March 16, 2017 — If you’ve launched enough sites, you’ve been there. Everything seems to be going great, but then one after the dominos start falling until it seems like it will knock over an entire house of cards. This is the story of the days leading up to a high profile publishing site launching on WordPress and what it took to save the launch.

March 16, 2017 — Turn your familiarity with WordPress plugins and themes into valuable content for your site’s visitors by writing a review! In this talk, we discuss how to write an in-depth review of a plugin or theme. This talk will cover what data to collect, how to put a plugin or theme through its paces, and how to share the review in a compelling format for the benefit of your reader.

March 16, 2017 — Failing to plan is planning to fail. Way too many otherwise talented WordPress businesses get bogged down in development hell. Pain Free(ish) Project Management is a product and method agnostic approach to setting goals, getting systems in place, and following through with consistent execution. The talk includes ideas and samples of flowcharts and systems that people can use on their own projects at no or low cost.

This talk is not only for businesses but also great for anyone building a WordPress site or doing any type of project.

March 16, 2017 — The topic will be covered by Kayleigh and Keith and will cover various WordPress user related issues commonly faced on the support team at 34SP.com We will cover popular support queries and how we go about finding a logical solution to the common problems we face and advise on how the people listening can troubleshoot their issues too. We will cover WSOD and common causes, plugin and theme issues and also cover some tips on how you can use handy tools such as WPCLI to find and fix issues commonly found on WordPress websites.

March 16, 2017 — Unfortunately WordPress has reputation of weak security and the web is full of guides and plugins to enhance WordPress security. Unfortunately some advice is misleading or just false sales pitch. Understanding what is truly essential for security and what is irrelevant can be difficult. In this talk I explain, based on my experience of maintaining hundreds of WordPress sites, what I don’t consider relevant and what you don’t need to worry about, and what are the actually important things you need to care for.

March 15, 2017 — No matter what the purpose of the site you’ve built, it’s likely you’ve included a standard contact form as one of the first (or last) items on your pre-launch task list.

Name, email, reason for contact, submit: BORING!

In this session Adam will look at some creative ways to use forms in WordPress with the goal being to better engage and convert website visitors. Whether convincing potential clients to make first contact, grow an email subscription list, or streamline the guest blogging submission process, website contact form(s) are a key part of the communication process.

Adam will share several different contact form approaches and what plugins and/or services work best for each.

March 15, 2017 — As a site owner, I wanted to have more flexibility and control over my content so looked towards custom post types and custom meta fields. This is the journey of how a non-developer learnt to structure post types, custom meta fields, the plugins and libraries I’ve used to create my sites with and some tips for making the editor more user friendly so all the extra fields don’t feel overwhelming.

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March 15, 2017 — Four months after the UK voted to leave the EU, where are we in terms of its impact on the web profession? How is our work going to change? What new rules might we have to follow? In fact, whose rules might we have to follow? Learn what’s ahead for the next few years, Brexit or not.

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March 15, 2017 — More often than not, support requests aren’t actually requests for support, but an attempt to get a website on the cheap. So what can you do to manage our customer’s expectations and ensure your business remains profitable?

The answer? Stop selling support and start selling updates.

March 15, 2017 — Recruiting new supporters and encouraging them to take part in campaigns and make donations is crucial for charities and non-profits. In this talk I will talk about how a few charities I have worked with recently, ShareAction, Positive Money and Refugee Action, have managed to achieve that using their WordPress websites. Through a mixture of strategic use of plugins and optimising the sites to encourage people to sign up or donate at the right time, I will go through a range of case studies and practical tips to show how other people can get similar results.