Sessions

This session will be a Q&A round table with noted WordPress developers on the future of WordPress moderated by Allen Moore of 10up.

Semantic markup may no longer be a groundbreaking idea, but many modern web developers do not truly understand the concept. Good, semantic markup is the foundation of – and easy path to – an accessible and responsive web site that plays nice with search engines and virtually any other user agent you can imagine. But even if you understand semantic markup, your clients probably don’t, and keeping things semantic when they’re turned loose in TinyMCE can be a challenge.

How to use WordPress to do other things than websites: iOS web based apps, streaming web video channels, and ROKU channels (to name a few!).

Build a fully custom and beautiful site with custom fields and theme options without a single plugin. In this session, we will release TypeRocket 3.0 for WordPress to the public and learn how you can build a theme like this fast!
So, what will you learn?

• Create custom post types and taxonomies.
• Add custom fields to posts, pages, custom post types, taxonomies, user profiles and the front-end of your site using the TypeRocket Forms API.
• Learn how to sanitize custom field input.
• Add meta boxes to post types and the dashboard.
• Add global theme options.
• Build modular component based designs by creating a page builder.
• Create custom resources and go beyond post types for advanced applications.

And so much more!

Use TypeRocket and take your themes to the next level.

See the Power. Every WordPress website has (or will have soon) an API built-in! What can you do with that? It allows us to further separate the data from the code. Because WordPress is a great CMS we can use it to manage our data and then via the API access that data to power whatever we like. We’ll touch a handful of examples and explore an iOS app pulling all it’s data and assets from a WordPress site via this API.

See the Power of the WP API. Now that every WordPress website has (or will have) an API built-in, what can you do with it? It allows us to further separate the data from the code. Use WordPress to manage our data and then via the API easily access or update that data to power whatever we like. We’ll touch how to set it up and a handful of examples and then explore an iOS app pulling all it’s data and assets from a WordPress site via this API.

This will be geared for developers with some “how to” but also for everyone interested in the power of WordPress and where things are heading.

Learn how to spell WP-API
Learn about the power and flexibility it brings to WordPress
See it working in a live app

Creating SOLID (not STUPID) Plugins and Themes

A dive into the mistakes we as developers make and the best practices we can employ in object-oriented programming and design. We start with an example plugin and remove issues addressed using the STUPID principles. We then apply the five basic principles of SOLID design ending up with a word class WordPress plugin.

STUPID: (Singleton, Tight Coupling, Untestability, Premature Optimization, Indescriptive Naming, Duplication)

SOLID (Single Responsibility Principle, Open/Closed Principle, Liskov Substitution Principle, Interface Segregation Principle, Dependency Inversion Principle)

If you want scary data about how users interact with your website then this session is for you. Find out what can be tracked and some fun and interesting uses of Google Tag Manager.

I’ve seen it too many times… unnecessary custom post types are created for something that does not need a custom post type. Meet the team, featured projects, and case studies sections are the most common offenders. I’m here to tell you that doing so is just making things more difficult and adding something that, in most cases, you don’t really need. The WordPress editor itself can handle what it is you seek to accomplish when creating such sections of your site, as it has the power to do so. Some things I’ll touch on in this session…

• What is a custom post type?
• When should you use a custom post type?
• When should you avoid custom post types and just make it happen with the editor?
• The power of the WordPress editor!

Learning to write code is easy. Learning to fix broken code is really hard. Whether you’re pasting code from a tutorial or writing your own code, figuring out why something doesn’t work as expected and how to fix it is difficult. In this talk, I will walk you through some basic methods for troubleshooting PHP and JS in your WordPress site, and introduce you to some helpful tools.

An explanation of WordPress Management and Operations. A look at Themes vs Frameworks, Design, Development Best Practices, and options for managing your WordPress websites.

Or, “A case study in the dangers of relying on data that is easy to obtain instead of getting the data that is actually useful.”

In this presentation Calvin Powers will walk through his experience using Google Analytics to come up with strategies to build the audience for his podcast and how it went horribly wrong. He’ll show you how he got on the right track when he figured out how to collect data that is actually useful instead of just using data that is easy to obtain.

You’ll learn about the WordPress plugins he used to collect the right metrics from his site and how to use them on your site with Google Analytics. You’ll take away a better appreciation for learning to ask the right questions before you dive into all those snazzy looking Google Analytics reports.

What are shortcodes, and why would I want to use them? Come find out! Shortcodes are a great tool to quickly and easily add features to the content in your website. Learn about useful and popular WordPress plugins that will help you build the website you want, with shortcodes!

In recent years WordPress has become by far the most popular platform for building websites, powering more than 26% of the world’s websites. Why? This presentation attempts to answer this question by providing an overview of the main features of WordPress, along with a quick demonstration of how you can create your own free website on WordPress.com. To provide context, the basic building blocks of WordPress will be defined, with examples of HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL and Javascript. To help you decide next steps, we’ll look at the differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, and will finish up with a few examples of some of the most popular WordPress themes and plugins.

