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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March 18, 2017 — WordPress upgrades, they bring us new features, faster sites, and better security. But pushing that upgrade button can be a scary moment, unless you’ve ensured your site is ready and compatible. I’ll show you the best practices for ensuring your site is ready including a simple strategy that works whether you manage one site or hundreds.

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March 18, 2017 — The day I discovered Vagrant was the day that I changed the way I worked. I went from fighting with server setups and local development boxes to seamlessly creating sites that fit in with my own workflow. But Vagrant by itself, while good, won’t get you there alone.

That’s where VVV – a WordPress development environment – comes in. VVV comes pre-equipped with all of the tools, bells, and whistles needed to streamline your development environment.

Mitch will walk you through the setup of Vagrant, commands and tips to help you get the most out of Vagrant, and other applications (VVV Dashboard and VV) that help you use VVV to its full potential.

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March 18, 2017 — In eCommerce, speed is your most important metric. Mere milliseconds can mean the difference between a sale and an abandoned cart, which could mean millions of dollars in lost sales. I’ve spent a good portion of the last three years in pursuit of page speed, exploring caching, virtual machines, hosting platforms, SSL negotiation time, CSS preprocessing, minification, inline styles and WooCommerce optimizations with the goal of sub-one second pageloads. Using real-world examples, I’ll show you the results I’ve been able to achieve and how to replicate them yourself.

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March 18, 2017 — Shortcodes are commonplace in WordPress themes, plugins and even WordPress core. Whether you are a new developer looking to implement a shortcode for the first time, or are a seasoned pro; come join us as we delve into the pros, cons, gotchas, best practices and creative approaches to shortcodes.

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March 18, 2017 — Common Security Issues with Plugins

March 17, 2017 — If you have ever had a client pick out a random theme, and asked you to build it out- then you spent 2 days learning how it worked- then this is for you. Don’t spend all your time learning new wheels- get a framework and learn it inside and out.
Frameworks are going to be your best friend- there are several out there, I will talk about my top four faves- and the pros and cons of each. And, there are so many snippet resources out there- (of which I will share a ton) implementation will be your best teacher.
The Bonus? Build sites in 2 days, not 2 weeks. “Not because it is easy, but because you are GOOD at IT!”

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March 17, 2017 — The Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) plugin is a powerful tool that allows you to extend the capabilities of WordPress admin without writing any additional code to create these fields.

We’ll explore:
• How ACF allows you to offer additional functionality to your clients
• How to use these new fields in your templates
• And how to make sure you don’t go too far when adding fields.

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