March 29, 2019 — The accessibility of a website is significantly affected by the underlying HTML, CSS and javascript that developers use to create it. But it is also possible to impact upon the accessibility of a site at the design stage – both the visual design, and the interactive design or UX. And it’s not just about colour schemes either.

In this presentation I will outline a few key points to keep in mind when you are designing your next beautiful website or theme. I will illustrate the points with some good (and bad) examples.

Good design and web accessibility can go hand in hand – come and find out how.

I have previously presented this talk at WordCamp London 2017 and WordCamp Bristol 2017, and a couple of WP meetup groups.

March 28, 2019 — As a self-employed website designer often we work on our own with direct contact with our clients. This gives us a great opportunity to use the principles of agile development to make sure that we are able to offer the customer exactly what they want without succumbing to feature creep.

WordPress offers ways of making this easier with it’s easy setup and stacks of community – we can get a MVP out to clients quicker than ever and then iteratively develop the final website with feedback from the client.

This talk discusses how we can do this, what pitfalls there might be and why agile is not just for large powerhouse companies but also for the self-employed.

March 28, 2019 — Frequently, we see ourselves limited to translate sites when we talk about Multilingual. However, the Multilingual World is much wider than that: you can also build Multilingual communities.

In this talk I will give a case of study of a Multilingual community which aims to create a multilingual database of interviews with historical and eye witnesses, the Open History Project. This is all created with a growing and multilingual community. I will also talk about other Multilingual communities as GlotPress and, of course, Polyglots.

March 28, 2019 — The process of developing a bespoke WordPress website from scratch is a lengthily one. When you’re repeating it on a regular basis for your clients, it soon becomes necessary to “boilerplate” certain aspects of this process to save time, reduce repetition and increase profitability!

In this talk I’ll share my experience of building Kapow!, the bespoke WordPress development boilerplate that I’ve been working on at Make Do for the past few years.

I’ll cover some of the important things you need to bear in mind when creating your own development boilerplate, highlight some of the decisions and challenges you’ll face as well as share some of the lessons that I’ve learned along the way.

March 28, 2019 — The WordPress community has core tenets that naturally mean some of its members want to create tools and platforms for civic good. With WordPress powering nearly 30% of the web, the potential its community has to impact democratic engagement is enormous.

But how much do these members understand the dynamic between citizens and their public bodies in order to build things that are useful and used? How aware are they of the ways in which our institutions work and their cultures in order to be able to affect real change?

I’d like to talk about my decade (and a bit!) working with government, local government, civil society and citizens in Scotland first as a digital engagement agitator and now as a digital engagement specialist.

Using the headlines under WordPress’s philosophy, I want to share stories and give advice about approaching creating civic tech in a way that mirrors the language and ethos of the WordPress community.

The hope is that I can give people some information that means they take a more considered approach to civic tech as opposed to thinking everything can be fixed with an app or a website.

March 27, 2019 — Have you ever launched a website only to return to find some annoying SEO has come after you and destroyed it? Has some obnoxious marketer bugged you for lots of little changes- outside the client’s scope and budget? I’m sorry. That might have been my fault. Let’s work together to help our clients. I’ll share my secrets on setting up a WordPress site for SEO success. While this won’t guarantee SEO results, but it will set up your clients for optimal Google love.

March 27, 2019 — In this talk, I will walk through specific techniques and tools that will increase scores on Google PageSpeed Insights. We’ll discuss caching, plugins that help minify your code, and best practices when building custom themes.

Presentation Slides »

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.