October 31, 2019 — In this session, Tonyo Cruz will answer three questions: How bad is the problem of fake news? What steps are being taken to combat the problem? And what could bloggers do to help audiences parse and filter information?

October 31, 2019 — WordPress is set apart by its vibrant, passionate community of enthusiasts and stakeholders. As WordPress continues to grow, the community will continue to grow with it. There will be things we might have to sacrifice to build an even larger tent, and things we will allow to constrict our growth — in order to preserve our culture. Andrea Middleton outlines a few of the choices already made, and some choices we’ll need to get ready to make in coming years.

October 31, 2019 — Jonathan Wold talks about the history of WordPress, its current state, and its future through the lens of serving as an Operating System for creating on the Open Web.

October 31, 2019 — Internet privacy is more important now than it’s ever been. In 2017 the Department of Justice approached DreamHost with a problematic subpoena for customer data. When the request was refused, an avalanche of international media attention followed, bringing the issue of internet user privacy to the global stage.

In this case study, Brett Dunst discusses how one company used its core values to turn a public dispute over website logs with the DOJ into a wildly successful global campaign for internet privacy, and why open platforms like WordPress are so important to preserving a free and open internet, especially in times of crisis.

October 31, 2019 — Web components have been around since the first spec was written in 2011, but they only started getting full support from the main browsers in 2018.

In this talk, I’ll discuss the four key specs that make the magic of web components happen and explain how they can help improve our workflow.

After showcasing the advantages of using web components, I will explain how to use web components in a WordPress application and highlight the tools and developer guides.

In conclusion, we will integrate web components with Gutenberg and learn how we can use the best of two worlds.

This talk is focused on front-end skills and requires a basic understanding of JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

October 29, 2019 — Successful consultants will always recommend the right tool for the job. This is how you elevate yourself from a vendor to a trusted partner. If we stay huddled within our own community, without paying attention to what is going on outside the WordPress community, we’ll be out of touch with customers and prospects. Knowing your preference (WordPress) is different than understanding all your options. Understanding the difference is critical to staying competitive in today’s industry.

Steve Zenghut discusses the current landscape and the process a prospect goes through when evaluating a WordPress proposal, including a brief look at some of the competitors for content management, eCommerce and SaaS platforms.

October 29, 2019 — WordPress now powers over one third of all websites on the internet. The decisions that the WordPress community makes ripple out and make an impact on the ways people use the web, how web developers and designers do their work, and influence future technologies and development. That’s a lot of power in our hands – are we using it wisely? We have a responsibility to lead by example.

Natalie MacLees explores the influence our community is having on accessibility and inclusive design, the things we’re neglecting, the impact that our decisions are having on people across the globe, and what we could be doing better.

October 29, 2019 — Gabriel Mays explores the conditions of WordPress’ success (it’s not what most people think) and why that won’t work for us going forward to reach 50% and beyond. He will also explore the core elements he feels is holding WordPress back–complexity and fragmentation–and ways we could possibly resolve it.

October 29, 2019 — It’s never been a more exciting time to be writing PHP in the WordPress ecosystem! WordPress core recently bumped the minimum-supported PHP version from 5.2 to 5.6 and plans to bump it again later this year all the way to 7.2!

Whether that least sentence incites feelings of jubilation or anxiety in you, this talk has your back. We’ll take a deep dive into ways devs of all levels can breathe new life into their plugins and themes with modern PHP features and principles.

We’ll cover back-compat gotchas, including how to deal with version-specific features and code partial plugin activation so you don’t break users’ sites with your upgrades. We’ll also go over modern principles such as using autoloaders and namespaces, setting up group aliasing, using return type declarations, leveraging traits, and more.

Finally, we’ll talk about how to create a development plan for the short- and long-term so that continual and improvement and iteration can keep you up to date with modern PHP development.

Presentation Slides »

October 29, 2019 — Regardless of how passionate we are about our niches, blog posts don’t always flow effortlessly out of our brains. Luckily, there are some great ways to get your readers to generate high-quality content for you. And WordPress has excellent tools to help you accomplish this. We’ll discuss different options for user-generated content, how to select an option that aligns with your goals for your website, and how to engage and encourage reader participation and contributions. We’ll look at examples of WordPress plugins for a few types of content.