May 1, 2016 — Running your own business is tough. There’s tons of things to think about, for sure. But how do you handle that, while also trying to stay current with all the technological changes that seem constant? How do you manage investing in your own growth? If there’s anyone who can share insights into the question, there’s no doubt it’s Tom.

May 1, 2016 — 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

Presentation Slides »

April 30, 2016 — Beginner’s BootCamp

You want to make your site your own, but if you touch those Core file or plugin/theme files you’ll just create future headaches for yourself. Learn from WPRocket’s Support Guru, Lucy Beer how to enhance your website without hacking it to pieces.

Presentation Slides »

April 29, 2016 — Part of Beginner’s BootCamp

We will be covering setting up a local WordPress install so you can work on your sites offline for purposes of development, troubleshooting etc.

April 29, 2016 — This intermediate to advanced developer talk will focus on the types of vulnerabilities common in WordPress plugins by providing insight into the common vulnerabilities prevalent in WordPress plugins and themes including what they are, how they work and what a developer can do to prevent them. Topics will include XSS, CSRF and various other vulnerabilities often seen in WordPress.

Presentation Slides »

April 29, 2016 — In this session I will dive head first in how to get online presence for your brick and mortar business. There are so many tactics online to help you market your business, and I will show you which ones are the best. I will also talk about what can hurt your business. Every brick and mortar relies on a localized online strategy and I will help business owners and web development specialists know how to build local businesses through Local SEO the holistic way.

Presentation Slides »

April 29, 2016 — This session is dedicated to showing what all has to be done with a website after it is developed and handed over to the user(s). I will discuss a bit of security, updates, backups, keeping the site “fresh” Google Webmaster tools, different notifications you can receive about your site for if the site goes down, what to do when the site does go down,

Presentation Slides »

April 28, 2016 — You probably already know to use headers and alt-text to improve website accessibility, but it’s so much more than that. Accessibility is not just for the blind. Come learn about the different aspects of accessibility and the simple steps you can take to improve accessibility for every website you work on.

Presentation Slides »

April 28, 2016 — Open source third party code can help you at every corner of the development process. In fact, many of the popular plugins and themes you use today leverage popular open source libraries for functionality, reporting, presentation, and more.

Learn about how you can use third party code to speed up development, reduce budgets, and meet deadlines faster. This presentation will be light on code, but geared towards beginning to intermediate developers who understand the underlying principles of writing code for WordPress.

Presentation Slides »

April 28, 2016 — Five years ago, WordPress powered 13% of the web and struggled to be considered as anything more than a “blogging platform.” Today, as the de facto content management tool that powers a quarter of the internet, WordPress is at a crucial pivoting point of determining how to get *off* of the web. A CMS can no longer merely exist as a website entity available when summoned from the browser. Now, a “website” must extend into the peripherals our users are accustomed to and become an active participant in the dissemination of content. There must be, “an app for that.”

Luckily, with the recent hotness of JavaScript-based front end frameworks, we can use the same skills, tools, and experiences learned from making websites and apply them to developing apps that run not only on iOS and Android phones, but across many platforms. This presentation will explore how WordPress’ capabilities position it as the perfect engine to power hybrid applications. Be warned: There will be code.

Presentation Slides »