October 12, 2017 — Live critiques of attendee-submitted websites on 3 categories:

Design
Marketing
SEO

October 12, 2017 — WordPress is software like no other. Businesses harness its versatility. Creative skills are mastered with it. It unifies individuals from diverse backgrounds. Yet to so many, it remains “just” software. As a blogger, web designer, marketer, educator, and entrepreneur since long before its existence, I’ve watched it grow into a worldwide phenomenon. My own path to success is intertwined with a decade of WordPress use. Clearly, there’s more to this software than just a free install. Discover how WordPress will completely change your personal and business life for the better, if you let it! This is an introduction to my concept of The WordPress Lifestyle (#wplife) which is all about community. It goes far beyond merely using WordPress to support one’s livelihood. It includes education, inspiration, art, experiences, relationships, and so much more.

October 12, 2017 — There are a lot of ways to control how WordPress looks and “Themes” covers all of them…

Commercially available themes, from ThemeForest for example.
Frameworks such as Genesis from StudioPress
Drag-and-Drop Builders from Beaver Builder to Bold Grid to the Visual Composer plugin.
How do you pick which is the best-fit for your project and your client?

October 12, 2017 — With all the buzz around the REST API maybe it’s been awhile since you took a look at WordPress core’s JavaScript-driven single page application (SPA), the Customizer.

In this talk we will explore how to use the Customizer to improve the user experience for theme and plugin settings, explore how the Customizer has evolved, and look at the future of the Customizer.

Presentation Slides »

October 12, 2017 — One Sunday morning while reconciling my books during a slow cash flow month, I was shocked to realize that I was paying nearly $300 a month in subscriptions to run my freelancing gig! Things like invoicing, project management, contracts and growing – it was seriously getting out of control.

Sure $7-$35 here and there was harmless, maybe even unnoticed most times. But after seeing all the subscriptions categorized (especially during a slow month) and knowing there’s over 40,000 plugins available in WordPress, I couldn’t help but wonder “What can WordPress replace?”

And with that, I started a journey into creating (even though I didn’t realize at the time) an extranet that my clients and I both could use, all with the ultimate goal of reducing my monthly operating costs.

This topic is about what I learned while creating my extranet and what monthly subscription services WordPress could totally replace, what it might be able to replace (depending on circumstances), what it should not replace and the unexpected benefits and head bumps I uncovered!

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October 12, 2017 — After investing so much time, effort, and resources in developing your WordPress website and marketing your brand, it can be frustrating if you are not achieving a high number of conversions on your website.

Tom Shapiro will walk you through effective techniques to get more of your site visitors converting. Some of the techniques will focus on behavior-based data gleaned from heat maps, scroll maps, and A/B testing, while others will focus on messaging, neuromarketing, and human psychology, while yet others will focus on color, design, and UX (user experience) elements. Whether you are looking to sell more on your website, increase leads, promote an upcoming event, build your email list, or drive site visitors to another type of conversion event, you’ll walk away from this session with highly specific methods for increasing your website’s conversion rates.

October 11, 2017 — Having a solid backup strategy can save your life in times of an extreme website crisis. No one wants to lose any of the hard work they have put into their site and why should you ever have to if you are backing things up.

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October 11, 2017 — MVC, which stands for Model-View-Controller, is a popular methodology used by modern PHP frameworks to separate the presentation (HTML) from the data and logic of an application. In this talk you’ll learn how to write plugins “the MVC way” while still doing things “the WordPress way.”

Intended Audience Type: Developer
Intended Audience Experience: Advanced

October 11, 2017 — A problem that gets out of hand easily, and is hard to come back from once you’ve gone too far, is CSS bloat. We will discover the importance keeping CSS bloat to a minimum, the benefits of using a CSS preprocessor, and the best-practices to avoid bloat in the future. While all of this may cause small delays in the present, it will help you immensely in the future and inevitably you will thank past-you for keeping things tidy and clear.

Intended Audience Type: Developer
Intended Audience Experience: All (beginner, intermediate, advanced)

October 11, 2017 — Slowly loading websites not only negatively influence the customer’s perception of your brand, but they also negatively impact your site’s search engine rankings.

A CDN, or content delivery network, is something that everyone can use to speed up their site for visitors all around the world.  CDN’s used to be expensive and require long-term contracts, but all of that has changed.

Presentation Slides »