July 26, 2019 — In this talk, I will introduce several tools and best practices for developing WordPress sites in a local environment. I will compare the most popular options and show a quick 5 minute tutorial on how to use each of the top 3 (Local by Flywheel, Desktop Server and MAMP)

May 8, 2019 — In this session, I will cover how to connect with others in the WordPress community, how to build relationships and trust with other professionals, best practices for successful partnerships and mistakes to avoid so that your partnership can thrive.

This topic is relevant to anyone who wants to get more connected in the WordPress community as a contributor or start working with others in the community in a professional manner.

May 29, 2018 — Child Themes are one of the most essential and neglected things when customizing a website. Quite often, people will customize a theme and get their site exactly how they want it, only to see it all wiped away by a theme update. This can be avoided. In this session, I will teach you when you should use a child theme (spoiler alert: it’s all the time), how to set one up and how to use it to customize your website. At the end of the session, everyone will be equipped with the knowledge of how to set up the child theme and also have the ability to download the Twenty Seventeen child theme that I built for WordCamp Buffalo as a starting point with a lot of comments in the style.css and functions.php to explain why I did what I did and how to do similar things to customize their child theme.

November 29, 2017 — In this presentation, I will explain what child themes are and why they should be used. I will then show how to create a child theme using both a plugin as well as manually creating a new directory and putting in a custom style.css and functions.php file. I will then show how changes to a child theme’s CSS overrides the parent theme’s styles when they apply to the same target element, whereas items added to functions.php run in addition to everything in the parent theme’s functions.php. I will also show how to use Inspect Element in a browser to find what style is currently assigned to an element. Throughout the slides, a single child theme of Twenty Seventeen will be created, resulting in a completely custom child theme that is well documented with explanations written in comments about what the code is doing and what line in the parent theme’s style.css it is overriding for reference.
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December 2, 2016 — In this presentation, presented in English (avec des sous-titres français au bas de l’écran) I will explain what child themes are and why they should be used. I will then show how to create a child theme using both a plugin as well as manually creating a new directory and putting in a custom style.css and functions.php file. I will then show how changes to a child theme’s CSS overrides the parent theme’s styles when they apply to the same target element, whereas items added to functions.php run in addition to everything in the parent theme’s functions.php. I will also show how to use Inspect Element in a browser to find what style is currently assigned to an element. Throughout the slides, a single child theme of Twenty Sixteen will be created, resulting in a completely custom child theme that is well documented with explanations written in comments about what the code is doing and what line in the parent theme’s style.css it is overriding for reference.

June 21, 2015 — How to set up and work with WordPress child themes.

Presentation Slides »