September 16, 2015 — WordPress has built-in support for storing location information on posts, but no real way to make use of it. The Geo Mashup plugin enables deep, powerful geolocation in WordPress, letting you easily add geolocations (coordinates) to almost any content type. It also displays locations on maps you can embed in your theme, posts or widgets, with a dizzying array of options for what to show and how to display it.

This talk starts with the default geolocation system in WordPress and how Geo Mashup integrates with it. We’ll then cover the basics of setup and adding locations on posts, then the different map types and situations where you’d use them. We’ll finish with some dev considerations for displaying maps as elegantly as possible.

Prerequisites:
This talk is aimed at anyone planning a site and considering geo integration. There will be developer speak (PHP/HTML/CSS) at times, but there will be lots to consider for anyone building custom WordPress sites.

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September 16, 2015 — By the end of the The Business of Blogging, you’ll be able to answer the question: Does my business need a blog? I’ll cover what it takes to build a blog, how much time it takes to sustain a blog, and common blog mistakes businesses make. Session attendees will also learn about content marketing and how to curate great content without having a blog. I’ll include resources and WordPress plug ins that make blogging easier. And, we’ll learn how to hire a Virtual Assistant if you don’t think you can do this alone!

Takeaways

Common blog mistakes businesses make and how to avoid them
Resources to find content if your business doesn’t have a blog.
Tips on finding and hiring a great Virtual Assistant to help you with your company’s social media, blog, or content marketing

September 16, 2015 — Spend a few minutes learning how to increase the PageSpeed score of your WordPress powered site. Find out some of the rules you have to follow, and some of the rules you have to break to get there.

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September 16, 2015 — Creative SEO tactics go beyond the usual technical SEO, keyword selection and link building. Dan provides a practical session with actionable takeaways to inspire new ideas.

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September 16, 2015 — Did you know the average user will wait only 2-3 seconds waiting for a webpage to load before abandoning it forever? Having a fast website is critical to its success. How do you ensure your site loads fast and reliably, to all kinds of users around the world? In this presentation we’ll discuss seven strategies for increasing your WordPress site’s speed. Covering caching, content delivery networks, image optimization, file optimization, database cleaning, and hosting and theme choices, you’re guaranteed to leave this presentation with concrete next steps for improving your site’s performance.

Prerequisites:
Most of these strategies can be accomplished through plugins!

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September 16, 2015 — This is not a marketing presentation on how to get more conversions. In this presentation we walk through best practices for integrating A/B testing tools and plugins like Visual Web Optimizer and Optimizely for WordPress. We also look at how to properly setup template pages, embed tracking codes and how to manage your content and media for testing across multiple devices.

Prerequisites:
This presentation is suitable for intermediate designers, developers or marketing managers using WordPress.

September 15, 2015 — I talk about the merits of using Client Side technologies when building out a web application. With WP-API moving its way into core and getting better, building web applications with WordPress is becoming more feasible, and easier. JavaScript MVC frameworks have exploded in popularity over the past couple years and I show that they can be used to build with WordPress, in faux MVC setup. I hope people learn the value in the WP-API, if they did not already, and when client side can be a better option for a custom build.

Prerequisites:
I cover the basics of everything including what is WP-API and the basics on how it works (responses, etc.)

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September 15, 2015 — Custom post types, fields, and meta boxes all offer powerful ways to transform WordPress sites, but when you use all three together, the impossible becomes possible. In this talk I explore just how custom you can go by combining WordPress’ custom functions to solve a real-world problem. I also cover custom taxonomies, custom templates, and leveraging some basic PHP, featured images, and existing plugin functionality to take your custom post type even further.

Prerequisites:
Attendees should be comfortable with making changes to WordPress theme and/or plugin files.

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September 15, 2015 — WP-CLI is a set of command line tools for managing your WordPress site. It allows you to perform many tasks much quicker than you would be able to by other means. In this session, I will teach you how to get WP-CLI running, and show some of my favourite time saving features. Once you’ve started using WP-CLI, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it!

Prerequisites:
This talk is appropriate for developers, designers and server administrators of all skill levels.

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September 14, 2015 — Troy talks about why recurring revenue is the holy grail and how you can create recurring revenue in your WordPress business. During the talk Troy teaches you how to package up your recurring revenue offer, how to pitch it to clients and how to build infrastructure to automate most of the work.

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