September 7, 2015 — Many graphic designers take on website projects like they would a print design project. This can work for simple projects, but what happens when the client introduces additional features like data integration, automated processes, custom features, reporting and more? How do you identify when a design change will break the mobile responsiveness of a website?
Having an understanding of some of the common technical issues can give you more confidence in winning a complex development job and stopping issues before they happen.

Presentation Slides »

September 7, 2015 — Each time someone clicks onto your site, their actions tell a story. When you listen to these stories, patterns often emerge.

Your data pipeline (collection, processing, analysis, etc.) is critical to understanding how real users find and use your site and enables you to rely on more than intuition that you’re improving their experience when iterating on a design.

Presentation Slides »

September 6, 2015 — This session helps you make sense of the basic code and files you need to make a simple theme… and explore some of the features you can add on to make more advanced themes. We dive into the template hierarchy, custom template files, useful functions, child themes, and customizing loops. Lots of code will be demonstrated, so it is best that you have a good foundation in HTML at least.

Presentation Slides »

September 6, 2015 — Based on usability research and UX principles, we discuss what we know about users in terms of both big-picture concepts and nitty-gritty details. For example, learn how people interact with photography on websites and what kinds of ideas they have in their head when they arrive at your homepage.

By looking at website examples, we uncover common problems that website designers and owners make often (but can be avoided). You’ll walk out with practical tips that you can immediately use to make your website visitors happier.

Presentation Slides »

September 5, 2015 — Once perceived as a mere blogging or small website tool, WordPress is an enterprise-grade CMS… stable, secure and scalable enough to be used on large websites. emagine is a leader in at acquiring large, lucrative WordPress projects and would like to provide insights and considerations for doing so.

Takeaways

– How to identify the most lucrative prospects
– How to pitch large projects (value proposition, differentiation, overcoming objections
– How to execute (IA, Project Management, Resources, post-launch support)

Presentation Slides »

September 4, 2015 — We’ve all been there. From beginners to advanced users. So how do WordPress users and site owners stay out of trouble? The answer is simpler than you think. And even fun.

September 4, 2015 — The term SEO is thrown around a lot, but what does it really mean for bloggers and content producers? This talk gets to the heart of the matter. I’ll explain the new rules of SEO and teach writers how to cross the t’s and dot the i’s when it comes to SEO content development.

Presentation Slides »

September 3, 2015 — WordCamp Asheville 2015 keynote address.

Presentation Slides »

September 2, 2015 — Contact forms are an important tool for website visitors to connect with you. Learn contact form best practices including the elements of a contact form, how to test a contact form, confirmation messages, how to incorporate a contact form into website design, and how to track contact form submissions. Get introduced to popular contact form plugins.

Takeaways

Gathering Data improves your site and business (and that isn’t a bad thing)
How contact form design and placement contributes to conversion
Contact forms have many uses including bug reports, newsletter signups, and lead generation

Presentation Slides »

August 26, 2015 — In 2014 after the release of WordPress 4.0 international downloads of the software surpassed English downloads for the first time. This flash talk explains what lead to that and how a team of amazing WordPress contributors who translate the software in hundreds of languages made that leap possible. It clarifies the terms internationalization (i18n) and localization (l10n) and explains the benefits of writing translation-ready plugins and themes. It also gives useful tips on how to get started contributing to the WordPress Polyglots team.

Presentation Slides »