Sessions

Presented by Daniel Abernathy in WP as a Solution.

Theme developers are often caught between giving clients too much freedom (page builders) or building rigid themes that don’t adapt to clients’ changing needs. Using ACF Pro, you can have the best of both worlds by creating a flexible editing experience that won’t break your design. We’ll walk through a completed theme built using ACF Pro.

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Presented in Everyone.

Presented in Everyone.

Our afterparty will be on the first floor of the Omni Hotel in Capital Factory’s Main Space from 6-8pm.

701 Brazos St
Austin, TX

The afterparty is being sponsored by Capital Factory and WP Engine.

Presented in Everyone.

Presented in Everyone.

Presented by Nick Batik in WP as a Solution.

Small and midsize businesses are dealing with an ever widening divergence between the IT infrastructure demanded by emerging business needs and the infrastructure that was available when they were a startup. They want to include the data from their internal processes into the WordPress back-end so they can migrate away from their legacy systems.

In this session we will examine the process of using the PODS Framework to build these systems, and present numerous code examples to accomplish the tasks. We will demonstrate constructing PODS tables to match legacy databases, and importing those data collections.

We will go into greater depth by examining how the PODS Framework with the Rest API enables organizations to rapidly convert legacy data assets to WordPress without disrupting existing business processes, unlocking the value of trapped data, and minimizing legacy service disruption.

Attendees will see how to eliminate the need for expensive legacy system replacements and deliver successful legacy modernization using PODS, the Rest API, and Vue.js.

Presented by Pete Nelson in WP as a Solution.

From Subscriber to Administrator, WordPress comes with a variety of roles and capabilities to both grant and restrict access to various functionality within a site. But what if you need to step outside the defaults?

This advanced developer talk with plenty of code samples will show you how to create new roles within WordPress, how to create new capabilities and grant roles access, as well as fine-tuning capabilities using filters.

Presented by Michael Schmid in WP as a Solution.

Containers are in everybody’s lips, if you search through any tech conference session proposal list, they are full of talks about Docker and Containers. Lull in conversation at a networking event? Ask how someone is using containers! Unfortunately, these talks are only about how to specifically connect Containers and PHP, how to run them on massive scale or how to setup them in a secure way.

I believe thought when it comes to containers, we are missing the forest for the trees. The excitement around the topic is great, but today barely anyone is actually using containers in production. For such a hot button topic this should not be the case, except that containers can also simply be scary. I personally believe that only a few people really understand in great detail how they work and the rest are nodding, smiling, and faking it until they make it.

In this session I would like to give any interested person (business, backend, frontend, design, consultant) an explanation and overview of containerization:

– What’s the big deal anyway?
– What makes containers so exciting and why they are seen as a revolution in computing
– What’s the potential?
– What new possibilities containers open up (for PHP, for local Development, for automated Testing)
– What’s the hold up?
– Why people are still hesitant on running containers in Production
– What’s next?
– Where containers will bring us in the future

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Presented by Michael Bastos in WP as a Solution.

Setting up an awesome WordPress install cheaply and easily on cloud services like AWS and Google Cloud has never been easier. Yet I’ll go into topics like using Ansible or Salt to deploy your code, choosing the right architecture design for your WordPress site as well as including things like replacing WordPress search with Elasticsearch and caching with Redis for faster and more robust systems.

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Presented by Toyin Akinmusuru in WP as a Solution.

How to use Rapid Application Development (RAD) techniques to yield maximum business value with minimal development time through prototyping and iterative development. Any Rapid Application Development model relies on tools that ease the process. In this presentation, Toyin will discuss how the Pods API and VueJS can be used to focus on business value and optimization of the development process.
This presentation will walk you through building a simple application, with three or four objects and will address:

• Extending the User Object
• When to use CPT (Custom Post Types)
• Adding Pods-based Custom Post Types
• How you turn on the Rest API in Pods
• How to handle pages
• How to handle data relationships
• Routing for a Custom UI
• How to assign CPT Names for objects
• Limitations of this approach

Presented by Kori Ashton in WP as a Solution.