A breakdown of SEO concepts that help users drive traffic to their website. Including…

1. SEO Myths to Avoid
2. Overcoming Initial Fears
3. Choosing Better Titles for Content
4. Why Creating Beginner Content is Critical
5. Plugins to Help Optimize a Site

We all have stories to tell. Whether it’s why your business is better than your competition, how you got to where you are today, or about the latest political kerfuffle, data makes any story more engaging. At this talk, we will look at good and bad data visualizations and explore how incorporating the good ones clarifies and strengthens stories. You will walk away with ideas, inspiration, and tools to begin incorporating data visualization into your stories and website.

Every day millions of websites, blogs and social channels create unique content that’s worth sharing – but how do you consume and share the best, most valuable and relevant content with your audience?

The answer is content curation.

In this session Adam will discuss the “why” and “how” of curating content from reputable sources, and how sharing that information in a centralized place adds value and helps to position your brand as a trusted news source for your niche.

In this topic, I’ll share information and insight on the things you need to know to create a sustainable WordPress product business. I’ll share about everything from planning, initial development, launch, marketing, customer support and updates to your product. I’ll explore real-life strategies I have implemented and ways to make your product as successful as possible in the WordPress ecosystem and beyond.

When you write a new blog post on your WordPress site, do you post immediately to your social media platforms that one day, and then never again? Do you think a Magical Social Media Fairy will then grant you 1,000 views every day for the next five years with that one engagement?

Don’t let that well-researched, well-written blog slowly die on your website. Learn how to leverage social media to re-purpose and re-promote the content from your WordPress site in ways that save you time and effort. You’ll learn:

• The best plugins for re-promoting your content
• How to integrate content scheduling plugins to auto push to your social media accounts
• How to use your well-written blog to create new content types
• How to automate your social media posting

After you implement the tips you’ll learn in this session, you will see the magic – the magic of increased engagement with your website.

You’re kinda interested in the “Business Track”, but what if you don’t already have a business? In this presentation, you’ll learn how to provide services to clients that match your skill set, and create your own WordPress business. With a little work, you can take a side gig and grow it into your full time enterprise.

Automation should be a key component to any business. Anytime you find yourself doing the same thing over and over for different clients, automate. Automating reduces human error and increases productivity. Let’s face it, when it comes to business, we are our own worse enemy. Learn how to take the “YOU” out of our business and start making more money.

Today’s prospects are tech savvy and very comfortable going online to find information about products and services before making a purchase. In this presentation, you will learn:
– How to hook your audience and get them to do what you want
– How to increase your visibility on the web
– 2 things that could turn your online presence around for the better
– How to deliver information to sell your products and services
Find out what it takes to create an effective online presence that gets people to buy.

Speaker: Micah Wood
Track: Developers

Chrome is not just a great browser for viewing websites, but also an invaluable tool for building websites. Out of the box, Chrome ships with “developers tools”. Many web developers are aware of this and make use of some of the tools it provides. However, most developers only scratch the surface of what the browser can do.

Join in as we take a deep-dive into the Chrome developer tools and learn, among other things, how to:

– Quickly test styling fixes
– Emulate handheld devices to test responsive designs
– Easily navigate and debug JavaScript
– Use the JavaScript console
– View form submissions
– Monitor AJAX requests
– Check for performance issues
– Troubleshoot caching issues
– Create and use your own snippets

Speaker: Julien Melissas
Track: Developers

I’m going to be speaking about some of the more popular JS frameworks, Angular, Backbone, and React, and show some real-world examples of how easily they can interact with the API.

I’ll be showing (with real code) basic examples with each library and fetching the 10 latest posts from the WP-API.

Take aways:
– The WP-API isn’t that scary, it’s so easy to get/send stuff if you’ve got JSON skills (which aren’t that hard).
– JavaScript frameworks all have different ways to do things, but similar stuff going on in the background.
– At the end of the day, React rocks (it’s the best), but it might not be the best solution for your project …

Speaker: Dougal Campbell
Track: Developers

My wife recently launched a new WordPress Multisite network for the Cherokee County School District in Georgia, which encompasses 40+ schools and serves more than 41,000 K-12 students. For some of the deeper coding, she enlisted my aid to help bend WordPress Multisite to her will.

From adding custom BootStrap CSS column classes to nav menu items, to automagically including a custom stylesheet for each school site, to denying content editor access to specific parts of the dashboard, these and several other code snippets will be covered.

Featured code snippet: the “redirect_naughty_children()” function. Get out of my Dashboard, you darn kids!

Speaker: Susan Campbell
Track: Power Users

Just like doctors make the worst patients, teachers make the worst students when it comes to running WordPress Multisite in a K-12 environment. This talk covers the trials and tribulations of implementing a scalable WP Multisite network on Windows servers (yes, Windows – running on a WIMP stack), and the hardest part of all – managing the content managers!

Speaker: Steve Mortiboy
Track: Power Users

We’ve all seen those errors appear on our webiste. Maybe you’ve been unluky enough to see the white screen of death. In this session I will go through how to debug these and other common problems.

