May 12, 2016 — Nowadays the WordPress world is full of competitors and the only chance to survive without failing is to increase and retain the quality of your products. Come and learn how to build automated tests for WordPress projects and products, how to find bugs in earlier stages, and how to not spend too much time on it.

May 12, 2016 — What does it take to get that traffic? Christina Hills will discuss how to utilize content and media to your benefit.

May 12, 2016 — Practical tips on how to work with the REST API that currently exists in the core WordPress.

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May 12, 2016 — Want to know what it takes to change careers and start a WordPress web development agency? I’ll take you step by step: – Bootcamp – Building a team – Workflow – Contracts

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May 12, 2016 — A major new feature in WordPress was first requested over six years ago in this core ticket has now launched as part of WordPress 4.4. This feature has a dramatic and interesting history. Its arrival has been presaged in changes over at least the last three core releases. Its development has followed an interesting and at-times controversial path involving many well-known core contributors. Its presence has major implications for anyone who develops or maintains themes and plugins in WordPress. The feature in question is Taxonomy Term Meta, and it’s a big big deal!
This session has several purposes:
to provide a brief and entertaining account of the development process and major design decisions involved in making term meta happen, including accounts from the people who developed the feature.
to provide a quick technical introduction to the feature itself and its API.
to discuss what the feature means for WordPress developers and users — in particular for anyone who maintains themes and plugins.
This un-boring session is most appropriate for developers, but also potentially interesting to anyone with responsibility for a WordPress theme or plugin. I’ll be drawing on my experience as a maintainer of several large plugins (including Co-Authors plus) my relationships with several of the core contributors most important to this change and my work at Automattic on WordPress.com VIP, where we’ve spent a significant amount of effort preparing our clients for this transition.

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May 12, 2016 — Revelations like Edward Snowden’s about NSA spying, and Google’s announcement that it will begin considering a site’s HTTPS status in its rankings, led to a lot of talk about moving websites to secure connections. Similarly, the rise in ecommerce, and the simplicity with which one can accept payments online, has increased the need for sites to be available securely. With so much terminology that’s likely new, often very similar, and rarely more than a stream of initialisms, this entire discussion can be very intimidating. I’ll clarify basic terminology, offer some reasons why it’s worthwhile to secure a site whenever possible, and share several solutions to cover everything from simple to enterprise needs.

While securing a site can be intimidating at first, the recent introduction of Let’s Encrypt (https://letsencrypt.org/) significantly simplifies the process for most sites. Many hosts have introduced support for this service, which I’ll discuss before delving into options for sites and circumstances that aren’t suited to Let’s Encrypt.

May 12, 2016 — Return on investment is the end result that you want when it comes to your website. Whether it’s buyers, subscribers, commenters, social shares, or some type of engagement, you need to figure out the right formula. A lot of it begins with design and your use of calls to action. The color, the size, the text, the placement of it, as well as want you want it to do, are just part of the formula. I’m going to discuss what a call to action is, tips on creating a great call to action, and some cool resources to test them so you get the most out of it.

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May 12, 2016 — Whether your site is five pages or 500, it needs a strong foundation that plans for growth. We’ll cover site maps, content strategy, user interaction and experience so you have a plan for your site now, and down the road. We’ll also touch on best practices for doing it all over again for mobile.

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May 11, 2016 — Learn how to start writing custom CSS for your theme. Learn about the browsers’ developer tools, the basics of CSS syntax, some free resources to deepen your CSS knowledge and some ways you can integrate the code you write into your theme.

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May 11, 2016 — In our ever complicated world, what do we REALLY need on our websites? Sometimes there are so many options, so many FREE options, that we may be tempted to add them ALL! But, is their a price to pay for loading your site down with possibly too many features? Are you or your client’s websites better off with LESS stuff? (less plugins & software???) Do your special features, for example, sliders, fade in and outs, animations, attract or distract from your website’s purpose? Is your website easy to navigate? Do you automate tasks and security when possible? These are some of the areas we will discuss in “Zen and the Art of WordPress”.