Attendees of this session will get an in-depth look at how to use WordPress as an iterative prototyping tool for marketing websites. Maggie will demonstrate how designers can use WordPress as a platform to build wireframes, create visual content, setup quick and easy A/B testing, and perform user research while building towards a simultaneous product and marketing website launch.

The session will include real-world examples of this content-first approach.

I would like to talk about ways to focus your efforts in a manner that eliminates some of the deadline pressure bloggers feel by eliminating some myths about certain “rules” of blogging, and talk about the importance of setting a consistent content strategy and using an editorial calendar.

I’d also talk about what I call the “Blogging Snowball Effect,” which, much like the Debt Snowball Effect we’ve heard about from financial guru Dave Ramsey, can help build some blogging momentum and help you get ahead of the game.

As WordPress increases in popularity and use, so to it becomes a more attractive target for hackers. This session will focus on the simple steps you can take to secure your installation so that you don’t fall prey attacks. We will cover the tips, tricks, and best-practices from choosing a host through installation, setup, plugin selection, and upkeep.

We will also cover backups and what to do in case you do get hacked. These same steps will serve you well against unintentional mishaps and crashes.

How to effectively utilize roles and capabilities in WordPress eludes many developers. Working with them can seem tricky and rigid, but it doesn’t have to be.

This presentation will have a brief overview of roles and capabilities in WordPress and how a developer can create their own. We will then move into a discussion of the user_has_cap and map_meta_cap filters, which enable developers to precisely manipulate capabilities without having to write anything to the database.

We have methods, systems and software; we have books, blogs and white papers—all of which helps us produce well-articulated content and manage the how, when and why of engagement for effective content marketing tactics.

In this session, though, we’ll take a fresh look at web content by seeing it through the eyes of the user, and we’ll discuss methods of improving users’ experience by employing simple and effective psychology alongside common-sense SEO.

We’ll also explore how methods of effective in-person conversation can be applied to web content strategy. Then, since better prospects will be finding and reading your content, I’ll show you how to engage your target audience sustainably, measure results, and enable you to face the challenge of creating content that people actually care about.

If you know CSS, then Sass is the next step to create beautiful themes that are coded well.

Since WordPress v1.5 I’ve started and build a handful of WordPress-centric companies (Themes, Content, Consulting Services, iOS and mobile apps), most recently 8BIT, a theme company that was acquired by WooThemes. Needless to say, the sky is really the limit in terms of how you want to implement WordPress into a scalable and profitable business model!

I’ll share some some techniques to get started as well as how to determine your avenue and approach. I’ll share details on the challenges of growth and scale as well as how to build great WordPress products.

A robust Q/A should be available as well. This is definitely a “business-centric” talk and should be quite fun for those interested in venturing into some new territory or for those that want to sharpen their business skillset!

Contact forms are great, but if that’s *all* you’re using your form builder for, you’re missing out on a whole world of what’s possible with a WordPress custom form builder. Hint: you don’t need an e-commerce plugin to take payments on your site, or that all-in-one directory theme to power your directory-based site, or even a separate scheduling app for appointments.

Deceptively simple but incredibly powerful, you can likely use a form builder whenever you need to accept submissions on your site and then do something with the submission.

Fine print: Hugs likely to ensue once you realize the possibilities.

I will go over some of the core content from my book, Responsive Design with WordPress, which teaches you how to leverage WordPress to get the most out of responsive design, implement best practices, automate important processes, and make your life easier overall.

My WordPress beginnings came out of necessity for two reasons:

• 1.  As a service-provider, I was tired of trading hours for dollars and in need of a way to scale.
• 2. I had overindulged early-on in my consultancy on a custom HTML website that I frankly couldn’t afford (it WAS beautiful though) and with the high cost of maintaining and updating it, I had to find a solution.

My solution to both problems – WordPress

I self-taught myself to build sites for each of my companies. Doing so, I quickly realized I would also need to teach myself basic code to manipulate the CSS for customization of the themes if I ever wanted to use my websites as a revenue generator.

From there, I started building e-courses based around my expertise, next subscription-based community sites, and now operate several sites that house various interactive online learning tools, including a 6-week certification program — all built on WordPress and its available tools.

I’ll give you the framework and resources that have streamlined my content-based products, made them profitable, and tripled my consulting revenue. I’ll also be sharing what I wished I had known years ago, and how you can be profiting much sooner.

In the presentation I’ll cover best practices applications and theories that every website owner (i.e., administrator) should be familiar with. It’s not the day of yesterday where a website was run by a website administrator, today every website owner is an administrator, as such these principles must be shared and taught to all.

Together we make the web experience a safer one for everyone, and I’ll be sharing insight that very few can share through the experiences we have ascertained at Sucuri. 

At BoomTown, we’ve managed to source control our entire config and stack and get our developers up and running in a matter of minutes with Vagrant, Puppet and WP-CLI. This talk will be on what these technologies do and how you can use them to automate and source control your environment.

I work on the support team helping make recommendations for customers every day on how to setup their WooCommerce shop. There are thousands of sites using WooCommerce today, we just recently passed 3 million downloads, and there are tons of success stories to share. My talk will give a quick overview of the history of WooCommerce, what it is, how it is setup and will share stories of how other customers have used WooCommerce to help excel their business.

I prefer to have interactive talks on this topic, so I will be encouraging audience participation to learn more about how an e-commerce site might apply to them. The talk should be educational, inspiring, thought-provoking, relaxed and energetic at the same time. 🙂

This session is for beginners that are new to WordPress and would like to learn the essentials of how to setup a website utilizing WordPress’ awesome built-in features such as the blog, themes, widgets, and plugins.

I will also cover the basics of what you need to do to maintain and manage your site, as well as resources for where to get help in the community and online.

We’ll discuss how to put together a performant WordPress site while not breaking the budget. We’ll consider hosting, Web server software, various options for caching, content delivery networks, and other external services that help tune a WordPress site to peak performance.