January 5, 2016 — A logo should not cost the same as a cup of coffee (read: fiverr.com) – as WordPress designer/developer “unicorn” we often get stuck with a client who wants “just a simple logo”. The problem is logos are not simple, they are very important – and they are on every page of your website. This talk will offer guidelines on how to judge a good from a bad logo and offer some inspiration/steps for others to follow to build their own brilliant logos.

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January 5, 2016 — WordPress is easy! Ads are… not so much. Are you curious about some of the basics of the industry? Maybe you’d like to earn some revenue from your site? In this session we’ll look at options for monetizing your WordPress site.

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January 5, 2016 — An excellent topic for developers using WordPress for the first time. Also suitable for people building a website for the first time. This is a case study of a first-time WordPress development project for the website defeatharper.ca. My talk will outline how the ideas behind the site evolved as the requirements changed and the environment it was designed to play in kept shifting. How did we manage the change? How do you keep forward progress in development?

This was my first “real” WordPress project as a developer. I will be sharing my trials and tribulations in trying to get WordPress to “act like a proper CMS”, and then my ultimate insights into the “WordPress Way” of doing things. I have mixed feelings about the two major plugins we used, and will share those findings with you as well.

January 5, 2016 — To start a company is a noble thing! To start an online company, nobler still. A distributed workforce (or even a workforce working in an online “space”) has special requirements. There are nearly endless possibilities where expansion and direction are concerned, but finding and maintaining a workforce in those environments is a task that can be made simpler through a few key components.

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January 5, 2016 — “We’ve all built a ton of WordPress sites. We’ve also managed them all too. You’ve probably heard about WordPress Multisite Networks, and all the awesome things it can (and can’t) allow you to do.

With great power, comes great responsibility. During this talk, Taylor will step through the do’s and don’ts of Multisite Networks. He will share how WordPress Multisite can be your best friend or worst enemy… but usually both… at the same time.”

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January 5, 2016 — My presentation will focus on sharing practical tips and advice based on my experiences in becoming a core contributor. While there will be some technical aspects of how to contribute, my intention is to share what I have learned along the road to getting my first props and to provide practical, real-world advice on how to get into core contribution. My audience would be developers of any level who want to start contributing to core.

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January 5, 2016 — WordPress developers have been refining their development workflows and toolkits for almost 12 years now. As game changing server technologies like Facebook’s HHVM start to creep into the WordPress hosting space — WP Engine, Pagely & Kinsta all offer HHVM-ready plans — those workflows need to be expanded.
I’ll be introducing you to a new Vagrant-based WordPress development environment (HGV) that includes debugging and profiling tools and allows you to test your code in both PHP & HHVM environments.
vIf you’re interested in attending this talk, a passing familiarity with the command line helps, but isn’t a hard requirement.

January 4, 2016 — WordPress powers over 20% of the Internet and comes with a fully-fleshed out unit testing framework covering the core library. For testing plugins and themes (extensions to WordPress), I developed WP_Mock, a comprehensive mocking framework for WordPress. WP_Mock allows developers to test their code in complete isolation from WordPress itself.

I’ll walk attendees through both test frameworks, covering the pros/cons of each and examples of their use. Attendees will gain a further understanding of PHPUnit, unit testing in general, process isolation, and code modularization.

January 4, 2016 — Creating a custom WordPress theme from scratch is time consuming, but why start with a blank canvas every time? In this talk we will go through the differences between starter themes, frameworks, and parent themes; and which one is right for your needs.

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January 4, 2016 — There is group of people who began using WordPress as a hobby, then soon began getting paid for WordPress work as freelancers. Once you start getting paid, the government sees it as income — even if it’s just a side job. In this session, we will be cover basic things to consider when you begin working as a freelancer, what to include in a basic business plan, and tips from other freelancers.

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