July 12, 2015 — With so many content management systems out there, why are so many people going to WordPress? What are the benefits and why is it better? We will be going through all these questions and outlining the main reasons why WordPress is so AWESOME, and how it compares to the other popular systems out there.

July 12, 2015 — When you start to use WordPress as an application platform, one thing is very soon clear: WordPress defines very little base structure for your application code, where to put and how to write tests, how application is loaded, or for example how dependencies should be managed. Because of this, applications or just complex sites built on top of WordPress tend to get really messy.

There are application frameworks built on top of WordPress, but none of them seem to have wide enough use for to build any serious applications on top of. Until any of those gets wide-spread adoption, combining existing, non-WordPress specific PHP technologies as a custom solution probably is a more future-proof solution. We will be looking into one possible stack of technologies.

July 12, 2015 — Mika Epstein speaking on how to work with hosting companies.

July 11, 2015 — The REST API is an upcoming feature in WordPress, allowing access to your site via a RESTful API. The API brings WordPress into the future from the dark ages of the XML-RPC API. Find out what exactly the API is, along with how to use it, and how to extend it.

July 11, 2015 — For only 10% of WordPress’s life have build and test tools been a part of our core repository. We have only solved 10% of the problems we can with tooling. 10% answers can kill you in software development. They’re the tip of the sword. Here’s my question: What is the next ten percent of our answer?

July 11, 2015 — As web developers, there are many considerations we have to make as we develop: for mobile, for responsive, for accessibility. I believe we can approach this in a more robust, positive, and future-proof manner by looking at capabilities rather than concessions. This talk is about shifting and inspiring perceptions, rather than any sort of tutorial.

July 11, 2015 — We start off showing you how to install and configure BuddyPress. Then we will take you through each of it’s main features including members, groups, messages, forums and more. We show you how to configure BBPress for forums (both site-wide and group forums). Finally, we will examine some useful themes and plugins for BuddyPress.

July 11, 2015 — The past three years have seen a huge increase in the number of EU laws affecting the work of web designers, developers, bloggers, and business owners. Some of them make the web a better place to be, others make our work unnecessarily difficult, and some raise questions we all need to ask about the future of our industry. Heather will give you a plain English overview of what you need to know about the ways these laws affect you. We will run through issues including VAT, copyright, liability, privacy, data protection, and e-commerce.

Presentation Slides »

July 10, 2015 — This talk outlines the history of the API, the differences between the current stable version and what will likely be in WordPress, as well as paradigms and patterns within the project and some practical examples of how it might be used.

July 10, 2015 — A reflective look back at our journey, including our growing pains and lessons we’ve learned, from some of the earliest “premium themes” to a team of 50 supporting the biggest ecommerce plugin for WordPress.