November 4, 2019 — A panel discussion with members of the WordPress community exploring ethical issues that can arise when working with clients, with each other, and within the WordPress community at large.

November 4, 2019 — Extending WordPress above and beyond the core functionality is part of what makes WordPress so powerful. However, the sheer number of plugins available can be overwhelming. A strategy for evaluating plugins makes both developing managing WordPress easier.

In this presentation, attendees will learn strategies and tools for choosing one plugin over another. We’ll also look at paid plugins versus free and find out if you get what you paid for. We’ll also look at how to manage plugin updates and evaluate security. We’ll find out how to research plugin security history and identify risky functionality.

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November 4, 2019 — There is so much confusion about what types of things should be put on a page and what should be in a post. Static vs. Dynamic content is the best way to tackle this. An “About Us” page would be just that… A PAGE. If you are talking about something that is more time sensitive, then you want to do a post. Connected to this would be Categories and Tags. What are they? When creating a website, you can edit a menu to include not only pages, but also category archives that can create a more complete experience for small businesses. This is not just how to do it but WHY you should do it. This gives an in depth look at the justification for placement of content on your website and way finding.

November 4, 2019 — Over 15 million U.S. Internet users have some form of impairment that affects their ability to use the Internet. In this talk, we will share some simple ways to improve your site’s accessibility. These changes help everyone. As an extra bonus, accessibility improves your search engine optimization (SEO). By the end of this session, you will be able to understand why accessibility is helpful for everyone, to help make your website better for the visually impaired, to help make your website better for the hearing impaired, to help make your website better for the mobility impaired, to improve your website SEO.

November 4, 2019 — Let’s take a closer look on the SQL queries that are executed when we are listing posts with WP_Query. Is there any difference in performance between querying posts by custom fields vs. by taxonomy’s terms? It is oftentimes the case that when we need to attach an extra information to the post, we would store it as a custom field, e.g. using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin. But are there any situations in which it would be better to store it as a term in a custom taxonomy? Let’s dive into WordPress database schema, common SQL queries that are fetching the posts and let’s try to understand which factors have the biggest influence on query performance.

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November 4, 2019 — When you are creating and managing WordPress sites for a living, regardless if you are a freelancer or working for an agency, it’s always great to see your customer base increasing. This, however, leads to the question – what happens when you start struggling with the time for managing all of your client’s sites? The answer is actually pretty simple – automation.

Automation has become an important part of all departments in the IT sphere. No matter if you are a developer, DevOps or system administrator, it is critical for your time management to be able to complete the tasks you work on as fast as possible with minimum manual work.

Nowadays there are quite a lot of tools for WordPress provisioning, management, and code versioning, but wouldn’t be cool if you can do all of these things with the help of a single powerful software? I definitely think it is, that’s why I’d like to share with the audience how this can be achieved.

The talk will cover the following topics:

What is Ansible – how is it working, basics and general information.
Why Ansible will make your life easier – use cases and examples of how WordPress developers can benefit from it
How to start automating your WP site management process
Practical examples and suggestions for automating tasks related to WordPress sites management

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November 4, 2019 — How can you manage 48 WordPress sites at once? It’s a tall order, but at the Southern Tier Library System (STLS) we’ve accepted the challenge, and we’re excited to share what’s worked and what hasn’t. At STLS, 48 public library outlets each have their own, unique online presence in the form of a WordPress website. Staff tech skills at each library range from experienced web designers to first-time computer users. In order to support users with a broad range of experience and expertise, who also want to have a unique and distinct presence online, we’ve curated a list of recommended plugins and themes that are accessibility friendly and help keep sites up to date.

In this session, we’ll share our list of themes and plugins that are working well across 48 sites, as well as some that we’ve tried that haven’t worked out. We’ll also delve deeper into a few plugins that help keep sites running smoothly, automatically – without someone logging in to manage updates. We’re focused on creating sites that are accessible and sustainable, and we’ll also discuss our process for establishing a list of best practices for new WordPress users, leading workshops about WordPress, and sharing news about big changes, like Gutenberg, in a non-scary way.

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November 4, 2019 — In this session I will share how I harnessed the power of WordPress to create and manage a successful multi-author blog. I’ll start with exploring the genesis of the idea for the site and then speak to the blog’s design and development. From there I’ll talk about blogger recruitment and training and end with an overview of my tasks as the blog’s sole editor-in-chief.

1. Discover one way to create a multi-author WordPress website
2. Learn how I recruited and trained all the writers and documented everyone’s roles
3. Gain an understanding of the time commitment required to manage bloggers so you can determine if creating a blog like this right for you.

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November 4, 2019 — Being a lead developer not only means being responsible for clean and optimized code, it also means mentoring and teaching junior developers. Having been a karate sensei for almost 9 years, come learn how I took cues from my time at the dojo, and applied it to helping junior team members. From learning styles to patience, and to self-confidence, much can be learned from the martial arts.

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November 4, 2019 — We walk through the steps that Lindsey has taken to change and develop our content strategy at an organizational level. We will walk through the process needed to make a cultural shift to create more content and how to get “buy-in” from your stakeholders to create blog posts.