September 28, 2022 — WordPress software is used on millions of sites and is considered secure; however, sites still get hacked every day. What can you as a WordPress user do to make sure your site is secure?

Join in as we take a look at the big picture of website security and break things down in a simple, approachable way. We’ll walk you through some of the most important things you can do today to secure your WordPress site better and help to mitigate risk.

August 24, 2022 — WordPress is awesome, but everyone runs into issues now and then. Whether you own, maintain or build WordPress sites, troubleshooting is a skill set that will save you time and money. In this session, you will:

– Learn about the types of WordPress issues you may encounter and how to diagnose them.
– Discover the step-by-step processes that will help you find the root cause of an issue.
– Learn what your next steps are once you know the source of an issue.
– Learn what information you should be providing when interacting with developers or your web host to help speed up the problem resolution process.

July 13, 2022 — Testing WordPress websites and applications can be time-consuming and labor-intensive. Yet, most people manually test their work in the browser… assuming they do any testing at all. Bring up automated testing and most people will write it off as complicated, a maintenance burden, or they simply don’t understand the value.

In this hands-on developer workshop, we will be learning to use Cypress, an end-to-end JavaScript testing framework that makes automated testing easy. Essentially, Cypress acts as a user on your website by visiting pages, filling out forms, and clicking buttons. It can also validate CSS, perform accessibility checks, and run tests across different viewport sizes and browsers.

The beauty of end-to-end testing is that tests are quicker to write and are more robust than any other type of testing. A unit test will only tell you if a function is working properly, but an end-to-end test can alert you if something in the code, the database, or even the design isn’t right. If you are new to testing, this is the place to start!

November 27, 2020 — Do you constantly feel like you are hacking code together? Do you find it difficult to maintain, adapt or even read code you’ve written previously? Chances are, you are not taking into consideration some of the basic principles of software architecture. Come learn how some simple habits and changes in perspective can transform you from a 1x developer to a 10x developer!

October 2, 2020 — Cypress is a JavaScript-based automated end-to-end testing framework. It can act like a user on your website by visiting pages, filling out forms, and clicking buttons. Learn the basics of how to use Cypress as well as some of the nuances of testing WordPress plugins, themes, or websites.

Presentation Slides »

August 27, 2020 — Do you constantly feel like you are hacking code together? Do you find it difficult to maintain, adapt or even read code you’ve written previously? Chances are, you are not taking into consideration some of the basic principles of software architecture. Come learn how some simple habits and changes in perspective can transform you from a 1x developer to a 10x developer!

Presentation Slides »

July 11, 2020 — In this talk, we’ll discuss the importance of the SPF, DKIM, and DMARC email security protocols and how to use them to help prevent phishing and spam email. Without these protocols in place, other people may be sending emails under your domain name or even manipulating the content of your emails.

Presentation Slides »

October 17, 2019 — As developers, we are constantly building tools to help make other people’s lives easier. How often have you stopped to focus on making your own job easier?

In this talk we will cover the three pillars of productivity, analyze our workflow for optimizations, and identify key leverage points that will allow us to exponentially increase our output.

Presentation Slides »

August 8, 2019 — Caching can be tricky business. Fundamentally, the concept is simple: storing a temporary copy of data so future requests can be served faster. In reality, there are a number of different types of caching. Certain types of caching can effect our code in different ways. Data changes and the cache has to be invalidated. What happens if a caching layer runs out of memory or goes down?
This session will enlighten those new to caching as well as introduce some common misconceptions, pitfalls and strategies to caching in WordPress themes and plugins.
Takeaways:

What caching is
What types of caching exist
What developers should know about caching when developing on WordPress

Presentation Slides »

August 6, 2019 — Clients want to work with quality WordPress developers. They want to know that they can get their project done on time, in budget, and that the solution is going to be effective.
Project management aside, writing quality code is the key to delivering on all three of these expectations. If you write poor code, it is going to be harder to read and understand. As a result, it will take longer (and cost the client more money) to add new features. A lack of consistent quality also results in more bugs and a decreased effectiveness of the solution you are creating.
WordPress has a set of coding standards that are designed to provide a consistent level of quality for those who are contributing code to WordPress. However, it just got a lot easier to apply those standards to your own projects. Whether you are creating a theme or writing a plugin, you can leverage an “automated code mentor” to help you provide consistent quality to your clients.
Come learn how you can leverage the WordPress Coding Standards and automation to help you become a quality developer that clients can trust.
Takeaways:

What coding standards are
Why you should care
A simple way to get started today

Presentation Slides »