Sessions

Users & Bloggers Track

The User/Blogger track is for site owners, new and experienced bloggers, or those just getting started using WordPress as a way to manage your site’s content. Many of these sessions will be relevant if you use WordPress.com, a self-hosted WordPress installation, or are just entertaining the idea of publishing content on the web.

The Website Owner’s Guide to Working with a Designer

Kane Jamison | Users & Bloggers Track

A checklist of what website owners need to consider when working with web designers, applicable for both website owners working with a designer or developers, or designers and developers who want to learn to work with users more efficiently.

Write or Die

Scott Berkun | Users & Bloggers Track

A masterclass in writing well – Local author Berkun has had a popular blog since 2003. He’ll offer no-nonsense advice about the forgotten core of what makes a blog succeed: good writing. From picking great topics, to writing drafts, to steel-eyed editing, to discipline and motivation, you’ll get a pro authors best lessons on the craft of writing. With plenty of time for Q&A.

The Beginner’s Guide to Choosing a Theme

Bob Dunn | Users & Bloggers Track

With more than 1,700 themes on WordPress.org and hundreds more premium themes from established companies and resellers, choosing a theme can be overwhelming. In this session I will talk about the pros and cons of free vs. premium; what features to look for, and how to tell what you can and can’t do by simply looking at the demos. You also get a simple, non-geek explanation of what frameworks and child themes are, as well as their benefits are. Lastly, we will look at the often-asked question, “How easy is it to change my theme?”.

WordPress Writing Workflow

Aaron Hockley | Users & Bloggers Track

Having worked with WordPress since 2004, blogger Aaron Hockley has managed and written for over fifteen WordPress-powered blogs. He’s developed a solid workflow for moving a topic from idea to successful blog post. In this talk, he’ll walk through his workflow and go into detail about the software and processes he uses for:

  • developing an idea into a solid post topic
  • drafting the post
  • editing/revising the post
  • including external media, links, and other resources
  • deciding when to publish
  • methods for promotion/sharing
  • writing and publishing an article with SEO in mind

If you’re struggling with organization of ideas, drafts, and posts, this talk is for you. If you suspect there might be tools that can make your writing easier, this talk is for you. Attendees should have an understanding of how to create and publish a WordPress blog post. Familiarity with installation of plugins will also be helpful.

SEO in WordPress

Justin Briggs | Users & Bloggers Track

An updated version of Justin’s talk from 2011 WordCamp covering a range of basic “What is SEO” to advanced technical SEO. SEO has changed with major updates like Penguin and Panda, Justin will be reframing the discussion of SEO within the current state of SEO.

Panel: Building a Community with WordPress

Michael Cyger, Ariel Meadow Stallings, Steve Roy & Laura Scroggins | Users & Bloggers Track

Join these four experts for a panel discussion on using WordPress to build online communities.

Designers & Themers Track

The Designers & Themers track is meant for designers and site builders who leverage more themes and plugins than custom code. Although a general knowledge of html/css is usually applicable, most sessions focus on design or design related (light) coding, leveraging plugins and working with clients.

Taking Backgrounds to the Next Level

Robert Dall | Designers & Themers Track

With the varying shapes and sizes of screens these days, websites either need to flex to the size or make use of a background colour or image to fill in the spaces around the edge. These spaces are somewhat neglected and sometimes lack the connection to the branding of the site and or company. Through a lot of trial and error I will show you some tricks and trades I have picked up and use in my daily development.

Leveraging CSS3 in WordPress

Suzette Franck | Designers & Themers Track

This session will aim to inform, enlighten, and delight attendees with the right way to include CSS in your WordPress theme using child themes or a plugin such as Jetpack, and we will also cover some of the best new features of CSS3 that you can put to work right away. You should be familiar with HTML and have some basic WordPress and CSS knowledge to get the most benefit from this talk.

Responsive Typography for WordPress Themes

Natalie MacLees | Designers & Themers Track

A look at a variety of tools available to make your theme’s typography beautiful and responsive, including an explanation of em vs. rem, lettering.js, FitText, Sass & Compass, kern.js, web fonts and more.

Style Themes Faster, Better: Intro to Sass and Less CSS

Paul Clark | Designers & Themers Track

Do you feel like your stylesheets go on for miles? Like colors, fonts, and selectors are getting a bit too repetitive? Come learn how to do more, but write less using Syntactically Awesome StyleSheets (SASS). Learn to free your time and release your creative juices by throwing out the unnecessary. After this class, sites will bend to your will and reload like magic!

Client Proofing your WordPress Sites

Jeff Brock | Designers & Themers Track

Your clients may be experts in their fields, but you can’t expect them to share your comfort level with WordPress. Jeff Brock, owner of local design & development shop Jeff Brock Studio, has built more than 50 WordPress sites. Drawing from 16 years of experience working with clients — many of them with highly specialized website needs — he’ll cover how to: 1) Provide user-friendly and deeply customized edit screens, using “Advanced Custom Fields,” the Swiss Army knife of backend customization WordPress plugins 2) Streamline the admin to help your client navigate, with plugins such as “Codepress Admin Columns” and “Menu Editor” 3) Create efficient and easy-to-understand online support documentation, using WordPress MultiSite 4) Host screencasts to walk your clients through their new site’s back-end, with services such as Join.me

Developers Track

From beginner to professional, the developers track will cover a number of development practices leveraged by top WordPress developers. All developers are welcome, no matter your exposure to WordPress and it’s code base. Pro Tip: Advanced themers or those designers that work with code regularly should consider attending part/all of the developers track.

WordPress Coding Done Right: 3 Lightning Talks

Kailey Lampert, Tanner Moushey & Jeremy Felt | Developers Track

3 lightning talks on coding best practices from 3 amazing developers, followed by Q&A.

Automated WordPress Development

Eric Mann | Developers Track

A widely recognized best-practice in web development is to keep JS and CSS to a minimum. This means combining multiple files into a single download and minifying the file so it loads quickly. Grunt is a local development tool that helps optimize and streamline this workflow, empowering developers and designers to focus on what they do best. Attendees will be introduced to various CSS and JS best practices, and to a workflow that uses Grunt to automate the nitty- gritty details of preparing a theme or plugin for release.

Caching in WordPress

Zack Tollman | Developers Track

Core Concepts In modern WordPress development, a firm grasp of caching concepts is a critical skill. While resources exist to explain how to implement caching in WordPress, the basics of caching are often misunderstood and overlooked. My talk will provide an accessible introduction to caching in general that will be essential in understanding WordPress’ approach to caching. It will allow developers to have a deeper understanding and appreciation for caching that will inform their understanding of WordPress’ caching implementation. Building on these concepts, I will explain how WordPress provides an infrastructure for extending and manipulating its cache to provide support for the latest caching technologies. At the conclusion of my talk, developers in attendance will have a grasp of the concepts of object caching, page caching, transients, as well as the “advanced cache” and “object cache” WordPress drop-ins.

Creating Object-Oriented WordPress Plugins

Ian Dunn | Developers Track

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) is a popular paradigm for developing complex applications in an organized, intuitive and maintainable way, but it hasn’t received much attention within the WordPress community. This session will introduce the basic theory and principles of OOP and show some practical tips on how a WordPress plugin can be designed to implement and benefit from those principles.

The GPL and You

Otto Wood | Developers Track