February 16, 2018 — My WordPress journey started with working on small projects as a freelancer.

Over nine years, we have grown to reach the other end of the spectrum, regularly handling large enterprise WordPress projects.

At this scale, the rules for “selling” WordPress change. WordPress’ traditional advantages don’t necessarily apply anymore.

I will start by addressing the two biggest apprehensions that enterprises have about WordPress, i.e., security & scalability, and will also cover other pain points like:
– Integration with existing systems
– Ownership and responsibility
– Extensibility and long term viability
– “Free” and “GPL” concerns

I hope the lessons I share in this talk from our learning will help fellow agencies increase the WordPress adoption in enterprises.

February 16, 2018 — Our goal with this Panel discussion is to offer insights on things you need to consider when choosing a WordPress hosting company.

What are the WordPress Hosting Requirements?
Things to Consider when Choosing a WordPress Hosting Provider
Evaluating Your WordPress Hosting Needs
Free WordPress Hosting
Shared WordPress Hosting
WordPress Dedicated Server Hosting
Managed WordPress Hosting
Support
Security
Caching

February 16, 2018 — WordPress has grown from blogging tool, to flexible CMS to an application platform. As the web development world embraces micro-services, how does WordPress, which is normally implemented as a monolithic solution fit in and evolve? In this talk, I will look at what makes WordPress a good choice for application development, as well as where it is lacking. To put these questions in context, this talk will be framed around a case-study of a hybrid web app, built using WordPress and other tools including VueJS, Laravel and Amazon Web Services.

February 15, 2018 — There is a hype surrounding the WordPress REST API these days. People focus on how it will change the future of WordPress, allow developers to expand the range of projects they can build, make WordPress popular outside its own bubble.

What we rarely talk about are the challenges presented by the REST API

This talk focuses on the challenges. It’s a short guide to the WordPress REST API from a non-developer perspective – what is it, how it will change WordPress development, combined with some thoughts on the impact it will have on projects created with WordPress and the people creating them.

– cover some of the hype around the REST API
– look at what REST is
– look at APIs more generally and how they enable applications to interact with one another
– look at how the REST API will impact WordPress development. I’ll cover different ways that people are using it
– for example custom admins and as a headless CMS
– look at the impact that the REST API will have on WordPress businesses

Presentation Slides »

February 15, 2018 — A frank, and honest discussion with women who work in WordPress. We will touch on our struggles, our achievements, and what we see as the future for young women in the WordPress community.

February 15, 2018 — There’s a lot of buzz about “headless” systems whereby the separation of concerns between administration and consumption can be achieved by using WordPress as a CMS and adding a separate frontend that consumes the data from the CMS. I want to talk about all of the “gotchas” involved in this approach, including the infrastructural requirements, issues with using plugins, and challenges with user accounts.

February 15, 2018 — Are you having trouble growing your freelancing business into a full-blown agency? I was too! The average web design business has 1.4 employees which means the vast majority are solo-preneurs. In other words, it’s hard to grow a web design business!

But in 2013, I made a few significant changes to my strategy that paid off big and allowed me to go from struggling freelancer to 7-figure acquisition in just 3 years – starting from scratch with a completely new brand.

In this presentation you’ll learn:
– The benefits of selecting a niche
– How to position yourself in the market
– How to productize your service for maximum efficiency
– Acquisition “gotchas”

February 15, 2018 — Ever wanted to make small changes to the look-and-feel of your site but weren’t sure how to go about it? Itching to change the colour of your site title, tweak the size of your paragraph text, or hide the date on your posts? Let’s go on a CSS adventure together! In this session you’ll learn some basic CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and we’ll look at some practical examples, using a browser inspector to customize our site’s design.

Prerequisites:
Some basic HTML knowledge is helpful, but not required. You should be open to looking “under the hood” at a site’s HTML and CSS.

Presentation Slides »

February 15, 2018 — Learn about the important items you need to check off your list after launching a new WordPress site, including: submitting a site map to search engines ,website audit, analytics , SEO optimized , and security issues.

This talk will provide you with a handy checklist that you will be able to use for all your WordPress projects!

February 15, 2018 — In March of 2015, I bought the company I had worked for for since 2008. When I took on the business, I didn’t understand the ways I would change and grow, and in many ways was completely unprepared for what I was about to do. Since that time I’ve learned many lessons the hard way that I hope to share with others who might benefit from them.

The things I’ve learned range from knowing your value, to firing the right (or wrong) clients. Attend this talk if you’d like to hear the things that have changed the way I run my business, and will very likely help you run yours.