December 15, 2017 — Up to this point, my relationship with WordPress has known many sides. I started as a WordPress.com blogger and then moved to WordPress.org. Step by step, while trying to customize my blog, I began to understand how flexible WordPress was. Besides HTML and CSS, I discovered that I was able to learn PHP by myself, by following WordPress tutorials and forum discussions. After a while of study and practice, I launched my freelance business and spent a few years building mostly WordPress websites for clients with different business types and from various parts of the world. Today, I handle product development for CaptainForm, a WordPress forms plugin launched in 2015.

I would like to walk you through the ups and downs of this journey, to share some of the insights that I’ve gathered along the way and, most of all, to express my deep passion for WordPress and for the beautiful things you can build with it.

December 15, 2017 — Ante is a self-taught web developer currently working at Agency,Mai?. His favourite language is JavaScript, and he enjoys working with it both on the frontend and the backend. When no one is looking, he also writes PHP. WordPress sparked his interest a few years back when he started creating his own websites. Most of his early experience comes from selling themes and plugins on the Envato marketplaces. Nowadays, he is mostly focused on experimenting with different JavaScript frameworks and frontend build tools. When not working or playing with code, he is either sleeping or trying to quit gaming.

December 15, 2017 — As lead of the Ongoing Client Support at CrowdFavorite I’ve worked with lots of legacy code on different projects. This session covers some of the lessons we’ve learned in the process and tips how to deal with the most common issues faster and more effective. It also shows how the legacy code can be actually fun.

December 15, 2017 — Open Source can be a great foundation for building a business. That being said, keeping the balance between community building and commercial activities can be tricky. In this talk I want to share my experience and practical tips, which can help you leverage OS and boost your business, while meeting fantastic people and learning a lot in the process.

December 15, 2017 — Since its launch in 2009., Netokracija has become “The Techcrunch of the Balkans” – according to Techcrunch itself – the largest tech and business blog in the region built entirely with enthusiasm – and WordPress.

With over 250.000 readers across the Balkans, Netokracija’s Ivan Brezak Brkan will tell the story about how his team created not just a blog, but a community that supports startups, digital change etc, explaining:

* How WP provided a great basis, but also proved customizable when the project grew;
* How Netokracija’s team based in 3 cities manages their editorial process to create outstanding content;
* What has Netokracija build over the years based on WordPress and their evolving business model;
* What other content creators can learn from the evolution of the project over the past 8 years.

December 13, 2017 — For WordCamp Europe 2017, the design team wanted to create a brand new theme. Not only for this WordCamp iteration, but for all WordCamps worldwide.

Developing a theme is not hard, but what makes it differently, when you have to develop something that fits for many different countries and languages. How do you deal with the limitations of a huge multisite, which all WordCamp website run on. And were do you put which code? And last, but not least: how can you contribute code to a plattform like wordcamp.org, when you don’t have direct code access?

In this talk, I will share my experiences in developing a new default theme and the difficulties I had along the way.

December 13, 2017 — In her talk, she will cover how the power of WordPress REST APIs can be used to create functional Single Page Applications (SPA). Also, if time permits, she would cover possibilities where else the RESTful APIs can be used.

December 12, 2017 — So you’ve just built (or contracted for) a shiny new WordPress website and now your first visitors are leaving comments, purchasing off your site… exciting!

But just like out there in sci-fi movies, the internet can be a dangerous place: spam bots, malware attacks, insecure web hosting, etc.

With this Awesome Toolkit Vol 1, I intend to provide you with all the basic (and some more advanced) WP management tools AND techniques that will ensure your site is secured, backed-up, and performs at its best.

At the end of this presentation, you’ll have the know-how and resources to maintain your own site, or if you’re a designer, to improve what you deliver to your clients and ensure the safekeeping of their new site.

December 12, 2017 — eCommerce websites have been evolving since the first online shop opened in 1995. You would think that, by now, businesses would have perfected their customer journey and user experience? Yet, many online retailers are still buying or commissioning one-size-fits-all themes under the assumption that these will automatically rake in the millions.

Each and every functionality and feature on your website’s money pages has a purpose – to arouse curiosity, generate interest, tingle desire, provide social proof and create a sense of urgency. That’s how you will convert your visitors into paying customers.
During my talk, I will walk you through proven product, cart and checkout frameworks, that you can take away to design the customer journey that fits your business model and product offerings. I will draw on examples from my own professional experience and other successful eCommerce websites.

You will pick up some inspiration to turn your own website into a high-converting eCommerce machine.

December 12, 2017 — That phase of any project that, if not pinned down and given the attention it needs, can trip us up big time. Chatting with other small agencies and self-employed WordPress developers and designers, I’ve found we all share experiences of differences between the client’s expectations and what we’ve priced and committed to delivering. If only we knew all the details upfront…

So for this talk I will gather as many experiences and ideas from as many of us as possible – from one man bands to the larger agencies, developers and designers – we all need to pin down Discovery!

Discovering just what the client expects and all the things around being able to make that happen. That’s what we want to do.

The thing is, we all know this. Some include this already in their process and from this they have become successful (surely!!). Each of us has a horror story of the client’s expectations not being met because we did not understand quite what they had in mind; there was a mismatch and the client holds us accountable for that. Or what they want and expect is just not possible on their hosting. Or the client’s data needs significant translation to be usable.

Being clear at the start is essential. If we do this, document it, get the client to confirm that this document is what they want and understand they’re paying for, then we’re winning and so are they.