January 11, 2016 — Presentation will cover: Why content is important; website content and how to start developing it; how blogs enhance a website and why not to be afraid of blogging; delve into blogging strategies, tips and topics; take a vertical dive into writing – basic concepts on grammar, sentence structure, voice, etc. to make content better; content driving SEO, with specific focus on the Yoast SEO plugin and how to use it.

The intended audience is WordPress users and bloggers, and anyone who struggles with putting pen to paper (fingers to keyboard).

Learning Outcomes

– Develop content for websites based on the less-is-more approach keeping responsive design in mind.
– Improve the quality of content on their website.
– Use the Yoast SEO plugin to improve content and SEO for pages and blog posts.
– Think about different ideas for which they can use their blog.
– Overcome the fear of blogging.

Presentation Slides »

January 11, 2016 — What makes websites, mobile apps, and other digital media products go from ‘good’ to ‘great’? Or ‘very great’? How about ‘really, really, really great’? In this session, we will be looking at the Kano Model to unlock the secrets of companies who have turned their products from a new market offering to something that captures their users in total delight.

We will be exploring what makes digital media products successful offerings in the marketplace, what is this thing called “user research” and how to prioritize product features based on what your users really want and what you can deliver.

Walk away with three ways you can immediately apply the Kano Model as well as some resources on how to get started with a full-blown Kano Analysis.

This session is perfect for designers, developers, digital strategists, project managers, business analysts, product owners, and everyone who loves a great and delightful user experience – YOU!

Learning Outcomes:

– Get a high-level introduction to user research and how it contributes to a great user experience.
– Identify your product’s “exciters and delighters” against its “satisfiers” and “basic expectations”.
– Map out your user’s product needs versus the service you intend to deliver.
– Use the Kano Model to drive product decisions anchored on user research.

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January 11, 2016 — Tips on how to improve the security of your WordPress site and develop better security posture. I’ll explore the motivations behind why WordPress sites get attacked and how to protect, detect and respond to these threats.

Learning Outcomes

– Understand the motivations of attackers and why they would want to hack your blog.
– Protect your website from the bad guys.
– Improve attitude and posture towards security.
– Effectively monitor your site environment for anything amiss.

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January 11, 2016 — CSS preprocessors make developing clean and semantic stylesheets effortless. My talk will take someone through a basic structure for organizing Sass within a WordPress theme, using the Bones theme framework as an example.

I will go through some of the benefits and cool tricks you can implement with this structure including breakpoint includes, variables, functions, nesting, and mixins.

Finally I will address perhaps the greatest hurdle to immediately implementing Sass in your WordPress theme — compiling. I will take people through the common methods of doing this including Grunt, Compass, and WordPress plugins like WP-SCSS.

Learning Outcomes:

– Look at their current workflow and ask the question: Why am I repeating myself? And how can I automate it?
– Embrace a CSS workflow that is made up many small components instead of one large component.
– Gain familiarity we core features of Sass like nesting, variables, mixins, functions, and imports.
– Feel confident in using a library like Bourbon to write stylesheets that have better browser compatibility, all while writing less lines of code.
– Be aware of build tools like Grunt/Gulp, which can be used to compile Sass in addition to many other front end tasks.
– Feel confident in implementing Sass in a WordPress theme immediately.

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January 11, 2016 — Most small organizations have a challenge with how to leverage their basic WordPress site into a full marketing platform. My presentation takes the audience from a discussion about the marketing problems they face, to a digital marketing platform design pattern that they can use, and then ultimately through a discussion about which WordPress plugins they can use for the different components.

Learning Outcomes:

– Understand how to transform a WordPress site into a conversion funnel used to collect leads and make e-commerce transactions.
– Understand how a WordPress site can be used for Content Marketing and SEO.
– Understand the value of Social Media and how to connect it with WordPress.
–Understand the importance of collecting email addresses for use in marketing campaigns.
– Understand how digital advertising can be used to bring more traffic to a WordPress site.
– Understand the importance of using traffic analytic tools like Google Analytics to track site traffic and conversion goals.
– Understand which WordPress plugins can be used to build a Digital Marketing Platform for your business or non-profit organization.

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January 10, 2016 — A good proportion of web design today descends from print/graphic design and these influences are becoming even more prevalent. Typography for the web is now all the rage especially as we are (finally) able to use different fonts other than the tried and tested workhorses Arial, Verdana & Georgia. Therefore, solid knowledge of typography basics should really be a must for every internet professional today. Learn how to design a web page with type and impress your fellow designers.

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January 10, 2016 — This talk explains how to create a membership site using WooCommerce.

January 10, 2016 — Sam will tell the story of how the Digital communications team at the University of St Andrews used WordPress to rapidly create a prototype site to explore and communicate a new vision of the University website. Please note, that the first few seconds of the video is missing, but the whole talk is practically present.

Presentation Slides »

January 9, 2016 — This talk recommends best WordPress plugins for a variety of users and website types.

January 9, 2016 — If you’re not already using the customizer to add custom ‘options’ into your themes, then this talk will help you get started! Dave will cover the fundamentals of getting your theme ready for customizer action before showing you how to add settings, controls, sections and panels. Then the talk will touch on more advanced topics such as enabling live updates to preview your changes, exercising control over your website’s colours and finally how to add your own custom controls.

Presentation Slides »