June 4, 2017 — We’ve given the content owners of our big, complicated, custom WordPress intranet a great way to safely stage their pages on a private site, then move changes over to the live site without having to copy the entire database.

But when they need to launch a new section of the site, things get very complicated – and deploying a lot of new content to the live site on launch day is a stressful and time-consuming process. Content owners quickly get in over their heads when they try to manage a launch, so developers spend precious hours planning and executing content launches.

Dark launch to the rescue! Borrowing ideas from software companies that use feature flagging of new software to test the waters, roll out gradually, or roll back quickly – we’re gradually moving new content areas over to the live site well before launch day, as the new content is developed.

The cool thing is, no one knows the new content is there until we decide to make it available – not even the search engine – unless we tell them exactly how to find it.

Content dark launch is saving our sanity and giving hours back to our developers, and I’ll explain just how it all works.

June 4, 2017 — In this talk, we’ll cover building a WordPress site that leverages the power of Express.js and WebSockets to enable things like live publishing, commenting, and alerting users when content is being edited. We’ll build a simple Express app to handle POST requests from a WordPress site and turn them into events emitted to users, and build REST API endpoints to handle data from users. We’ll also talk about integrating something like this into a production site.

June 4, 2017 — Keynote WordCamp Raleigh 2017

June 4, 2017 — Plugin or theme development for WordPress is not an easy task. It becomes much harder for developer when distributed plugins/theme get rated very low or number of supported tickets is overwhelming. This not only may affect developer’s productivity but also health and personal life.

My extensive experience as developer with a few plugins in the official WordPress repository allowed me to define few methods that turn any feedback into action that makes my products better and end users happy.

June 4, 2017 — The popularity of JavaScript has lead to an ecosystem that’s vibrant, growing, and to be honest, somewhat out of control. Each day leads to a new framework labeled as the next great thing, but each framework presents it’s own unique set of pros, cons, and frustrations.

In this talk, we will look at Vue.js, one of the most popular JavaScript frameworks available. In 2016, stateofjs.com conducted a survey where over 89% of the surveyed developers gave Vue.js a satisfactory rating, which rates it as the second highest rated framework behind React, which received a rating of 92%. We will look at real world examples of how Vue.js can be integrated into a WordPress project for the front end, the back end, and interaction with the WordPress Rest API.

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June 4, 2017 — Why do so many websites look the same? As our tools have improved and we’ve been able to do more with the web, there’s been a growing trend toward websites that look exactly alike. Why did this come to be, and what can we, as designers and curators of the modern web, do to avoid it? We’ll touch briefly on the history of web design, and examine how modern tools and practises have contributed to a more homogeneous-looking internet.

In order to answer these questions, we’ll explore on the history of web design, and examine how modern tools and practises have contributed to a more homogeneous-looking internet. We’ll examine the web design process from two perspectives – the designer’s and the developer’s – and discuss how the blurring of those roles impacts the design process. Along the way, we’ll discuss the various merits of following or bucking trends. Finally, I’ll offer some constructive advice to help you – whether you’re a designer or not – add an individual touch to your work.

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June 3, 2017 — 1. Denise VanDeCruze
Title: Working Across Time Zones
Description: How do we deal with a global client base? How do we get projects done with a worldwide team? I will be sharing some best practices for working across long distances and differences in time and culture. You can expect stories of this going wrong as well as stories of this going well, how to set-up expectations, timelines and deliverables.

2. Mark Wilkinson
Title: Computing in UK Schools. What they Teach and WordPress’ Role.
Description: In 2013/2014 the UK government made major changes to the ICT curriculum, most notably removing a lot of the traditional “how to use” content and replacing this with a Computing focused curriculum. As a former teacher at the time I went through this transition. In this talk I will outline what is now taught in UK schools at the moment along with some of the techniques and software programs used to get these skills and knowledge across to our youngsters. The talk will touch on the role WordPress could and perhaps should play in the curriculum. This talk with be of interest to anyone interesting in learning what and how computing is taught in schools. In may be of greater interest to agencies recruiting from the pool of up and coming talent.

June 3, 2017 — Content is King, right? But alongside shiny new designs, new features and technical challenges, content barely gets a second glance. Much like when you move house, migrating your content seems easy enough until the deadline is looming and you’ve got no choice but to grab everything at random before it gets left behind.

Where do all the boxes go, and how do they get there? Do you even know what they all are? What order do they go back together in? And why do you still have that poster from the 90s? Moving house, and Migrating content, is all about planning, mapping and making a specific list and sticking to it. It’s also about knowing when to abandon everything and start afresh. Having migrated dozens of sites well, and dozens of sites badly, I’ll show you how to keep things on track, how to plan for success, and how to cope with failure.

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June 3, 2017 — We’ll start with an overview of what you can build with the Customizer and where to use it, followed by hands-on development building customizer controls. We’ll wrap up with a discussion on some of the more advanced ways you can leverage the customizer, with tips & techniques for your own theme.

June 3, 2017 — Migrations are a thing we have to do sometimes, but dread doing. You ask yourself before, will it go okay? You think later, did I forget anything?

In this talk I’m going to give you some key insights into migrating information from WordPress.com to a WordPress.org self-hosted site. After we’ll discuss the details of migrating a public web site from one host to another. I’ll give you the tools to test the migration before completely flipping the switch. Lastly, we’ll briefly discuss when you want to migrate content from a development copy of the site over to your public site.

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