December 31, 2019 — Themes control the look, feel and layout of your site. Picking a ready-made one can be a daunting task, so let’s take a look at themes and understand the decisions that need to be made. We’ll dive into:

Why it’s critical to understand your brand, audience and content before you even begin looking. We’ll dive into:
• What to expect a theme to do and what it won’t
• What to look for when picking a theme and good places to find them
• How to install and switch themes
• Understanding the theme file structure
• Understand how child themes work

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August 31, 2017 — There are few things that can help a site with organization more than getting things categorized correctly. There are also few things that can be more confusing, over-used or more diluted than how these terms are defined on a site. Let’s look at the good, the bad and the ugly and ways to clean things up so that using categories actually work for your users and help them find what they are looking for.

We’ll also explore cool ways that you can use categories to display your posts in interesting ways – there’s way more than the list in the sidebar!

October 30, 2016 — How do you set up an informational site that has over 700 pages and is constantly growing? How will anybody find anything? By crafting the menu and template pages to show categories of items and allowing the user to filter the results. Through the use of custom taxonomies, template pages with custom queries and a faceted search result, we walk through how a site can be setup so that it can grow and maintain it’s consistent structure. Even if your project only has 70 posts, being able to cross-reference them with multiple terms so that no matter how they look for things, the information will be found, is very powerful.

July 4, 2016 — Whether you’re creating a small site for one stake holder or re-designing a large site with many players, understanding how to manage the project is the key to getting anything done. We’ll look at a couple of case studies and learn about methods and strategies that keep a project on track and get the site launched.

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December 20, 2015 — During this panel we openly discuss content structure, content strategy, content discovery, development tips, and end with an audience Q&A. We will help you make sense of all the things you have to consider when setting up or improving your site’s Information Architecture, and share some of the secrets and pro-tips that we have found work well.

June 26, 2015 — How do you set up an informational site that has over 700 pages and is constantly growing? How will anybody find anything? By crafting the menu and template pages to show categories of items and allowing the user to filter the results. Through the use of custom taxonomies, template pages with custom queries and a faceted search result, we walk through how a site can be setup so that it can grow and maintain it’s consistent structure. Even if your project only has 70 posts, being able to cross-reference them with multiple terms so that no matter how they look for things, the information will be found, is very powerful.

Presentation Slides »

July 4, 2014 — Whether you’re creating a small site for one stake holder or re-designing a large site with many players, understanding how to manage the project is the key to getting anything done. We’ll look at a couple of case studies and learn about methods and strategies that keep a project on track and get the site launched.

Presentation Slides »

January 11, 2014 — This presentation highlights working in and building the WordPress community, sharing knowledge, constantly learning more of the craft as well as ways to manage your own freelance business and client strategies. The work is out there; if you make the commitment, you can make a living.

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September 17, 2013 — Most web designs are done with beauty and user experience in mind, but what about back-end usability? That’s why we work in WordPress, so that the site owner can add/edit; right? Balancing the layout needs of the designer and making it truly usable by the site owner is a balancing act. We will look at several case studies of how a site went from a graphic to a custom theme and kept it as user friendly as possible.

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October 4, 2012 — Making a living as a WordPress professional is a lot of work, but it’s not only possible, it can be a lot of fun. We’ll cover some simple guidelines on how to make the commitment, market your services, communicate with clients, quote and bill your time and help contribute to the WordPress community.

Presentation Slides »