate the editing experience within WordPress beyond simply adding new functionality.

The session began with a presentation on the fundamentals of block extension. Then, we covered practical examples of adding new features to existing blocks, utilizing hooks for advanced extensions, and modifying block behavior to suit your unique site requirements.

Presentation Slides »