May 27, 2015 — We’ve all come to use JavaScript in WordPress, be it in the admin or the front end. This talk covers some common pitfalls/traps and ways you can avoid them in your code

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May 26, 2015 — This talk covers the three major conventions for organizing CSS: Object Oriented CSS (OOCS), Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS (SMACSS) and Block Element Modifier (BEM). And discusses similarities, differences and use cases between the schools, as well as general tools that can be used to speed up and clean up the CSS development process.

May 26, 2015 — An introduction on how to configure your .htaccess file to do more than what WordPress provides by default. The talk will cover basics like setting up a preferred URL, and redirecting old page URLs for better SEO. How to optimize your site’s files using gzip will also be covered, as well as preventing image hot linking, and more. A sample .htaccess file will be provided to all attendees. A useful introduction to a very important file for any shared hosting environment.

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May 25, 2015 — This is a discussion on understanding WordPress security, basic internet security and what you should be doing to practice “good basic security”.

May 25, 2015 — Today’s web users have the need for speed. With internet and cellular connections getting faster and faster, users expect sites to feel snappy and not make them wait. We as developers must make sure we’re doing our very best to serve those pages quickly. This talk focus’ on the things you should be doing, both on the front-end and back-end, when building WordPress themes.

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May 25, 2015 — Fear is a powerful force that stalks us through most aspects of our lives. Kirk works full-time as a developer, but not a day goes by without having to face feelings of inadequacy, Imposter Syndrome, and making a commit that takes down one of the highest traffic sites on the Internet. He shares the power of fear in his life (past and present), give some fun disaster stories along the way, and share tips to ensure we all wake up raring to code every morning.

May 25, 2015 — Plugins are what make WordPress extra-awesome and enable you to make your website do pretty much anything you want it to. Need to add collapsible sections to a page or make your gallery images circular? There’s a plugin for that! How about making your widget titles into links, or duplicating pages at the click of a mouse? Yep, plugins can help you do that too. Whether you’re just getting started with WordPress or use it everyday, there are over 30,000 plugins to choose from and finding the right one for the job can be tricky. We look at how to choose an appropriate plugin and I’ll introduce you to a few I just couldn’t live without.

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May 25, 2015 — This presentation talks about getting out of the Photoshop mindset, embracing the tools that the modern web has provided us in order to streamline our development practises and get real-live sites up and running fast. We’ll start with talking about how to use style tiles to reduce the amount of time spent on mockups, and then we’ll move on to discuss how to leverage available tools in order to quickly get a site running: skeleton themes, CSS precompilers, version control for quick deployment, icon fonts, browser development tools, grids, and CSS frameworks. Whew!

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May 24, 2015 — Add_meta_box(); is great! It allows us to extend any post object with additional information, moving beyond a simple post with an author, date, excerpt, and image. But it can do so much more. This talk is a case study of using Custom Post Types and Meta Data to populate navigation structures and ‘category’ archive pages of a enterprise level site which easily has 150,000+ views per day and strict publication requirements for the client’s editorial team.

May 24, 2015 — A discussion on how (and why) to ensure that your plugins are safe and conflict free.