Saturday Sessions
Workshop Prep Help: WP 101 & JS for WP
Come early, register when the lines are short, be first in line for the freshest coffee, and then work with experts and volunteers to make sure you’re ready for the Saturday workshops!
You’ll want a laptop with a fully-charged battery to get the most out of these workshops!
Learn to Use your WordPress Website
Attendees will need a self-hosted website they can experiment with and maybe even break! Workshop attendees without access to a site can get a temporary site on—brace yourself—poopy.life. Just go with it and you’ll have a fabulous WordPress playground ready to apply the expertise of workshop leader Kelli Wise!
JavaScript for WordPress
If you’re doing the Javascript for WordPress workshop, you’ll need the following:
- Laptop (with a fully charged battery!)
- A working local WordPress install with SSL on your laptop (Zac suggests using Local by Flywheel or DesktopServer for easy setup)
- A Code Editor
Come early to meet your workshop instructor Zac Gordon and make sure you’re ready.
Keynote 🎙️ WordPress is a Banquet
WordPress now powers over 28% of the web, and it’s built and maintained by hundreds of contributors all over the world. There are as many ways to contribute to WordPress as there are dishes in a feast! In this talk, we’ll look at some recipes for successful contributions followed by people who’ve made a big impact on WordPress. There’s room for you at this table — join us!
Accelerating Custom Development with Dynamic Scaffolding and WP-CLI
In trying to figure out how to build better WordPress sites faster, we at Cornershop have developed an approach that leverages WP-CLI to dynamically inject configurable, pre-written code (HTML, PHP, JS and SASS) into our in-house starter theme. This novel approach speeds up our custom development work by letting us quickly assemble oft-used functionality without littering our theme with superfluous code.
Come learn about the decision-making that led us to go down this road, and see exactly how we’ve gone about building our extensible framework as a plugin that extends WP-CLI. Whether you’re an agency or a solo freelancer, hopefully seeing our approach can lead to fruitful thinking on how you can deliver the most value to your clients.
Empowering Speakers: A Journey to Encourage Women and Diverse Groups at WordCamps
When more people from underrepresented groups start speaking at WordPress events, everybody benefits. At WordCamp Vancouver, we started by focusing on women. In 2013, not many had applied. The following year, three times as many women applied and fully half of selected speakers were women. This dramatic shift was no accident. My talk will share how we accomplished it, some of the lessons we learned along the way, and the positive changes that resulted in our community.
Pixel Imperfect: A Practical Approach To Responsive Design
With seemingly endless new ways to browse the web, we know that responsive design is here to stay. But how do we adapt the traditional design process to flexible screen sizes, device-based restrictions, and multiple use-cases without feeling like we’re giving up all control to the great unknown? We’ll learn how to use our Problem Solving Superpowers to move away from creating endless mockups, and into crafting Design Systems. You’ll learn actionable methods to transform how you design for the web, and workable ways to present these designs to your team or your client.
Workshop 💻 Learn to Use your WordPress Website
You have this great WordPress website and now you want to know how to use it.
Congratulations! You just launched a shiny, new website built on WordPress and you’ve logged in to the admin area to have a look around. You’re ready to publish your first blog post or edit a page but, Wowza, there are a lot of things to click on! All of those menu options is making you very uncomfortable.
What are all of those options for? What happens if you click on them? What if you click on the wrong thing?
Better BuddyPress Communities
Death of the Media Query
We’ve all been there. Your site looks beautiful on mobile, tablet, and desktop but 768 pixels to 900 pixels is a disaster. Creating a truly responsive website experience goes beyond using bootstrap. Front-end Developers consistently find themselves creating elaborate sets of media queries that are time consuming to create and difficult to maintain.
This talk will explore browser-compatible innovations in CSS that you should start employing in place of media queries. The end result will save time and create more adaptive web experiences.
We will walkthrough practical use cases for the calc() function, Flexbox, and CSS Grid.
The Price is Wrong
Are you charging enough for your services? Chances are you’re not. The goal is not to get as much money as you can get but to get paid for the value you provide.
When I first started out with web and graphic design, I was charging pennies because I felt I was not good enough. For my first website, I charged $500 and the second website I charged $0 and was later paid $1,000. After comparing my work to others on the internet, I soon found others were charging $5,000 to $10,000 for a website and were not giving as much value as I was.
