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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January 4, 2016 — What happens when you review 30 membership plugins? You learn a lot about writing reviews. You learn a lot about products and product marketing. You learn a lot about membership plugins. Come hear the stories of these lessons if you’re either a product developer, in marketing, or a membership plugin user.

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January 2, 2016 — Content Marketing isn’t new, but now if you don’t have a solid multi-faceted content strategy you will get left behind. In this session, we’ll dive into how you can create a solid content marketing strategy that includes video, podcasting, Ask-Me-Anythings (AMAs) and how to execute your plan with WordPress.

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January 2, 2016 — This session takes you beyond the cut and paste addition of content to your WordPress site, and digs into the details of content formatting and image management to create beautiful pages and posts visitors actually want to read. You’ll learn:

Best practices to make your content feel easy, fast, and interesting to read
Tips on working with images to attract attention and keep page load speed fast
Visual considerations the best content designers take into account that give their site design and content presentation an edge

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January 2, 2016 — With the performance gains promised by HHVM and PHP 7, WordPress site admins are living in pretty exciting times. The PHP world at large is in a proverbial space race, and every WordPress site will (eventually) benefit. But early adopters and folks who manage their own servers shouldn’t be the only ones who get early access to these face melting bumps in speed. In this talk, I’ll be introducing you to things you can do to get your code ready for these next generation hosting environments. And we’ll cover where you can host your code once it’s ready. If you’re interested in attending this talk, a passing familiarity with the command line helps, but isn’t a hard requirement.

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December 31, 2015 — ” .. every question is a cry to understand the world. There is no such thing as a dumb question” – Carl Sagan

Have a question that hasn’t been answered by one of the presenters today? Or maybe a discussion with one of your new WordPress friends has sparked your curiosity? This is your chance to get answers, explanations, or just a good laugh from the WordPress Help Twins. Feel free to ask your questions, the WordPress Twins want to help.