March 21, 2017 — Learn the basics and some advanced tricks of WordPress plugin development. This track will demonstrate how to create a complete plugin from scratch and make it work with any WordPress site. Topics covered include hooks, content manipulation, some of WordPress’ most powerful APIs that are utilized by plugins. By the time the session has completed, attendees will have the skills to develop plugins from scratch using simple PHP and the WordPress API. We will also change the Hello Dolly plugin to display our favorite song lyrics.

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March 21, 2017 — While many WordPress developers understand the security value of adding an SSL Certificate to a Website; few think through the strategy necessary to minimize the loss of essential back-links that are key to SEO. In this session we’ll cover an effective SSL Implementation Strategy that will not only reduce impact on your SEO but use this opportunity as a way to build engagement with visitors.

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March 20, 2017 — One in every four people that use WordPress use it as a means to support themselves or family. This powerhouse of a software is more than just code. WordPress is a vehicle for success and employment. Learn how WordPress can make all your financial dreams come true and build you a career path you can enjoy and be proud to have.

March 20, 2017 — Pascal Birchler resides in Zurich, Switzerland and is a student and a passionate developer. He was a co-organizer of the WordPress Zurich Meetup as well as WordCamp Switzerland 2014 and 2015.

He built his first website and began blogging as a 12-year-old in 2006. He started blogging about WordPress in 2008.

March 18, 2017 — A big hurdle for WordPress Developers when jumping into Javascript development is the paradigm switch from PHP’s Class based classical inheritance to Javascript’s more Functional prototypal inheritance.

In this talk we will be taking an in-depth look at how objects work in Javascript. We will also be look at different ways to handle inheritance in Javascript. In addition to reviewing what JS Prototypes are, we will also spend some time looking at object creation patterns in JS. How they differ from PHP, and in some ways how they are similar. We will even cover cool things that Javascript lets us do like borrowing methods from other objects. And much much more.

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March 18, 2017 — The web created the first universal publishing platform but schools, of all levels, are still having students submit paper or “electronic documents” for grading and review. Academic work lives in private, closed systems, never exposing students to the opportunity of external feedback.

This session will propose a different approach. We require incoming college freshmen to become publishers during their first few weeks in school. They create websites and use that publishing platform to post personal reflections, current event updates … and all of their assignments. The website becomes a repository for what will be a portfolio of assignments by the time a student graduates.

Our approach could work for any discipline, but it will take a change of mindset and the acquisition of new skills and infrastructure. It’s time to change the culture of education by creating college graduates that are media literate, proficient web publishers and good digital citizens.

March 18, 2017 — Work faster, not harder. You’ve probably heard of WP-CLI, but do you know everything you can do with it?

We’re going to take a deep dive into WP-CLI, from installation, to configuration and automation of your common WordPress maintenance tasks. It’s you don’t want to miss this!

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March 18, 2017 — Does your organization send a lot of HTML Emails? Are you tired of getting in your Delorean every time and coding tables and inline styles, oh my? Let WordPress do the heavy lifting. At Vanderbilt, we’ve built out an Email Creator WordPress theme that allows our users to easily create HTML emails, using various template options. Come to this session to learn more about how to reduce the effort you’re putting into HTML marketing, and putting more control in the hands of your users.

March 18, 2017 — There are a lot of obvious benefits to using version control for your projects, but there are a lot of non obvious benefits too. In this session, learn how to create an industrial grade version control workflow using Git and automatic testing. Topics that will be covered include:

* How to Use Git Branches – Instead of having all of the developers work on the same “master” branch, you can have developers work on separate branches that can be created per developer, per feature, or even per ticket in your project management system.

* How to Do Performance Testing – Instead of crossing your fingers when you site gets a lot of traffic, be sure that your site can handle the traffic by doing performance testing on each deployment that you do.

* How to Do Cross Browser Testing – Instead of firing up a bunch of Virtual Machines to test different browsers and devices, set up an automatic script so that every time you are looking to do a deploy you get a bunch of screenshots to review.

* How to Do Visual Regression Testing – If you are pushing a change that shouldn’t effect the front end of the site, wouldn’t it be nice to verify that? Learn how to visually compare a “before” and “after” version of your site to see where (if anywhere) visual changes happen.

* How to Notify You Of Deployments – Instead of wondering if code has been deployed, learn how to integrate your workflow with chat solutions like Hipchat/Slack or more traditional solutions like SMS or Email.

If you are a developer or manage developers on web projects, this session will help you learn how to level up your workflow and do a lot of really powerful testing on your project every time you do a commit.

March 18, 2017 — Agile practices such as Scrum, and Lean practices such as Kanban, have become some of the biggest buzzwords in tech, and are top keyword in job descriptions. But they’re also frequently misunderstood, and constantly argued about online, which can make them seem intimidating and confusing. They can affect everything from how you write code, to how you organize your work, and how you relate to your customers. I can’t cover everything about them in a single talk, but I can explain some core Agile and Lean concepts, and how to go about trying them out in a way that can maximize their benefits while minimizing risk and disruption to your work. I’ll share insights from hard-won experiences bringing Agile and Lean practices to several different companies and consultancies where I’ve worked. While some of these practices are tremendously beneficial for WordPress work, others can cause confusion, and even harm if you try to suddenly force them into a typical WordPress development environment. I’ll do Q&A with the audience through most of the talk, as every workplace has unique challenges, and I want to make sure the talk addresses what’s on people’s minds and the challenges they are dealing with, whether they’re issues with difficult customers, deadline pressures, too many bugs, project management difficulties, etc.

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