July 31, 2015 — He’ll discuss the different scenarios that we encounter when teaching WordPress to our clients, friends, and students. He’ll offer strategies for optimal sharing of our knowledge to others.

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July 31, 2015 — WordPress upgrades, they bring us new features, faster sites, and better security. But pushing that upgrade button can be a scary moment, unless you’ve ensured your site is ready and compatible. I’ll show you the best practices for ensuring your site is ready including a simple strategy that works whether you manage one site or hundreds.

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July 29, 2015 — What does the current WordPress design landscape look like? What are popular and upcoming design trends to look out for? We take a look at the current WordPress design ecosystem and explore how it’s projected to change in the next year.

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July 29, 2015 — In my talk, I break down the important aspects of the new HTTP/2 protocol, how it differs from HTTP/1.1, and ways in which you can take advantage of the HTTP/2 performance improvements today. Whether you realize it or not, HTTP/2 will affect your life in the near future and I will help you understand what it all means.

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July 29, 2015 — In this session learn how to build an MVP (minimal viable product). We’ll start by stripping out all the bloat, get rid of all those widgets and start with naked content. Then and only then we’ll start to methodically add features, as they are needed. You will be amazed how much your visitors enjoy just reading your content and engaging with you through simple solutions.
Walk away with practical strategies around:
Building content driven websites
Gaining traction and increasing engagement
Elegantly monetizing your blog
Plus 5 experience tips that will make your website 1 of a kind
Stop adding features for the sake of adding features, stop following exhausted advertising strategies, and start focusing on providing better experiences for people.

July 29, 2015 — I compare the three most popular form plugins, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms and Contact Form 7. With different business models the pros and cons are hard to see. I shed light and help you understand which would be best for you and your projects.

July 29, 2015 — Learn how to collect data, analyze data and optimize your WordPress website using various free marketing tools.

July 29, 2015 — What’s the most efficient way to sell images with WordPress? Why choose a WordPress plugin over an image selling platform like SmugMug or Zenfolio? See the differences between popular ecommerce plugins, their strengths and weaknesses. Watch as a WordPress website is created and setup to sell images in 10 minutes.

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July 28, 2015 — Setting up and maintaining local development and staging environments can be time-consuming, especially if you want to keep your dev environments up-to-date against an active production site. And if you use multisite this gets even harder. Stop editing your hosts file every 10 seconds, keep your database all up to date, and spend no time doing so. Also covered will be how this fits in with the BDN’s QA process.

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July 28, 2015 — Mat Marquis shares the tools and techniques that ensure that your content will reach your most demanding (and least powerfully equipped) users, without detracting from the experience of users on the latest and greatest devices—without limiting the creativity of your team, and without a massively inflated deadline. We discuss strategies for smarter asset delivery, techniques for avoiding potential points of failure, and start to cultivate development habits that help us deal with a vast landscape of unknowns from the very start of a project.