October 2, 2023 — In this session, I will share my experience using WordPress at the Longo Faculty of Business, Humber College, as part of my teaching portfolio and applied research initiatives.

Students’ Digital Portfolios:
As part of our Web Development course, students are tasked with creating their own digital portfolios using WordPress as their major individual midterm assessment for the course. This includes creating the information website, blogging, SEO, as well as repurposing some of the content for social media to establish a robust online presence. The portfolios serve as a valuable asset when they apply for jobs, including both summer internships and post-graduation employment opportunities.

Sustainable Business Websites:
We take our WordPress knowledge beyond the classroom and into the community as we partner with small business owners looking to enhance their online presence through a new or revamped website.
This is an extracurricular activity that is typically funded through Humber College where we engage students from various academic programs and faculties to form a multidisciplinary team that collaborates with industry partners.
We make this a sustainable solution by providing the business owner(s) with training and resources on how to update and maintain their WordPress websites. This includes developing user manuals, video tutorials, and one-on-one training sessions that are recorded for our business partners.

International Development Initiative:
One of the WordPress projects we are most proud of is an international development initiative where we developed a curriculum to teach female refugees in Kenya how to create their own WordPress websites and establish a strong online presence. Through this project, we aimed to empower these women with a valuable skillset and provide them with an opportunity to showcase their talent and entrepreneurial spirit to the world.

Attendees of this session will gain insights into using WordPress within the college setting, for both teaching and applied research purposes. We will discuss the challenges, successes, and lessons learned of these projects and share tips on how to engage students and small business owners in the process.

October 2, 2023 — Afghanistan has one of the lowest rates of female participation in the workforce and education, which is further exacerbated by the recent Taliban takeover. The Taliban have prohibited most girls from attending secondary school, banned all women from attending and teaching at universities, and prevented women from working. Afghan women are left with limited options for economic and personal growth. However, technology and coding skills can be a game-changer for women who want to access job opportunities and contribute to their country’s development. In this talk, the speaker will discuss the challenges and opportunities of teaching Afghan women how to code, based on her experience working with a nonprofit organization that provides coding courses and mentorship to women. This talk will highlight the cultural and social barriers that women face in pursuing coding education, such as lack of access to computers, the internet, and safe learning environments, and the additional challenges posed by Taliban restrictions. This talk will also showcase the benefits of coding education for women, including increased confidence, financial independence, and community impact. The goal of this talk is to inspire and encourage more educators and tech professionals to join the mission of empowering Afghan women through coding.

October 2, 2023 — We’ll take a look at multiple ways to use ChatGPT to speed up your WordPress builds, from using it to give you content that looks better than “Lorem Ipsum” to helping you with your CSS. And, then we’ll also look at using AI generated images for sites, both as main images and background images. Lastly, we’ll talk about some of the “gotchas” to watch out for when using AI generated assets!

October 2, 2023 — We typically think of WordPress as publishing information for humans, but WordPress is also quite good at publishing information for computers via the WordPress REST API. We’ll look at how to write code to retrieve this information and how to extend the WordPress REST API so our WordPress site can serve our own custom information.

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October 2, 2023 — “Is anybody truly good at context switching? Our business culture values multitasking, but our brains just aren’t built for it! Nonetheless, whether you are a manager or individual contributor, to move up in our careers we inevitably have to juggle more and more tasks of increasingly different types.

Agency life requires more context switching than other environments, and we’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly of these challenges. In this talk I will share practical strategies that I and my colleagues find useful for keeping track of it all: how to jump between projects and land on your feet, and how to get back into the groove faster after switching between different types of work. Teaser: the answer isn’t to try to do everything all at once!”

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October 2, 2023 — We’ve often been asked “why did ‘they’ make this change” or “when is WordPress going to do this?”. We are not mere spectators, but can find a place of belonging as WordPress contributors.
For WordPress to become a better project and meet its philosophies, it needs a more diverse set of backgrounds. Your life experiences are needed to move things forward!

During this session, you’ll learn about the teams that make WordPress, and ways to bring your unique background and influence.

What are the biggest changes you’d like to see? Come join the team: coding is optional.

October 1, 2023 — Sharing a 15-minute session of my experience as a WordPress freelancer, followed by two years as a junior website specialist at a digital marketing agency, and now as a lecturer at UPM. My journey with WordPress began during the challenging period of completing my PhD. Freelancing as a WordPress developer was a crucial part of my survival strategy. Today, I am dedicated to training my students and building a community focused on website development using WordPress. I hope this inspirational journey may inspire young developers. Keep learning and upgrading your skills.

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October 1, 2023 — I would like to share my experience with WordPress development. Previously, I was purely a UI/UX designer, and I was very afraid to learn coding as I found it to be very difficult. However, one day I decided to give WordPress a try, and I discovered that it allows you to easily create and manage a basic website without writing a single line of code. I believe WordPress is an accessible and easy-to-use platform for users of various levels, from beginners to experienced webmasters. Even after trying other CMS platforms, I found that WordPress remains the best and most user-friendly interface platform, even for those without technical expertise.

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October 1, 2023 — Headless WordPress refers to a decoupled architecture where the WordPress content management system (CMS) is used as a back end, providing content management capabilities, while the front end is built using a separate technology stack or framework. In a traditional WordPress setup, the CMS handles both content management and front-end rendering. However, with a headless approach, the front end is disconnected or “headless” from the back end.

This front-end application can be developed using various technologies such as React, Angular, Vue.js, or any other modern JavaScript framework.

Why should you use Headless WordPress:

Flexibility: You can choose the most appropriate framework or library for creating a dynamic and interactive user interface.

Enhanced Performance: Separating the front end from the back end can improve performance.It can make use of techniques like lazy loading, caching, and server-side rendering to deliver faster and smoother user experiences.

Scalability: If you have heavy traffic on your website, you can scale the front-end servers separately from the CMS, ensuring better performance and stability.

Omnichannel Content Delivery: Headless WordPress allows you to deliver content across multiple platforms and devices, such as web, mobile apps, smart TVs, or even IoT devices.

Future-Proofing: Headless WordPress enables you to future-proof your website by separating the content management system from the presentation layer. If you decide to change or upgrade your front-end technology in the future, the content and data from the WordPress CMS can still be utilized without significant disruptions.

Developer Experience: Headless architecture provides developers with the freedom to work with their preferred programming languages, frameworks, and tools.

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October 1, 2023 — Technical SEO doesn’t have to be complicated and intimidating. These 10 actionable but oft-overlooked technical SEO fixes have proven to skyrocket a page’s ranking on Google search and will ensure visibility in the new Search Generative Experience(Google SGE).

Outline:
I. 10 Technical SEO Techniques That Boost Page Rankings
• Each winning tip will be described for:
A. What It Is
B. Why It’s Important
C. How to Do It The Right Way

II. Technical SEO Case Studies
• Low-Hanging Fruits That Increased Page Rankings From 0 to No. 1 on Google

III. Recommended WordPress Plugins

IV. Leveraging Technical SEO for the new Google Search Generative Experience

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