March 27, 2019 — Four key members of the WordPress community discuss what the future of WordPress holds – a panel discussion led by Ana Silva.

March 27, 2019 — It is often noted that the last part of any digital project is usually the hardest and takes the longest as expressed famously by Tom Cargill, Bell Labs:

“The first 90 percent of the code accounts for the first 90 percent of the development time. The remaining 10 percent of the code accounts for the other 90 percent of the development time.”

Why is this? What makes the last part of any digital project this difficult?

Have we become the “Snapchat” generation that can’t focus long-term? What does it means for our projects? It is us, our clients or the projects themselves that fail at this stage?

This talk will aim to focus on common project failings that I have seen again and again in the final stages and provide actionable advice for all team members involved in creating websites to help deliver better projects.

March 27, 2019 — Do you design and develop websites or apps? Are you really proud that you have mastered two distinct disciplines? Or do you feel a bit insecure that neither your design or development skills match those of a ‘specialist’?

If you’re anything like me, you sometimes feel a bit of both and wonder how to pitch yourself for potential work or where your skills fit as part of a wider team.

I’m going to argue that we should not undervalue our skills, I’ll share some ideas about ways of working and make a plea to the wider web world to take us more seriously.

March 27, 2019 — WPML is the tool of choice for many site needing to have content available to users in multiple languages. In this talk I’ll explain how WPML works, go through the interface, and introduce some key insights I’ve discovered in my years with this very capable tool.

March 27, 2019 — What comes to your mind when you think about technical requirements for successful SaaS company? Should it be lean and easy-to-build, but ready for continuous improvement? Should it have wide opportunities for customization but still be reliable and stay under the control? Should it be powerful and scalable, but still really easy to manage? We’ll see how to build such kind of Software-as-a-Service application using WordPress Multisite, from scratch.

March 27, 2019 — As web designers, our clients regularly turn to us for what they consider “traditional” design expertise–things like color and movement on a website. But what often gets overlooked is the critical role that content organization and page structure play on a website. While many people consider design largely aesthetic in nature, it would be naive to ignore or downplay the importance of content. In order to design effectively for end users, designers must consider the implications that content can have on the overall user experience.

A content-driven approach should be used to inform website structure, page layout, and overall design. In this session, I’ll talk about the importance of leading clients through a comprehensive content-driven web design process and how doing so can help exceed their expectations every time.

Presentation Slides »

March 27, 2019 — Colour is an essential design element. When we design for the web, we’re sometimes conditioned in our colour choices by the colour palette of the brand we’re building the site for. However, usability and accessibility must be the first consideration in our choice of colours and their application. This talk gives practical guidance on how to approach and use colour in your web designs, with a few touch points on colour psychology and theory.

March 27, 2019 — Explore what a “living” style guide is and how you can use one to drive the creation of your WordPress themes. Looking at where this helps with things like collaboration, testing, maintenance, and reuse. From the perspective of an implementer rather than a designer so will contain technical details (so how to implement, not so much how to design for, and not just why you should).

March 27, 2019 — Share Neil’s journey from concept to product, via famous 5 minute install (in fact it was more like 5 seconds thanks to $ wp valet new –project=bedrock ).

Neil will talk about how this project was conceived, what it’s like to be the geek in a team of psychotherapists but a doofus in the dev team.

See the mock-ups that landed them a £660,000 project (and how he got bullied into accepting just a fraction of that *and* had to launch a year earlier than planned!)

Neil will share the lessons he’s learned about being a good ‘client’ to his developers (two of the nicest people he’s ever worked with), despite wanting to learn how they do what they do. Cringe as he shares some of the questions he’s asked them, the very patient replies he’s had, and the comical initial estimate of how much time he needed them for.

Find out how Neil support 800 users, the dilemma of supporting vs solving, and having collaborators rather than customers.

Next steps – where will this product be next year, 2 years from now?

March 27, 2019 — Voice search is rapidly evolving. Will it be the next big thing? Or is it already? And what should you be doing in order to stay on top of the game?

What about mobile indexing? Will this effect your rankings in the future?

In this talk I will be talking about some of the latest trends and important new insights in the world of SEO.