In this session, I share my pricing journey as well as tips on how freelancers can double what they are earning by creating a process and upgrading their professionalism to earn higher value clients.
Get Google to Love Your WordPress Website
Mobile Accessibility
Unfortunately, when developing WCAG2, the Working Group did not envision the current world where mobile is almost ubiquitous. For example, on a mobile device there is no continual access to a keyboard (unless someone is using it as an add-on to the device – or using a Blackberry Classic). WCAG2 requires that all content be accessible to the keyboard interface, but it does not require that all content be accessible to a mouse or to a touchscreen user – which is essential on a mobile device. Gian Wild talks about the unique accessibility issues on a mobile site and mobile app, including hover traps, VoiceOver swipe traps and zoom traps.
Stronger Than Fear: Mental Health in the Developer Community
There is a crisis in the tech industry. At least 20% of our colleagues, friends, and teammates suffer silently with mental illness, but our work culture does little to help. Based on real data, we’ll show the enormous impact of mental illness in our industry, and how we can change – and save – lives.
Workshop 💻 JavaScript for WordPress
In this workshop we will learn about JavaScript fundamentals like the DOM, Events and JSON all using native JavaScript. Then we will introduce the WordPress REST API and look at how to use it in both WordPress themes and stand alone JavaScript applications. Come get a foundation level understanding of this important topic of JavaScript and API driven WordPress development.
Some experience with jQuery or JavaScript is encouraged.
Come Prepared!
Make sure you come prepared! Come early to make sure you’re ready to go.
For this workshop you will want to have the following:
- Laptop
- A working local WordPress install with SSL on your laptop (Zac suggests using Local by Flywheel or DesktopServer for easy setup)
- A Code Editor
Customizing WooCommerce for a Time-Tracking, Service-Based Business
WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce platform on the most popular CMS, WordPress. It is great for selling discrete products, be them digital, physical, or subscription-based. But what if your “product” is a time-and-materials type service, where clients pay for the time it takes to do something. We love WC, but didn’t find an out-of-the-box solution that fit our need. So over 9-months of testing and refinement we built our own. This talk covers our process, the results, and lessons learned along the way.
Five Unspoken Rules for Contributing to Open Source Software
Contributing to open source software can be frustrating for developers accustomed to working in isolation. That’s because you’re no longer just dealing with software, but with people who have their own biases, emotions, and agendas.
Some difficulties new contributors encounter include: not knowing when to contribute vs write companion software; not communicating meta information; disregard for etiquette; impatience regarding discussion; and ignorance of what makes contributions hard to accept for project maintainers.
This presentation will help illuminate some of the unspoken rules of contributing to open source software that will help you be a better contributor.
Women in WordPress Panel
A frank and honest discussion with women who have been involved for different amounts of time in WordPress – ranging from development to designer to marketer.
Design Tips for Non-Designers
Visual design should work toward the site’s goals, but many of us came to WordPress without a background in design. How then can you select, modify, or build a theme with confidence that your design choices will be engaging and effective?
We’ll take a brief tour of web design fundamentals, and examine how contrast, hierarchy, white space, line length, and color selection can help you avoid design blunders and get a solid design every time.
Managing Big WordPress Sites
Final title to be announced.
An extremely engaging moderated discussion of the challenges that face large WordPress sites with 100s or 1000s of users.
Come learn lessons and hear advice on managing user needs and providing tools that make site management easier for everyone.
You Created A Plugin. Now What?
Do you have a plugin (or several) in the WordPress.org repository? Have you ever wondered how to turn your plugin development skills into a sustaining income-based business? Not sure how to go about it?
In this session, Adam details his story of creating a sustainable plugin business. He shares actionable advice that audience members can put into practice immediately to grow not only a user-base, but also a customer-base. Adam also explains the techniques he uses to guide free-users to premium product.
Attendees will learn everything they need to know to market a plugin that people will love, and recommend to others.
Partnerships and Good Business
Two are smarter than one!
We know the benefits of a good business partner, but is a partnership right for you? Learn what it takes to partner up and grow your business. We’ll walk you through best practices and tips to help you understand what it takes to forge a rich, rewarding professional partnership.
REST API: get up to speed in a half-hour
Beginning way back in WordPress 4.4 and continuing with 4.6-7 WordPress has rolled out arguably its most exciting new feature in years: a core REST API. Now every WordPress has two front-ends: a web interface designed for consumption by humans (that’s what themes are for) and an API interface designed for manipulation mostly by other code and machines.
