Sessions

One of the biggest challenges for new WordPress developers is taking that beautiful site that they built on their own computer or local server, and going live without having to rebuild the entire site from scratch.

This session will explore the easiest ways to launch you site, and eliminate the headache.

In this session, I’ll share “X” of the most common mistakes I see businesses making with their website, email, and ad copy — and how to avoid falling into the same pitfalls.

Attendees will learn…
1. The MOST important thing to consider when writing for your audience

2. A foolproof technique for keeping copy focused

3. How to know whether your copy should be long, short, or somewhere in between

4. Why you should NEVER write in a vacuum…
And more!

You’ll leave with a new bag of practical tactics and tricks you can apply right away to make your website copy stronger.

Are you debugging your JavaScript by writing console.log statements – the front-end equivalent of using “echo” or “var_dump” in PHP?

Being primarily a back-end developer, I was accustomed to using XDEBUG as part of my workflow, but often fell back on rudimentary debugging skills when it came to debugging JavaScript or diagnosing performance issues from the front-end.

Enter Chrome Developer Tools. It seems that every time I look, this little window in Chrome gets more and more features that save me time and headaches debugging, testing and optimizing my web pages. Whether I’m stepping through JavaScript, Debugging CSS, Testing REST API calls, or auditing page performance, Chrome’s Developer Tools are there to help. In this session, I’ll share with you some of the features that have made this tool an essential part of my toolbox. I’ll show you how how to diagnose a page’s performance issues, audit a page for accessibility, review page security,inspect calls made to the REST API, and more.

SEO (search engine optimization) has been typically approached with the freer hand of cooking. Start with some main ingredients, add a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a dash of those for good measure – and voila! – you have a delicious masterpiece. Or so some of us hope. SEO, however, is more akin to baking, where leaving out an ingredient or making a substitution can keep all your best efforts from rising to the top.

There’s far more to SEO than meta tags and proper page titles. During this session we’ll take a closer look at how SEO overlaps with and touches upon branding, design, copy and marketing, both on and off the page. By planning your SEO efforts upfront, you’ll begin connecting with the intended audience, designing site architecture, informing the copy, developing an editorial calendar, identifying linking opportunities, in addition to aligning social media profiles and marketing messages.

Baking in SEO infuses another level of detail into creating your online presence as a credible authority to be noticed by search engines, and more importantly, forming the base layers of a positive visitor experience. Think of SEO as giving yourself a recipe to follow instead of figuring out what might be needed as you go along – or after the fact – to make the whole thing turn out right.

WP-CLI is a powerful tool. On local and remote servers, you can use it to install plugins, activate themes, create posts, regenerate thumbnails, export your database, and the list goes on. This session will introduce you to the tool and cover basic to advanced tasks you can complete with it. You will walk away with a powerful new tool in your WP toolbelt.

Talk notes: https://github.com/knowler/wp-cli-talk

I will walk you through the basics of WordPress speed optimisation and performance, giving clear, actionable advice that any website owner or creator can take and apply to their projects.

• Slides

Would you like an honest but constructive critique of your website? Do you mind having your site reviewed in front of an audience? Kevin Brennan, owner of Build Studio, will review your site based on it’s design, functionality and usability. All you need to do is provide him with your website address and what goals you have for the website or company.

If you don’t want to submit your site, there’s still lots to learn from the sites we’re reviewing.

Submit your site for consideration.

Please provide a brief outline of the goal of your site/company so we have an idea of the intent and how we help you better reach those goals:

You have a plugin and want more people to check it out, and submitting to the official WordPress plugin directory. But how do you get it ready and submit it, easily keep it up-to-date, avoid common conflicts with other plugins, and get more people finding out about it?

In this talk I’ll go through tips and techniques to save you (and your plugin users) from pulling out their hair and get your plugin out there on wordpress.org

• Slides

• Slides

Let’s talk about some of the design trends that are popping up in 2018 and what that means for you as a designer and a developer. We will explore the use of video, responsive design and illustrations in web projects and the importance of selecting flexible themes for your projects.