Kori Ashton will give 3 different options for accepting donations on your WordPress website. Learn about security, ease of admin use, and the best user experience for your visitors.

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Presented by Christopher Martinez in WP as a Solution.

How to work at a large institution dominated by Drupal, but personally be motivated by WordPress. My talk explores the ideas of building a WordPress site without centralized, internal support, but with self-driven WordPress knowledge and understanding the power of the platform. Join me to explore being the lone, WordPress wolf.

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Presented by Ben Moore in WP as a Solution.

Since the release of the WordPress Rest API, there has been a lot of buzz around going “headless” or “decoupled”. However, I haven’t found a good summary of what this actually means. Instead there are articles on how to go headless with .
My talk aims to educate on What headless even means, the pro’s and con’s to going headless, and other potential solutions.
I also aim to introduce a new buzzword, “Brainless”, a solution that can use the best parts of both WordPress and Headless.

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Presented by Scott Kingsley Clark in WP as a Solution.

As we use WordPress, we begin to become more comfortable with easy access to plugins, themes, and services that provide us with many different positive outcomes. However, if we don’t think long and hard about what our needs are about our content structures — we will make mistakes that cost time and money that could burn your bridges. We will prototype a website or application with live interaction from the audience.

Presented by Dawn Watkins in Making a Living.

This course is designed for those who have a role in creating and publishing web content using WordPress. Learn the principles for a more inclusive digital presence that creates accessible content for all users. This includes common content issues, increasing readability, and universal design principals to maximize accessibility.

Presented by Kristin Sheppard, Corrin Foster in Making a Living.

One of the best applications of WordPress is brand-building, from full blown sites and splash pages for newsletter builds, to microblogs. Learn how to incorporate messaging and content with unique design to develop an overall voice. Need to hone in on your brand promise, benefits and features, and elevator speech? This focused session will provide you with the tools to make those big decisions that will make your marketing efforts clear and concise.

Discuss the best plugins and themes to make the most of the web and optimize discoverability in a crowded landscape.

Join Director of Marketing and Platform Corrin Foster (Greenleaf Book Group) and Director of Content Kristin Sheppard (Mutual Mobile) as they share their years of expertise and passion for WordPress. Bring all your branding questions and walk out with actionable takeaways.

Presented by Andrea Trew in Making a Living.

In the multifaceted world of design, there comes a point when a brand becomes more than just a logo. In her keynote, Andrea will speak about how she’s navigated this inflection point at the thriving tech startup, Flywheel. She’ll explain why she left one of the country’s top ad agencies to take full ownership of developing a brand in-house. Her talk will walk through the inner workings of building the company’s identity from the ground up, all while delicately balancing the need to allow it to grow, scale, and shift alongside the ever evolving tech industry.

Presented by Pat Ramsey in Making a Living.

The success or failure of delivering a WordPress project depends on the analysis you do of your client, their requirements, and your development plan. All of this happens before you begin writing a single line of code. Adoption of WordPress is happening across all sectors of business and across the globe. Even if your development effort focuses on a single vertical, or stays within a single country, client variation exists. What are some of the decisions you should make, processes to consider, and what information should you be gathering as you begin a WordPress development project?

Presented by Brandon Kraft in Making a Living.

As a lead of the support team for Jetpack and various other Automattic products, what support philosophy do we have? How do we handle the tough customers? What does “we’re looking into it” really mean?

This talk would be a behind-the-scenes look at how a large WordPress-focused support shop works to keep customers happy.

Presented by Sandi Batik in Making a Living.

This presentation will address the all-too common, and costly issue of project scope creep, how it negatively impacts your business and what to do about it.
As WordPress freelancers, consultants and digital creatives we all have experienced how an ineffective customer onboarding process or poorly defined scope of work can lead to project scope creep. We will discuss processes to manage client expectations, identify project warning signs, prevent common profit-eating pitfalls and share some tools to keep Project Scope Creep from creeping up on you.

