December 20, 2015 — The headline feature of WordPress 2.3 was what Matt called “native tagging support”. The taxonomy architecture that supported tags in WP 2.3 – an abstraction of the old Category functionality – is a critical component of how WordPress turned from a blogging platform to the more generalized content management system that it is today.

But this evolution has not always been smooth sailing. There was significant debate over how (and whether) WordPress’s general taxonomy framework should work. And the database schema that ultimately shipped in version 2.3 had technical ramifications that took several years to become fully apparent.

A close look at these problems, and how the WordPress team is addressing them, contains some useful lessons on how WP deals with breaking changes, the importance of unit tests and developer documentation, and how to weigh backward compatibility against future platform growth.

December 20, 2015 — This is an update of a presentation I gave at WordCamp NYC in 2012. It provides an overview of what SEO is (and what it is not), best practices for business website owners and bloggers who want to do their own SEO, and advice for how to select an SEO vendor for those who don’t. Covers on-site, organic SEO using the All in One SEO plugin

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December 20, 2015 — No matter who you are, everyone seems to need a website, and that often means hiring a designer, developer, or agency to do some work for you. But how do you communicate about something that is outside your realm of experience, much less help direct the project to suit your business? That’s why you hired someone, after all! We’ll unmask the “magic” of web design and learn to ask constructive questions, give useful feedback, and develop a collaborative relationship that will benefit both of your businesses.

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December 20, 2015 — During this panel we openly discuss content structure, content strategy, content discovery, development tips, and end with an audience Q&A. We will help you make sense of all the things you have to consider when setting up or improving your site’s Information Architecture, and share some of the secrets and pro-tips that we have found work well.

December 20, 2015 — Too many companies provide social services for “free,” quite literally banking on your data. WordPress is unique in that it charges (quite minimally) for the services it provides, and you own your data. I will explore various tools and paradigms — existing, and in the works — to develop and leverage your WordPress site as a central hub for your social data.

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December 20, 2015 — Follow along as I explain how I managed to pivot my WordPress development business from being an hourly/project-based WordPress developer with a plate full of different clients and projects to one with exclusive clients who all go through the same funnel and process month over month.

December 20, 2015 — In this talk, we outline the best practices involved in creating a multilingual site, then we will walk you through the benefits, drawbacks and pitfalls of current approaches to multilingual content with WordPress. Yes, we have (pretty much) tried them all. We hope that by the end of our talk, you will feel at ease if multilingual projects come your way.

December 20, 2015 — WordPress search is notoriously lacking. Why? MySQL is not search optimized. Elasticsearch is a scalable database that when coupled with WordPress produces extremely powerful results. This talk will cover what Elasticsearch is, why it’s important, and integrating it with a WordPress website using a 10up open source plugin called ElasticPress. ElasticPress has become increasingly popular in the WordPress community even being leveraged by popular hosting companies such as WP Engine.

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December 20, 2015 — HTTPS is The Way Forward™ for the web, as various web leaders are penalizing sites that still serve over HTTP. Search Engines are ranking insecure sites lower in search results. Browsers are limiting capabilities and stripping away features from sites serving HTTP.
This talk focuses on what HTTPS is from the very ground up, and some direction on how to set it up for your site.

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December 20, 2015 — Think your theme is secure? Your plugin API can be trusted? Think again. I’m going to show you how to make your site iron-cast by escaping your way to security

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