User Research on a Budget
The best way to make a user-centered website is to talk to real users. But not everyone has the time or resources for in-depth interviews, field research, or lab-based usability tests.
This talk will cover quick and easy methods to get feedback from your customers and increase the usefulness and usability of your website without needing a dedicated research team.
What WordPress is Doing to Keep Your Site Safe
Security is important, but can also be complex, overwhelming, and downright scary. Thankfully, as a WordPress user you don’t have to do it all yourself. Find out what WordPress and the WordPress Security Team do to keep your websites safe, how you can help, and what you can do to compliment that security on your own site.
Sunday Sessions
After Party @ Elephant & Castle
Come join us for an informal afterparty at Elephant & Castle just a few blocks from the conference.
Elephant & Castle
1415 5th Ave
Seattle, WA 98101
Contributor Track
Contributor Track is a casual session where people of all skills and experience levels can give back to the WordPress community. We’ll be working in teams to improve WordPress’s documentation, translations, code, design, support, and official websites.
Everyone is welcome, and the only thing you need is a desire to give back to the community. If you’re new to contributing, we’ll help you find an area where you can get involved and walk you through making your first contribution.
Gutenberg & the Future of WordPress
“What do I need to learn to become a WordPress developer?” This question pops up in forums, social media, and everywhere else on a daily basis. I think a better question is “How do I prepare for a future that looks nothing like the status quo?”
Tech is changing at incredible speed, and what we consider important skills today may be meaningless a year from now. This talk is a discussion of what technologies are on the horizon, how the web and the internet will change, and how we can all prepare for a future with or without WordPress.
Note: The “slides link” below is to an article summarizing the talk’s content.
How I Repeatedly Broke my WordPress Site – and How I Cleaned-up The Mess
What happens when you start building your site without considering what you want it to do? What happens when your web hosting company is part of the problem?
We’ll look at a real-life example of how to make wise choices while planning your site, what can happen when you don’t make the best choices – and how to clean up the mess, regardless of who or what caused the problems.
As our example, we’ll look at what happened when a simple site evolved into a WordPress site, and what happened while trying to get them to play well together.
This journey will be both fun and educational. No experience required!
Lightning Talks! ⚡ Blogging & Social Media
Workshop 💻 Clarity Breeds Opportunity: Brand Communication Tactics To Boost Referrals, Attract Clients, and Expand Possibilities
Your brand is your core business asset. It is the reputation you have in the market, the perception your audience has about your business, and the feelings and thoughts they associate with your products or services. With a strong, clear brand, decision-making is easy, your value is clear, and you can charge your worth with confidence and certainty.
When you have brand clarity and know exactly who you are selling to, what you need to say, and how to communicate all the important details with ease your sales marketing efforts will become less stressful and more enjoyable.
In this hands-on workshop session, you won’t be sitting back and relaxing, you’ll be neck deep in your brand, gaining clarity and getting things done. You’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of your brand, a powerful, refined marketing message, and new tools you can add to your business and use with your clients.
Content Doesn’t Grow on Trees – An Introduction to Content Strategy
Content is EVERYBODY’s problem: it’s a problem for the content creator, and a problem for the developer. Without content, there is no website. Without the website there is no client. Yet.. how is it always left for last? In this talk I will teach you the core practices of the field known as Content Strategy: planning, development, and management of content. Truly thinking “Content First” from the beginning will completely transform your workflow and give everyone a grasp on creating, managing and structuring content, in time and on budget.
This talk is equally valuable for content creators, agencies and freelancers alike. Everyone wants to avoid the horror situation of scrambling to get content together two days before going live. It’s a nightmare for the author and a nightmare for the developer to implement. Learn how to integrate Content Strategy into your entire web process, resulting in quality content — organized and delivered on-time.
Lightning Talks! ⚡ Themer & Site Builder
Contributor Track
Contributor Track is a casual session where people of all skills and experience levels can give back to the WordPress community. We’ll be working in teams to improve WordPress’s documentation, translations, code, design, support, and official websites.
Everyone is welcome, and the only thing you need is a desire to give back to the community. If you’re new to contributing, we’ll help you find an area where you can get involved and walk you through making your first contribution.