Presented by Jamie DeBole in Making a Living.

GlobeKick CEO Jamie DeBole has been using WordPress for years, powering websites for various projects in locales around the world.

In his experience with GlobeKick, it has become very clear that there is a burgeoning global freelance community filled with entrepreneurs who are itching to start their own businesses from the road. The challenge, of course, lies in the how. Building a website from scratch can feel daunting, but having a resource like WordPress paired with the wherewithal to learn and build upon those skills can get you where you need to go, quickly.

With plenty of competing platforms on the market today, it’s tough to choose the one that will work best for you. In this talk, you’ll hear firsthand why Jamie keeps going back to WordPress. He will dig into his personal experiences using the platform while working remotely, and also what he’s observed on the road with GlobeKickers who swear by it — not only to build websites for their own businesses, but also as a mechanism to make money as a freelancer.

To create a life you love is to transcend work-life balance and achieve work-life integration. Jamie will dig into the ins and outs of how to do that successfully, using WordPress as a trusted resource while having the freedom to travel the world.

Presented by Thomas Umstattd Jr. in Making a Living.

In this fun interactive session, you will learn about the business side of plugin and theme development. Learn how to craft a plugin that people will love and how to make money with it. You will also learn about the WordPress Repository Rules. 80% of the talk will be relevant to professional theme development as well.

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Presented by Jen Miller in Making a Living.

Beautifully designed, high functioning websites fall flat with poorly composed content. Search engines and readers value unique content. WordPress websites are the perfect place to showcase the details behind every client’s story and product. This talk will share tips and techniques for capturing your client’s voice and vision in your writing, giving insight into how attendees can great content in website pages and blog posts.

Examples of outsourced blogging gone wrong will be illustrated, showing how 2 minutes of additional research can be key to understanding topics. Helpful tips that allow copywriters to mentally transport themselves into the minds of their clients will be revealed as well.

Using real-world, every day client examples, attendees will learn to think and blog as their clients would, if their clients only had the time. This talk is not just for writers, it’s one agency owners and developers need in order to better evaluate WordPress website content and enhance quality control.

Presented by Marc Gratch in Making a Living.

This talk could go 1 of 2 ways. I am still working on a few different versions with local meetups.

I helped build a local mayoral candidates site this year. In doing so I did not write any code. This involved plugins such as Beaver Builder and Gravity Forms.

I can make this talk centered around the whole build process or the use of Gravity Forms (which I will provide examples using other form builders as well.)

Forms in themselves are an often overlooked topic which I am happy to speak on. After all most people don’t consider that this is how essentially all two way communication with users exists.

For the campaign site Gravity Forms was used to accept donation, build email lists, signup volunteers and coordinate with the appropriate team members. All without coding as well.

The other version of this presentation will be delivered as a case study where I will still explain how I built the site without code, but will focus on how WP is the right platform to build a site (and community) quickly, reliably, and inexpensively.

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Presented by Reiko Beach in Building a WP Site.

Over the 8 years building WordPress websites and training users I have found that even users that have had a WordPress site for years got some value from some of these tips & tricks. Some of the 20 tips are common, but worth a reminder, others I hope you will find helpful and new.

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Presented by Marty Spellerberg in WP as a Solution.

This talk will present a look under the hood of some WordPress-powered museum projects. We’ll explore WordPress as a solution to a variety of common problems, including powering websites, digital publications and in-gallery experiences. Our lens will be recent projects for the The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; The Clyfford Still Museum, Denver; The Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History and others.

In addition to taking advantage of an easy-to-use content management system and a strong open-source community, WordPress opens up opportunities to solve perennial museum website problems. We will discuss the development of museum websites’ content strategy and design, informed by analytics and qualitative user research. Additionally, we will demonstrate the ways we’ve solved specific museum and user needs, including designing a system of flexible page templates, solving event calendar challenges, and implementing systems/workflows for managing intellectual property restrictions for collection images. We will also explore how WordPress can be used to power experiences outside of traditional websites, including membership renewal and constituent management, online exhibition catalogues and touchscreen video kiosks.