Has a client ever wasted your time in a consulting session? Ever had a one-hour consultation turn into 3? Have you experienced the sinking feeling that comes when you leave the consultation and realize you failed to ask a key question? This talk provides answers to these issues and more. Attendees will leave with a clear, memorable outline to manage the client consultation.

Note from the organizers
The bad news: our video feed cut out before Nathan’s session was over.
The good news: You can watch Nathan present the same topic at WordCamp Albuquerque on wordpress.tv (see link below)

• Slides
• Video

In 2018, WordPress will modernize, streamline, and simplify the content creation experience with Gutenberg. It represents the biggest change to the WordPress user experience in several years. In fact, in the State Of The Word 2017 Matt Mullenweg described its enduring importance as “the editor for the next twelve years.”

How does it work? Who is already using it? How can I get ready? How can I contribute? This presentation will answer all those questions and more.

Publishing more and more posts is not the only way to increase traffic to your site. There are two types of audits you can do to get the most out of the content you already have published. First, an SEO audit can ensure that your site is technically sound, helping search engines crawl your site and understand your authority in your niche. Second, a content audit will make sure all your posts are relevant and in-depth. These two audits can increase your search traffic and make readers come back for more.

• Slides

Nothing converts like a solid case study.
Customer success stories get your leads to take action and set you apart from your competitors—whether they’re posted on your site, sent in emails, or used in outreach.

But getting client buy-in is hard. Capturing a great story is tricky. And once you’ve got ’em, how do you use ’em to drive leads and sales?

I’ve spent years building a powerful, repeatable process for capturing and sharing customer success stories, and in this session, I want to share it.

You’ll learn how to…
1. Build a case study strategy (and yes, you need one!)
2. Get client buy-in
3. Run the perfect case study interview
4. Use your case studies to improve outreach response rates

Whether you consider yourself a writer or not, you’ll leave with a process you can use to start getting more case studies and turning them into sales.

Being a freelancer, contractor or digital nomad is all the rage nowadays, but you don’t want to just survive doing what you love, you want to thrive! Learn strategies for building reoccurring income, business systems, sales automations and other tools to better manage your freelance business. I have been a freelance digital media expert of almost 10 years, and want to share my experience of what it takes to succeed outside of a 9-5 job for the long term.

The talk will cover:

• Basic business skills you need
• Building re-occuring revenue
• Automations and tools
• How to be every role, without spreading yourself thin
• Common mistakes to avoid

The discussion topics will range in areas of:
1. The difference between your and the public’s perception of how valuable and relevant your content is as a content creator.
2. How to connect across generational
lines for increased engagement.
3. Defining and understanding the dynamics of SoLoMoCo Social engagement, Local activism, Mobile digital technology, Community perceptions and expectations.
4. Accepting diversity in gender, culture, generational usage of technology and age is a good thing.
5. Applying new learning to be a digital leader on and off line.
6. Don’t rely just on SEO, conventional marketing and analytics.
The ability to connect with the diversity of Social Media can mean increased exposure, new clients, expanding your content into diverse markets, broadening the scope of your Brand. Content creators and digital innovators must be aware of the perceptions of others that are viewing, reading, digesting, comprehending and enjoying
content.
Social Media is designed to be engaging, fun and embracing the diversity of thinking.
Everyone has the potential to be awesome on social media because of their authentic content.
The understanding that SEO and Analytics are only part of the pieces to promote your Brand. Marketing requires an engaged plan of execution to build the proper exposure to your Brand, business or service that is offered.
Being mindful of the perceptions that people have from the content created that is posted online. Photos, videos, interviews, etc play a key role in creating a Brand that allows for positive perceptions and even in a digital environment.
The first impressions are still important.

Storytelling is the most ancient of crafts, since the days of the great hunt men and women sat around the fire warding of the beasties and the night with telling’s of great deeds.

Times have changed and now our campfire glows have turned into the light of a monitor. However this should never stop a good story.

Let Scottish Storyteller Calum Lykan introduce you to his world of storytelling and how it works for all mediums. From telling your own story to marketing your business and website using audio or video to tell that story.

Site speed is one of the top things people want to know how to improve. Submit your site to have local speed optimization expert Michael Bourne assess and give you some suggestions. But be warned, Michael’s answers will be timed, and when the timer goes off, it’s on to the next site!