October 13, 2023 — Learn multiple ways speed up your WordPress builds with AI tools ChatGPT and BARD, from generating content that looks better than “Lorem Ipsum” to helping you with your CSS and coding.

Find out more about AI generated images, and how to structure prompts to get both images and background images. Discover other AI tools that might help you speed up your website workflow.

October 13, 2023 — The workshop for WordPress developers offers an opportunity to understand and work-with hooks. Learn more about some of the hooks WordPress has to offer and find out how to create your own.

October 13, 2023 — Large Language Models are the technology behind ChatGPT, Google’s Bard and more. They are weird and somewhat intimidating pieces of technology: we’re still trying to figure out how they work and what they can do, in a field that changes radically on an almost weekly basis.

In this talk I’ll break down how they work, what they’re useful for, what you can build with them and how to dodge their many pitfalls.

I’ll show you how to run surprisingly capable models on your laptop, and demonstrate techniques like semantic search and retrieval augmented generation which harness LLMs to help unlock the value in your own data.
I’ll also talk about their many limitations, including new classes of security vulnerabilities that threaten applications built on top of them.

Exploring LLMs has made me more ambitious with the projects I take on. Used thoughtfully, LLMs can unlock new capabilities, both for us and for the communities that we build software to serve.

October 13, 2023 — This talk explores AI’s impact on SEO with a focus on integrating automated content into your sites. Striking a balance is key as AI tools boost content output but risk losing authenticity.

Learn how successful strategy involves infusing AI-generated content with a brand’s unique voice and values. Align with search engine algorithms while prioritizing user experience. In this synergy, businesses can elevate SEO, connecting meaningfully with audiences.

October 13, 2023 — Learn about the approaches that enterprise agencies use to keep client sites secure. Find out why the White’s Local Family Business site gets hacked but whitehouse.gov does not.

October 13, 2023 — Increasing conversion rates is a game of micro-improvements, data monitoring, experimenting, and more micro-improvements.

This presenter has been working with WordPress products for 10 years, and has lead marketing teams toward increasing success with online conversion at StellarWP.

Find out how to track marketing metrics, visualize data for insights, and ignore the rest.

October 13, 2023 — As a leader, you not only need to figure out your own work/life balance but also ensure that you’re modeling the right behavior to those you manage and lead. Or at least do your best not to accidentally model a harmful one. This can be tricky under normal circumstances for a typical person… but how do you go from fully multi-office-bound to involuntarily fully remote for years with the unexpected curveball of a proposed remote-forward but hybrid solution just when you’re getting used to the former?!

A woman in tech leadership, an immigrant from a somewhat different cultural background than most of my team to begin with and now with a bonus of many other cultures mixed in, likely in a different place in life than most of the people I lead: how did I learn to better understand and empathize with people who rely on me for leadership but live a different kind of life.
I made mistakes and so will you, but hopefully my list will help you avoid some big ones in the future.

October 13, 2023 — Learn more about the various paths that are available to you if you want to work in tech, but don’t want to code.

October 13, 2023 — The idea of decoupling your website front-end and WordPress backend brings a lot of opportunities and some disadvantages.

Who can benefit from this concept? This talk offers an introduction to the idea and explains how headless WordPress works.

October 13, 2023 — WordPress is a powerful content management system, but certainly isn’t the ideal solution for complex business functions and secure data management. These functions are often left to dedicated CRM and ERP solutions that are external to the website.

There’s good reason for organisations wanting to use WordPress for their primary website. It means they are able to manage their own public facing content easily, and with 40% of all websites on the internet using WordPress, it’s a good choice when choosing a platform to standardise on. However there is often an element of their line-of-business web applications that is user facing (such as a customer portal) and ideally it makes sense for these to be presented seamlessly via the website. Integrating between WordPress and other platforms has traditionally relied on methods such as iframes, APIs and custom developed plugins.

Inherently, most of these integration methods come with their fair share of security and/or usability issues and considerations. They can also be a pain to maintain.

In the pursuit of a secure, flexible, and maintainable solution, we explored a novel approach—leveraging Single Page Applications (SPA) built with frameworks like React and Vue.js. This approach provides a seamless user experience because the content is rendered seamlessly in WordPress as HTML, and as it is environment agnostic it works equally well in the Block Editor, a Page Builder or a traditional WordPress template.

Get ready for real-life examples and a practical demonstration of how this can be achieved, and more importantly some of the challenges you might encounter (and how to overcome them). From managing how to best style these for consistency with your existing style sheets, to learnings about how it can impact SEO and user experience – not to mention how we solved some of the challenges of dynamically adjusting navigation (and other items) when users authenticate or log out.

Whether you are a seasoned developer or new to WordPress integrations, this talk will equip you with practical knowledge and inspire you to push the boundaries of what can be achieved with external web applications (custom or not) and WordPress.