August 15, 2016 — WordPress is well known for its culture of remote workers, with people from all across the globe collaborating on projects, often without ever even meeting each other.

The benefits are numerous, enabling organisations to access the best talent without geographic constraints and allowing individuals to balance their work and personal lives in ways that are not possible in a conventional office environment.

But collaborating as a team of remote workers also comes with many challenges. I will share tips from 9 years of remote working at Wholegrain Digital to hopefully inspire others to try remote working and to help them do it successfully.

August 15, 2016 — “This is a 15-minute Lightning Talk*

A last minute addition – Josh Levinson will talk about React and some simple ways to drop it into WordPress.

August 14, 2016 — Tammie Lister works for Automatic and resides in the United Kingdom. She helped organize WordCamp Brighton 2016 and works with the Design Team.
Publish August 15

August 14, 2016 — Podcasting and live streaming have gained in popularity. There is just a podcast for just about everything you can think of today. And, with YouTube, Periscope, and Mixlr, you can live stream audio or video. In this session, you’ll learn how to record, edit, and publish your podcast or live stream with WordPress, and how to use WordPress plugins to embed your live stream or distribute your podcast to iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and other podcast outlets.

Presentation Slides »

August 14, 2016 — I have been working a lot on building WooCommerce stores that scale. I built a server stack and plugins, which combined, deliver phenomenal performance and scalability – catapulting WooCommerce into the leagues of enterprise eCommerce stores.

I have helped Datafeedr and WP All Import optimise their plugins, and my WooCommerce plugin makes the /shop/ page load in 0.2 seconds compared to the standard 63 seconds for a 45,000 product store.

I’ll talk about:

How this level of performance is going to change the market place, making it possible and easy for store owners to massively expand their inventory – particularly through drop-shipping and affiliated products.
Best practices for selling stock alongside drop-shipped and affiliated products to maximise your store’s revenue and provide a better service for your customers that grows more quickly as a result.
How I have achieved such levels of code performance, the common performance bottlenecks that exist and how developers can make sure their plugins don’t cause the same mistakes.

August 14, 2016 — 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?

In order to answer these questions, 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. 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 design work.

Presentation Slides »

August 14, 2016 — Spend time talking with a group of freelancers and the conversation will inevitably include someone’s unfortunate experience with a terrible client. Most freelancers have a story or two (or eight). While bad clients can’t be completely avoided, there are strategic steps any freelancer can take to contain the impact of a bad client. In this session, Nathan will explain the how to create a system that preserves workflow and keeps problem clients in check.

Take aways:

Four strategies that will keep problem clients in check.
Five monsters you should know and how to contain them.
The payoff of building good fences.

Presentation Slides »

August 14, 2016 — WordPress runs on a technology stack that provides many options for your choice of web server, database, version and flavor of PHP; this talk explores the commonly used options, and the various pros and cons of each choice, i.e., nginx or apache; PHP 5.x, PHP 7, or HHVM; and MySQL or MariaDB.

Take aways:

No tool is best for all jobs.
There are many implicit trade-offs to consider with software platforms, such as optimizing for speed vs memory usage, or using an older solution because it may be more stable, more well-tested, or more widely supported.
With any new project, these factors should be considered to ensure that you choose the best tools for your particular job.

Presentation Slides »

August 14, 2016 — *This is a 15-minute Lightning Talk*

The WordPress API, recently added to WordPress core, offers exciting new possibilities for connecting WordPress data and functionality with external systems.

In this talk, you will learn about how one Asheville company has used WordPress as a backend for iOS and Android apps.

I’ll do a brief demo of the “War In Our Words iPhone” app, which provides a platform for veterans to share their own personal stories with the world. The app makes extensive use of the WordPress API for backend functionality including user registration, authentication, and data storage/retrieval.

This talk is for all audiences. While it will touch on a few technical issues, the talk is designed to introduce any level of user to the power and possibilities offered by the new WordPress API.

Presentation Slides »

August 14, 2016 — *This is a 15-minute Lightning Talk*