This session will cover:

– Understanding error messages
– Standard techniques for debugging in WordPress
– Using logging to diagnose problems
– Plugins we can use for debugging
– Browser based tools for debugging

Speaker: Lauren Jeffcoat
Track: Power Users

Topic Discussion
I. An Intro to Video Libraries
In this session, I will be discussing the impact that a video library can have on your website. A video library is a collection of videos, typically organized into categories and groups, that members can view directly on your website.There is a place for video in almost any website, from marketing to content to customer service.

II. How to best utilize videos to engage your customers
I will cover the importance of a Video Library for Search Engine Optimization and how it helps keep visitors on your site for a longer amount of time. I will discuss how you can use video content marketing to better connect with your audience and communicate with customers. I will also present a number of strategic approaches to including videos on various types of websites.

III. Options for sharing and creating video libraries
I will include the different video sharing options that are available, how to create and host a video library, and how to utilize video for marketing, training, and communication.

IV. The best audiences for video content
Lastly, I would like to present the type of audiences that video is good for and statistically who is viewing videos on the web. This will include how to promote and organize your video library for your intended audiences.

Speaker: Adam Sewell
Track: Power Users

In this topic we’ll discuss how WordPress is hacked and why it’s targeted Also, we’ll cover how a hacked site be prevented and how to recover if hacked.

Speakers: Melissa Eggleston, Julie Grundy and Marjorie Sample
Track: Beginners

Maybe you have heard of user experience (UX) but don’t know much about it? Or you want to better the experience your visitors have at site, but don’t know where to begin?

UX professionals from the Ladies that UX Durham group will do a 15-minute overview of UX then hold a panel to field your questions and ensure you walk out with practical ideas of how to use UX practices to improve your WordPress site.

Following our presentation we will spend a couple of hours in the Happiness Bar to answer additional UX questions and offer individual feedback on websites.

Speaker: Lisa Ghisolf
Track: Beginners

Whether your site is five pages or 500, it needs a strong foundation that plans for growth. We’ll cover site maps, content strategy, user interaction and experience so you have a plan for your site now, and down the road. We’ll also touch on best practices for doing it all over again for mobile.

Speaker: Andrea Olson
Track: Beginners

After selling eBooks and courses (and now physical products) through her WP websites for over 5 years now, only recently has this mompreneur maximized the use of funnels to create an “evergreen” stream of revenue.

In this talk you will learn:
1. What a funnel is
2. Who might need one
3. The main components of a funnel
4. How to set one up with Mailchimp and a few WordPress Plugins
5. How to tweak the funnel for optimum impact
6. A few effective ways to get people to visit your website in the first place.

This is sure to be a practical and interesting talk on optimizing your offerings in a way that pleases visitors and provides you with more revenue from your WordPress website.

Speaker: Andrea Ferguson
Track: Beginners

Plugins extend the functionality of WordPress and are a great way to add sophisticated features to your website—without custom coding. But with more than 45,000 plugins available in the WordPress repository and a plethora available independently, how do you choose? Andi will teach you what to look for when choosing WordPress plugins to ensure that your site does what it must, functions superbly, and remains secure–now and in the future.

Speaker: Cameron Barrett
Track: Business

Learn how Newark Public Schools (NJ’s largest school district – 40,000 students; 70 schools) cut their annual web site technology budget in half by migrating to WordPress from a closed-source, proprietary, expensive, vendor-controlled SaaS CMS. Hear stories from the trenches about budget battles, angry/clueless technology vendors and frustrated administrators from one guy with a vision to disrupt the market and bring better web site technology to our public schools using a WordPress-Powered SaaS called SchoolPress. Case studies will be presented for three districts (2 in NJ, 1 in TX) that migrated to WordPress.

Speaker: Blake Gruber
Track: Business

WordPress is often a great solution for clients of all sizes, but enterprises can sometimes be skeptical that the open source platform can support their scalability needs. From security concerns to support and environment setups, many IT functions disregard the platform. But, with the right setup, strategy, and approach — WordPress can be an efficient and effective digital tool for the enterprise customer.

This talk is aimed at project managers, strategists, and developers alike. It will address common concerns enterprises pose when considering WordPress as a solution; suggest points to pick the right support, environment, and architecture to achieve success; and discuss effective strategies and management practices to scale WP for the enterprise customer.

Speaker: Lee Blue
Track: Business

Now that you have a WordPress site, how do you get people to go there? Everybody says you need all sorts of social media accounts, but how do you get them to work together? Join Lee Blue as he shares how he grew his business by over 40% in three months for free.

Speaker: Tony Zeoli
Track: Business

Today, businesses small and large must develop a combined search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and social media marketing strategy. SEO and social media, once independent of one another, have converged and are now inter reliant. High quality back links in social media are now part of the Google Search algorithm, therefore, it’s important to understand how to use freely available tools to optimize your website or blog for SEO, but also for social media, so that you content appears correctly in search. Microformat metadata are also being used to display and return information about company, including reviews. Star ratings can make the difference in search.

In this session, we will walk through a case study and discuss the setup and connections you need to make to ensure that your site or blog content can be found in search, while also being optimized for social media. We’ll also show you how to get reviews and how your star ratings can appear under to a landing page link in a Google search engine results page (SERP).