July 1, 2025 — Most WordPress users install a security plugin and assume they’re fully protected—but that’s only part of the story. In this session, we’ll explore what security really looks like across thousands of WordPress sites, based on real-world insights from the WPStaq hosting platform. You’ll learn the security configurations that actually work, from caching strategies to firewalls to CDN setups like Cloudflare and AWS CloudFront. We’ll bust myths, highlight common mistakes, and provide actionable tips that go beyond the plugin level.

June 29, 2025 — This session provides a step-by-step, actionable strategy for driving your first 1,000 visitors to a new WordPress site. Designed for business owners and marketers, the talk covers essential tools, foundational SEO setup, effective content creation, and simple promotion tactics. Live demonstrations will show exactly how to implement each step using free or low-cost WordPress plugins and tools.

June 29, 2025 — Many web designers are told that SEO is all about “adding keywords”—but in reality, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. If you’re building beautiful WordPress sites but they’re vanishing into the Google abyss, it’s time to level up your SEO game beyond the basics.
This session will unpack the three core pillars of SEO that every web designer should understand:
🌐 Technical SEO – How speed, structure, and crawlability affect your rankings
📝 Content – How to format and write content that serves both users and search engines
🌟 Authority – Why off-page trust signals matter more than ever
You’ll learn how to spot SEO red flags before launch, structure your sites for maximum visibility, and support clients with smarter strategies (whether you DIY or refer it out). If you want your sites to rank and convert—without becoming a full-time SEO—this session is for you.

June 29, 2025 — In a world full of pre-made themes and page builders, it’s easy to forget the value of custom design. This talk explores why unique, purpose-built designs still play a crucial role in building high-performing WordPress websites. We’ll dive into the importance of clean code, and well-structured architecture, and how custom builds… whether traditional PHP code or headless (Next.JS) can dramatically improve performance, SEO, and overall user experience. You’ll walk away with practical insights on how thoughtful design and development lead to better results for both Google and your users.

June 20, 2025 — A website isn’t “done” once it’s launched. From content management and performance tuning to security, SEO, and redesigns—managing a site well requires a broad and evolving skill set. This talk explores the full life cycle of a website, from planning and development to long-term management and continuous reinvention. We’ll look at what’s required at each stage, which skills matter most, and how teams and solo operators can sustainably support their sites over time in ever changing and demanding times.

June 20, 2025 — The generic fallback for solving WordPress performance issues, in most cases, amounts to installing some form of page caching, either at the server, or more recently at the Cloud Edge.
But the growth of highly dynamic WordPress sites for communities, ecommerce and elearning platforms has introduced a new set of performance demands that can’t be solved by a simple Page Cache.
In this talk, we will take a deep dive into the performance demands of dynamic sites, examining the challenges highly dynamic WordPress sites face both at rest and under high concurrency.
With the challenges understood, we will then explore some of the techniques used by high performance hosting platforms to address these core issues:
– OpCache Optimization
– Object Caching at Scale
– JustInTime PHP Compilation
– Database index optimization
– Page level plugin removal
– Edge Side Includes and WooCommerce
– Media offloading

June 20, 2025 — Millions of people search on Google every day—but what makes someone choose your WordPress site over others? It’s not just about ranking high; it’s about making your search results visually attractive and clickable. In this practical session, you’ll learn how visual elements of Google search results—such as the title link, snippet, favicon, and site name—significantly influence user decisions and clicks.

We’ll explore the anatomy of Google search results, clearly understanding how each component works and why optimizing visuals is crucial for effective SEO. Ranking alone isn’t enough; the quality and clarity of your visual presentation directly impact traffic to your site.

As an experienced SEO specialist, I’ll provide actionable tips on optimizing visual elements—including your titles, snippets, favicons, site names, and more—to achieve maximum engagement in search results. Whether you’re a business owner, marketer, developer, or designer, you’ll be equipped with clear strategies to make your WordPress site visually stand out, drive higher click-through rates, and boost organic traffic from Google.

June 20, 2025 — Your website is often the first impression your business makes—and if it’s not converting, it might be a design issue (not a traffic one). In this practical, no-fluff presentation, Haley Brown shares the five most common design mistakes self-taught web designers and small biz owners make—and how to fix them fast.

You’ll learn how to simplify your homepage for instant clarity, choose fonts that actually work, use white space like a pro, fix confusing buttons, and build a consistent colour palette (without needing an art degree). Whether you’ve been designing websites for years or just fell into it accidentally, you’ll walk away with simple, actionable tweaks that make your site look more polished, more professional—and more profitable.

This isn’t about a total rebrand or redesign. It’s about learning how to see your site like a designer—and make smarter design choices that build trust, boost conversions, and showcase your work in the best possible light.

June 12, 2025

June 10, 2025 — Structured content, post types, taxonomies, fields API. These are some of the APIs that have put WordPress in a leading position as a CMS. Developers have built powerful solutions on top of these API over the years. Learning from all of these efforts and as a preparation for the next iteration in the WordPress Admin redesign, DataViews and DataForms were introduced respectively in WordPress 6.5 and 6.7 to allow visualization and manipulation of any structured data. This talk will dive into the story behind the creation of these two APIs. Attendees will learn about the vision for these APIs. I will share insights about how these APIs fit into the admin redesign project and what to expect for the future. This talk will also show how you can make use of these two APIs today in your own plugins and projects. Join me to explore the future of structured content in WordPress.