December 17, 2015 — One of our goals as WordPress developers should be to build user friendly websites and admin interfaces. In many cases once we’ve added custom post types, taxonomies, plugins, and other features required by a site’s design and structure, the WordPress admin panel can become unwieldy and may be confusing to site managers. In this session we’ll explore a number of strategies and techniques that will help make site administration an empowering experience for your clients. We’ll discuss modification of the admin panel, strategic use of custom fields, managing permissions, use of labels and help text, and more, all with the goal of making hand offs to non-technical website managers stress free.

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December 17, 2015 — As a content writer who has collaborated with various web agencies on a freelance basis, I’ve experienced some issues that have made my role harder than it should be and problematic for the client. I’d like to talk about how web agencies can work with content writers more efficiently to assist with speedier projects and happier clients. In my talk, I would like to cover these main areas: attitudes towards content writing / content writers, communication and the systems to put in place to aid it positively and how your client and content writer can work together to assist a successful project.

December 17, 2015 — Without a clear tracking strategy you should not be investing time in content marketing. Tracking your digital marketing activities accurately will enable you to justify the time you are investing, see a clear return on your investment and direct you efforts in the future based on past results. Reviewing the core tools to track your digital marketing activities accurately, how to integrate these tools into a effective process and how to deal with the growing Google Analytics referral spam problem.

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December 17, 2015 — In this presentation I’m going to demo two pieces of assistive technology, and show you how they are actually used by people who rely on them to access the web.
Featured assistive technology (AT):
Dragon NaturallySpeaking – voice recognition software, typically used by those with motor impairments for whom using mouse and keyboard is not an option.
NVDA – a free, open source screen reader, typically used by those who are blind, or with poor eyesight, but also sometimes used by dyslexics and others with cognitive impairments.
Come and learn what it’s like to browse the web from a different perspective.

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December 17, 2015 — After freelancing for just over a year now and having left a well paid job this talk outlines lessons I have learned from taking the plunge to being a freelancer and some tips and tricks I have learned along the way. This talk will benefit anyone looking to become a freelancer or any current freelancers that are looking for some tips and tricks on getting by.

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December 17, 2015 — Steps every business owner should take to safeguard their business’ virtual presence

December 17, 2015 — On average images comprise over 2/3rds of the size of a page request. This gives us a wide birth in order to look at different ways in order to optimise images and potentially reduce this proportion and decrease the total page size.

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December 17, 2015 — Ben Usher Smith looks at three adapted techniques used by web professionals to help projects run smoothly and successfully:
1. Finding a common language to talk about design that involves everyone.
2. Understanding how using stories can help you manage your project.
3. Adapting modern project management techniques (Agile-ish).

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December 17, 2015 — If you’ve ever wanted to customize a theme, you’ve probably been tempted to go change the theme’s code directly. But, as Admiral Ackbar once said, “It’s a trap!” Come learn this web developer’s one weird trick to customizing your themes properly with Child Themes and see why cowboy coders hate him!

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December 17, 2015 — On average images comprise over 2/3rds of the size of a page request. This gives us a wide berth in order to look at different ways in order to optimise images and potentially reduce this proportion and decrease the total page size.

Presentation Slides »