This session will be led by Marty Spellerberg and Zack Rothauser. Marty is principal at Spellerberg Associates, a consulting practice that offers interactive design, development and communications assistance to artists and museums. He has 19 years experience in interactive design, including 9 years working specifically with museums. Zack is an Austin-based developer with 6 years experience helping companies make technical decisions and building solutions with WordPress and Javascript.

Presented by Shayda Torabi in Building a WP Site.

Two years ago I made a fundamental shift in my life. I decided to stop waiting for things to happen to me and decided to start doing them. Life is short, and I wanted to be the woman who lived life to it’s fullest instead of wishing things would just turn out in my favor. It’s a simple concept in theory, but to practice it day after day can seem impossible. Where do you even begin?

For me, it all started with putting my thoughts into actions. Ok, it came with a lot of tension, second guesses, and half starts. But one day I just did it, I bought a domain and started a blog. A food blog to be exact, because I love food, and more importantly I love chasing a good experience. Part of finding success is discovering what makes you light up, what’s your passion?

It was through this blog that the world began to open up around me, I found self-confidence, friendships, happiness, adventure, and it gave me an identity to move through life with.

This is a story of harnessing self-motivation, discovering your passion, and leveraging WordPress to propel you into living your absolute best life today. Don’t wait, join me!

Presented by Winstina Hughes in Building a WP Site.

Jetpack and Google Analytics give us insights into our audience we don’t gain through comments. They give us a window into who our visitors are, and what they’re thinking. It is a tool some of us are intimidated by because installing one requires scripts, it has a unique vocabulary, and pie charts and bar charts abound on a dashboard. I’ll show you we don’t need to know code to add them to our blog, develop an extensive vocabulary to unlock meaning, and have a background in statistics to gain value from the numbers.

Presented by Joe Robison in Building a WP Site.

The WordPress SEO Plugin by Yoast is the default SEO plugin for most WordPress sites. This talk will go beyond the basics and highlight some really cool advanced uses of the plugin.

Topics covered:
1. Using new Cornerstone Content feature
2. Creating optimal default title tags and meta descriptions at scale that are great for SEO
3. Integrating with Search Console data
4. Using new suggested Internal Links functionality
5. Optimizing XML sitemap settings for large or complex sites
6. Using Advanced part of the Yoast SEO meta box

Presented by Candice Beckmann in Building a WP Site.

Who are you talking to? Do you know your ideal customer? Are you connected with the people you might call your tribe?

Before designing your new website or writing that copy, get clear about who you are talking to and targeting. You don’t need to be a marketing or sales professional to conduct market research. So much of this is logical and easy. It just takes a bit of focus and guidance.

During this talk, you get the 8 Steps to Effective Market Research. These steps are both actionable and practical. The process starts with you, the business owner and your brand, and it concludes with creating customer avatars. Together, we create the outline of your Market Research Plan. You can take it home and apply it to your business.

A customer avatar is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer. It is based on market research and the data you have about your existing customers.

Why Avatars?
Creating avatars is valuable for supporting several business processes. Obviously, it’s helpful for marketing and sales, but it is also a tremendous tool for your product development or the development of your core offerings. Your avatars provide a structure for someone else on your team or a consultant to understand your ideal customer and how to best communicate with your tribe or how to deliver the best product/service.

Presented by Nile Flores in Building a WP Site.

Yoast SEO is one of the leading WordPress SEO plugins in the WordPress world. It has so many options. Aside from that, you’re trying to juggle your own SEO knowledge.

With so many options on Yoast SEO, there’s a lot to get confused about.

I’m going to go over some basic SEO tips, specifically best practices for using Yoast SEO.

Hopefully using the plugin will be a lot easier after this session.

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Presented by Cory Webb in Building a WP Site.

I’ve been a Joomla guy for a long time. In fact, I’ve been a Joomla guy since before Joomla was Joomla. I even wrote a book about it back in 2009. I became a Joomla expert long before I started working with WordPress on a regular basis, and I used to find it difficult to switch back and forth between the two platforms.

