November 17, 2020 — It’s been nearly two years since the block editor, Gutenberg, has been released in WordPress Core. What have you been building with the block editor? This session will cover the evolution of the block editor since the launch in Core, what’s coming in the block editor in 2020, and how you can use the block editor to scale your design and development innovation to build better sites faster. If you’ve been staring at the block editor and wondering how it can help your design & development workflows or how you operate your freelance or agency business, don’t miss this session.

November 17, 2020 — As Google continues to change and adjust the search results page, structured data has become a key way to influence these changes for your listing. Markup like FAQ, Q&A, How To, and other formats can be a great way to draw attention to your website, provide more information to the user, and push your competition further down the page.

November 17, 2020 — Join Josh Gellock of Expander Digital for a step-by-step walkthrough of how to add Google Analytics to your WordPress website using Google Tag Manager. Learn about the benefits of this setup and how it can help your digital marketing efforts and website performance.

November 17, 2020 — We often talk about websites the way we talk about cars. Are you driving a flashy sports car or a stable hatchback? And is yours a lemon, no matter how pretty the paint job? And if you just got one used, what’s going on under the hood? There’s a way to address these questions about your website, and it’s called a technical audit. The vast majority of site owners live in fear of the day their site breaks down. Performing a site audit can ensure you understand the current state of your site, from the back end code level to the front end performance. It can also help you see potential problems when it comes time to add features (like that sweet audio system). People attending this session will learn the basic building blocks of performing a technical audit, including approaches for auditing different aspects of your site including custom code, theme and front-end functionality, back-end configuration and plugins, and accessibility. The session will also cover tools that can be used to run these tests and tips on what to watch for when managing a website over time.

November 17, 2020 — Users’ minds take shortcuts to get through the day. Usually they’re harmless. Even helpful. But what happens when they’re not? In this talk, David Dylan Thomas will use real-world examples to identify some particularly nasty biases that frequently lead users to make bad decisions. He’ll then talk about some content strategy and design choices you can use in apps, designs, and platforms to redirect or eliminate the impact of those biases. Finally, he’ll explore our own biases as designers and some methods to prevent our own blind spots from hurting users.

November 17, 2020 — Improve you website’s speed by eliminating some of your plugins. In this session you will learn how to test your website’s speed with a few free options (Lighthouse and GTMetrix, for example) and then you will learn how to track down the causes of slowdowns and fix issues.

November 17, 2020 — Many WordCamp attendees are remote employees and, thanks to COVID-19, many more have now tried it. Most will tell you how great remote working is and that it works incredibly well for a lot of businesses. But let’s be honest, it’s not for everyone. While several large companies have tried it and failed, in this talk, we’ll reveal what often gets forgotten: what a business needs to do to make it work. Further, how individuals can decide if remote work really is the future of working for them.

November 17, 2020 — Web Components in WordPress
Creating a consistent look across an organization can be hard when applications are written in multiple frameworks. This talk will cover how you can utilize web components in your WordPress application. By using web components you can standardize the look across properties in your organization.

Pattern Libraries for the Non-Designers
Some people call them design systems or pattern libraries. Either way they seem to be the province of designers and something that is just handed to developers. But what if you work more or less alone, having the job of both builder and designer, making decisions about design for clients all on your own, or your designer doesn’t supply enough information to easily test. A pattern library can stream-line your process by showing you and your clients a site-wide system of recurring or common design options: colors, fonts, buttons, testimonials, call outs, etc. Without including distracting content or navigation structure, it makes for easier approval of design elements.

WordPress in a Headless World
WordPress has been a key part of the development of today’s web, but with the rise of the JAMstack, where does WordPress fit in? This talk will cover about how WordPress compares to the headless options available today and how WordPress is still one of the more powerful solutions available for a great CMS experience.

November 17, 2020 — Up until what seems like ten minutes ago, the expression “going viral” had an entirely different meaning. Just as quickly, everyday life has been replaced with solidarity and routine change. As we move into an increasingly digital world -which seems an inevitability after this pandemic- our work will become more important than ever.

This talk will examine how product design directly affects people’s lives, and how living in these times of crisis have opened people’s eyes to changes needed in our products.

Recognizing dark patterns and exclusionary design is an important step toward creating the future we need – one that prioritizes inclusion and empathy. How can we generate constructive conflict in our organizations to build the future we need?

November 17, 2020 — Building an ecommerce store can be a daunting experience. Suddenly you’re not just working with content anymore. Now it’s taxes and shipping and customers that need to be kept happy. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be scary. The session will highlight a number of steps you can take to remove the uncertainty from building ecommerce websites so that you can move forward with confidence.