July 3, 2024 — WordPress Playground is a zero-setup WordPress that runs in your web browser.

In this talk you will learn how it can help you:

– Showcase your plugin or theme on your homepage
– Build an entire website and share it with others
– Develop a plugin
– Test your code on different WordPress and PHP versions
– Create an interactive WordPress course
– …and so much more!
We will also discuss the impact Playground may have on the future of the entire WordPress project.

Presentation Slides »

July 3, 2024 — In 2023 we’ve seen some big open source projects almost die or be abandoned. So we think it is time to have an honest talk about open source and more specifically, about how to make open source software projects sustainable in the long run.

Now what does that mean? And how do we do that? Is contributing code enough?

What about funding? And how do we “sell” open source funding to the finance departments in our companies?

And what is it that we fund? What are we “buying”?

In this talk we’ll have a look at how to make open source sustainable and how you can help with this!

Presentation Slides »

July 2, 2024 — This lesson covers website optimization, focusing on improving site speed to enhance user experience. It discusses factors affecting performance, including software, themes, plugins, and third-party elements. It explains measuring performance with tools like PageSpeed Insights and WebPageTest, emphasizing Google’s Core Web Vitals. Additionally, it highlights the importance of good hosting and recommends performance-enhancing WordPress plugins like W3 Total Cache, WP-Optimize, etc.

June 25, 2024 — Now is your chance to contribute to the new Learn.WordPress.org redesign! The official WordPress education site is launching soon with a fresh look and Learning Pathways geared to users, designers, developers, and contributors. We need help to create small thumbnail graphics for lessons and tutorials on the new site. You can see examples of what the graphics look like in the Featured Courses and Courses sections on the new site. No previous graphics experience is required, since there’s a handy tool that makes the process of creating thumbnails simple! Join us for this workshop and learn how to use the tool, help us make graphics for the new site, and have some fun along the way. You’ll get recognition for your contribution and get a foot in the door on the WordPress.org Training team.

June 25, 2024 — This is a talk about the adventure and challenges of switching careers from two different fields: from the medical field to WordPress. The route had a lot of unique challenges, colorful characters and transformative life scenarios.

Presentation Slides »

June 25, 2024 — WordPress 6.6 will be released on July 16, 2024, bringing many exciting new features for theme developers. In this session, we explore how these updates can enhance your themes and streamline your development processes. Key highlights include:

– Major upgrades to the block style variations system
– New color and typography-only style presets
– Enhanced grid layout options in the Group block
– Specificity changes for Core styles
– And more…

While we weren’t able to cover everything in just one hour, you’ll have a solid overview of the most impactful changes and a wealth of resources to explore further on your own.

Presentation Slides »

June 21, 2024 — Many hosting options are available for WordPress, but one of the more popular options for developers is using a VPS or virtual private server. VPS services like Digital Ocean, Amazon EC2, and Google Cloud cost a fraction of more traditional managed hosting, with the benefit of controlling your server.

The downside is that you must know your way around server management, including keeping it secure. Fortunately, a wide variety of knowledge is available to guide you through the process.

Over the next couple of live streams, I’ll explain how to set up and manage your own WordPress VPS. We’ll cover the initial server configuration, installing WordPress in both single-site and multi-site installs, different web server software options and configurations, and some security and maintenance best practices.

The first live stream will focus on the initial server setup, using the Apache web server to host WordPress, as it’s the easiest to get set up and configured.

June 20, 2024 — While WordPress’s built-in debugging options should cover most of your needs, there are a number of plugins that can help you debug your code.

Let’s look at two useful debugging plugins.

June 20, 2024 — When developing in JavaScript, debugging your code at various points can help you see what’s happening.

Let’s examine some ways you can view the state of your JavaScript code.

June 18, 2024 — This lesson introduces the concept of web accessibility, explaining what it is, why it’s important, and how it benefits everyone. It covers key principles from the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and addresses common misconceptions about accessibility. The lesson highlights the importance of creating accessible websites from the outset. It presents tangible examples of the difficulties faced by people with disabilities, such as low-contrast text and inaccessible interactive elements.