Joomla and WordPress are very similar in many ways, but both systems have very different approaches and very different philosophies about content management. In this talk, I will discuss some of the subtle and not so subtle differences and similarities between WordPress and Joomla and how I had to learn to switch between thinking like a “Joomla guy” and thinking like a “WordPress guy.”

This will not be a comparison of the relative merits of both platforms. That topic has been discussed ad nauseam for years. This will be a discussion about overcoming the hurdles of learning a new system, getting out of your comfort zone, and embracing new ideas to become a more well-rounded developer.

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Presented by Adam Giese in Building a WP Site.

It can be difficult to write stylesheets that are flexible to different lengths of content. The great thing about WordPress is that clients can make edits to content directly, but if the stylesheet is not flexible this can cause issues. I would like to cover some pitfalls and solutions for writing flexible styles.

An often encountered pattern found in websites is a grid of “cards”, usually with some combination of a title, picture, excerpt, and link. Using floats, this would need to be styled by either defining a height and dealing with overflow or simply having mismatched cards if the content wasn’t of similar length. By using flexbox, you can easily match the height of each row.

Another common difficulty is writing navigation menus that can deal with both small and large quantities of menu items. By combining nth-child and nth-last-child, you can write “quantity queries” that can greatly simplify the development of flexible menu styling: all without writing conditional logic in a WordPress filter.

A future tool that would be great for writing flexible styles is the container query, proposed by the RICG. This would allow for the styling of an element based on the width of its container, as opposed to the width of the viewport.

By thinking creatively with CSS, you can ensure that your stylesheets are flexible no matter the content.

Presented by Ronnie Burt in Building a WP Site.

Let’s take a look at what makes a quality theme or plugin. We’ll share the process that we follow (and the automated tools that we use) to evaluate plugins and themes for performance, reliability, accessibility, and security.

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Presented by Matt Kopala in Building a WP Site.

Diagnosing WordPress performance issues without the proper tools is like searching for buried treasure on the beach without a metal detector. You can spend hours without actually figuring out what’s really going on, and drive yourself mad at the same time.

Everyone’s got a suggestion and an idea for how to fix your performance issues. Disable this plugin, try this, try that … usually just guesses, and not based on real data.

STOP GUESSING. If you have a performance issue, or just want to make your site faster, you need to KNOW exactly what is going on with your actual, live site in production. Once you are using the right tools, you will be amazed at what you can see, and how quickly you can figure out what is really going on.

We’ll talk about how to use New Relic to monitor your WordPress site in production, and use it to diagnose both server-side and browser & location based performance issues. We’ll look at the WordPress-specific tools that New Relic provides for analyzing server-side performance in terms of plugins, your theme, and WordPress hooks.

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Presented by Nathan Allotey in Making a Living.

We are all consumers, customers, and clients but how does price affect our buying decisions? As a freelance creative how do you decide what your prices should be? There is a particular psychology that is applied when we make decisions and pricing is no different from dating. The outcome is different, but the process is the same.

You’re not planning on dating your potential clients but learning this factors that are a part of the purchase decision can help you win more projects and raise your prices.

Presented by David Vogelpohl in Building a WP Site.

If you’re using out of the box Google Analytics on your WordPress sites, you basically have no analytics at all.

Join this session to learn how to configure Google Analytics to show the true value of the WordPress sites you build.

We’ll explore how to use custom Dimensions and off-the-shelf tools to enable WordPress specific metrics for categories, tags, and authors directly inside Google Analytics. GA isn’t optimized for WordPress, but in this session, you’ll learn how.

As a bonus, you’ll also learn how to set up Google Analytics to see exactly how sources of traffic, specific pages, and other parts of your site perform at generating sales, leads, ad views, social shares, and more. You can then use that knowledge to plan your strategy on what to build next or which site improvements have the highest ROI.

Don’t just deploy and pray. Come to this session and learn how to use Google Analytics to give you actionable insights you can use to make your WordPress sites more profitable today!

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