October 14, 2017 — If you sell a website as the end product, you will always be treated as a commodity where price is the most important element when picking a service provider.

In this talk, I want to share the 5 things every WordPress agency or freelancer should add into their service offering to start selling value to their clients and therefore generate recurring revenue.

I’ve started as a WordPress shop selling 1k € website and have now build a service offering that help me generate around 10k € in recurring revenue every single month.

In this talk I want to share what I’ve learned the hard way and give the audience very actionable ways to start generating more recurring revenue.

October 14, 2017 — In the PHP world in general, there is a standard (recommendation) when it comes to HTTP messages: PSR-7. Despite things like Calypso, Gutenberg and the growing JavaScript codebase in general, WordPress is written in PHP. Thus, wouldn’t it be nice to do what the rest of the PHP world is doing? Isn’t there some way to leverage all the existing PSR-7 middleware and incorporate them into the WordPress REST API? Well, there is.

In this talk, Thorsten will give an overview of the PSR-7 HTTP message interfaces. After that, he will compare these with the structures of WordPress Core, and analyze whether or not they match with the PSR-7 interfaces. Finally, Thorsten will provide a closer look into an example implementation of PSR-7-compliant WordPress REST requests and responses, respectively, and explain their inner workings.

October 14, 2017 — A few events recently occurred: a WordPress developer posted a screenshot on Twitter of the WP Admin of a website he’d just taken over. It was also the day I handed over a site to one of my clients. While I was explaining them where to find what in WP Admin, it struck me: there seemed to be no logic in a lot of the menu-items at all!

While we’ve all been busy designing websites with a focus on the front end, we seemed to have lost track of usability when developing extra functionality for the back end of WordPress, WP Admin. New menu items created by plugins, seem to be all over the place, not to mention the notifications that come with them.

Even though most of us are working with WordPress on a daily basis, taking over a website developed by another company isn’t always easy. So imagine what it is like for someone with less experience.

This talk is a first analyses on the WP admin of a WordPress website, that has the most popular plugins installed. It also presents findings of research done amongst plugin developers, on how they decide how and where the menu of a plugin should appear. Finally, I’m encouraging WP Admin users to participate in an online user test, that will help us to create a foundation for a more user friendly WP Admin.

October 13, 2017 — So you have your WordPress site up and running and it’s awesome. But what’s next? Don’t let those pesky Rebels destroy your new site.

Come learn about what you can do to keep your WordPress site in good working order after it is completed with Matthew Clancy.

Presentation Slides »

October 13, 2017 — In this interactive experience we’ll be exploring honesty in agency life. Too often in the agency world and society, we have an unwillingness to put ourselves in a state of vulnerability to our clients and our peers.

Adversity is what drives us to be better, to problem solve and to grow in all aspects of our lives. Nothing in life is perfect and even with extreme planning there are still curveballs thrown our way.

Aaron will be sharing his insights, missteps and lessons learned from nearly 20 years of agency experience, including his 10+ years running Linchpin: a WordPress focused digital agency. He will be encouraging interaction with attendees along the way, providing audience members with the ability to anonymously participate in sharing #fails and #wins on Twitter and/or the WordPress RI Website.

October 13, 2017 — Many of us build website for clients – most of us even get paid for it…

There is a lot of money in freelancing. There is also a lot of pain and frustration.

Ever wish you could just ask someone how they did it? You can! Our panel has been there, done that, has the t-shirt, scars, and lessons learned to share with you.

With any luck you can learn from their mistakes and avoid making a few of them yourself!

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 »