Out of the Box: Designing and Developing for Accessibility in WordPress Templates
One of the benefits of WordPress for you as a designer or developer is being able to leverage the same experience and code in lots of different contexts, and the same goes for accessibility for people with disabilities. However, sometimes accessibility is more than the individual elements of a page. What happens when the accessible parts don’t make an accessible whole?
In this talk, we’ll discuss the challenges of designing and building for accessibility in a template system at scale, and lay out best practices for making sure your site is cohesive and consistent for people with disabilities.
Picture Perfect: Getting Beautiful Images Without Violating the Law
Having the right images can make or break a website. Designers create templates that depend on high-quality photos, visitors expect appealing visuals, and social marketing is less effective without attention-getting graphics. With such high demand for perfect images, website managers can be tempted into downloading whatever they see on the internet, resulting in lawsuits that lead to bankruptcy. If we can’t just copy the images we find, what should we do instead? Hear from an image designer, a publication editor, a photographer, and an intellectual property lawyer on how to get great images without breaking the bank or violating the law. The panel will offer advice on assessing your image needs, options for acquiring those images, and tips for creating your own.
Workshop 💻 8 Ways to Make Sure You Keep Blogging, Week After Week After Week
Is your blog neglected and out-of-date? Is it at the bottom of your to-do list so never gets the attention it deserves? That makes you normal! Consistently blogging challenges most of us because we’re busy with so many other tasks. Let’s fix that. During this hands-on workshop, we’ll talk about the challenges we’re facing that keep us from blogging, and how to overcome them. Then we’ll get to work creating a plan you can stick with to make sure your blog does get the attention it deserves. You’ll walk out with a clear vision, a list of topics, a writing schedule, and a renewed commitment to your blog.
Discovery, Discovery, Discovery, Discovery! The Most Important Part of the Project
When a project goes wrong, most of the time it fails as a result of mismatched expectations. This can be avoided for most clients by following a repeatable and thorough discovery process. Understanding how to ask the right questions up front can mean the difference between happy clients who are eager to give you more business and nightmare clients who can never be satisfied.
This session will focus on:
- Asking the right questions
- Controlling the conversation
- Creating maintainable expectations
- Using discovery throughout your business
Don’t Be Afraid of the Command Line
The command line is a very powerful tool that you can use for all sorts of things. But the terminal can be a little scary if you’ve never been there before.
Let’s demystify it a bit and go over:
- what you’re looking at,
- some basic commands that’ll help you get around, and
- a glimpse of some more advanced commands that can be handy to have in your toolbox.
Empower Your Clients and Improve Maintainability with Advanced Custom Fields
“I never want my site to change.” – Said No Client Ever
Healthy websites change over time just like healthy businesses do. As developers, it is our job to empower website admins, and make our sites more maintainable.
This talk shares design patterns and best practices you will find invaluable when creating custom themes for clients, and demonstrates how to implement them using Advanced Custom Fields (ACF).
Practical WordPress Marketing for Nonprofits
Are you a small, ambitious nonprofit with lots of programs but a little marketing budget? Is it hard to show what you do on your WordPress website because your org just does so many different things? Do you need help maximizing your WordPress site’s potential to market your mission? In this session, we’ll share 3 cost-effective ways of promoting your nonprofit’s work:
- Build an online annual report
This is a highly effective and super shareable way of showing your nonprofit’s impact. And you won’t have to print and mail those reports again. - Build microsites for your special programs/events
Highlight your special fundraising events or conferences with a microsite, which has its own mini navigation bar. - Create an issue specific resource
You can create a crowd-sourced Google sheet that will drive new traffic to your site. It’s an easy to maintain document too. (Ex: Women in Tech).
WooCommerce Theming with Storefront
WooCommerce provides Storefront as its official WooCommerce theme. Storefront is a very clean, responsive theme based on Underscores. While Storefront is great out of the box and there are several add-ons for purchase, what if you want to customize it yourself?
Fortunately, there are many hooks and filters available for developers. Learn how to use them to create your own custom child theme based on Storefront.
Workshop 💻 From Freelance to Full-time: Strategies for a Successful Career Transition
Are you a freelancer or small business owner considering returning to a full-time role? Whether a career transition is on your short term roadmap or just an option you’d like to keep on the table for the future, there are concrete things you can be doing now to ensure you’ll be successful in finding and landing the job you want.
Join this interactive session to learn strategies to prepare for and execute a job search and discover how to translate the experience you’ve built in your business to market yourself to the organizations you’d like to work for.