December 15, 2016 — Cory Miller gives his keynote presentation at WordCamp Ann Arbor 2016.

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December 14, 2016 — Everyone hears they should be using SEO on their website, but what does that really mean? Angie walks through the important basics anyone can do to help their websites get better ranking, without the smoke and mirrors act.

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December 14, 2016 — Andrew Wikel answers audience questions and provides advice for those interested in getting started with ecommerce.

December 14, 2016 — I will discuss a user-oriented design approach from the perspective of a social scientist, rather than a designer or developer. Based on my experiences as a project manager and practicing anthropologist, I will cover what an understanding of human behavior and practice has to offer on the topics of user interface, user experience, and usability design.

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December 13, 2016 — Removing color from design in the early stages of a project fosters better conversations and creates truly effective experiences for users.

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December 13, 2016 — In Quebec, animals used to be considered “things” by the Civil Code, with the same legal status as a toaster or chair. In discussing this aberration with friends, I suggested we build a website, gather signatures, and start a media campaign to build awareness around the issue. Using a free theme and the Participant Database plugin, we had a site running in a day. Within 24 hours, we’d made headlines in local media and gathered 10,000 signatures. 22 months and 50,000 signatures later, the law changed to recognize non-human animals as sentient beings with biological needs. In this lighning talk, I’ll tell the story of Animals are not objects and give tips on how to use WordPress and the influence we can have online not only to make friends and get likes, but also to make the world a better place.

December 13, 2016 — John is talking about why, as a developer, you should treat debugging as a key skill that you should practice and become proficient at. He’ll talk about some tools and processes for modern and efficient debugging of the front end and the back end, and how processes such as testing and version control can aid your debugging.

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December 12, 2016 — Many of us here aren’t developers. We might have a fuzzy notion of what they do and why they’re important. When we run into an issue while using WordPress, we might know that it’s a developer who can fix the problem, but do we know how to explain the issue to them? More importantly, do we understand the answer they’re giving?

There’s a lot of technical jargon that many developers assume as common knowledge to anyone using WordPress: How is your backend configured? What theme are you running, and is it based on a framework? Is it a Genesis-based theme? A child-theme? Are you working with vanilla CSS3 or Sass? What version of PHP is your server running? Are you on a shared host, a dedicated VPS, or a managed solution? Are you seeing a server error or a PHP error?

The avalanche of questions and terminology can be completely overwhelming.

In this talk, I’ll break down some basic terminology, explain the foundational concept of how a WordPress site works, and in the end, try to help you bridge the language gap between you and your developer.

December 12, 2016 — Last year I took a course in Public Participation in the planning process. It was a natural next step in my education. I learned what government agencies must adhere to when engaging with the public on their planning efforts. Government agencies with planning departments need not fear WordPress CMS. In fact, they can embrace it. They can easily integrate [the] custom tools created in house and still fulfill the legal requirements they must follow when engaging the public. Let me share with you my lessons from the classroom.

December 12, 2016 — There is a hype surrounding the WordPress REST API these days. People focus on how it will change the future of WordPress, allow developers to expand the range of projects they can build, make WordPress popular outside its own bubble.

As a project manager working for a company heavily invested in the development of the REST API, I felt a lot of pressure to understand what it is, how it will change things for developers, clients, and – well, me. You see, I’ve been building WordPress sites for the past 4 years, with almost non-existent development skills. Is the REST API going to change that? What will it mean for small agencies? What will it mean for theme shops?

We rarely talk about are the challenges presented by the REST API, especially for non-developers, mostly because the only people who talk about the REST API are developers.

This talk provides a short guide to the WordPress REST API from a non-developer perspective what is it, how it will change WordPress development, combined with some thoughts on the impact it will have on projects created with WordPress and the people creating them.

– cover some of the hype around the REST API
– look at what REST is
– look at how the REST API will impact WordPress development. I’ll cover different ways that people are using it
– tells a funny story about two clueless PMs learning how the REST API changes building sites with WordPress the hard way
– look at the impact that the REST API will have on WordPress businesses

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