Sessions

Managed WordPress is a vibrant category of web hosting that specializes in doing 1 thing only: ensuring your WordPress websites are reliable, secure and well-maintained.

In this presentation, Alex Sirota, Director of NewPath Consulting will describe the different types of hosting available for WordPress with a focus on the ever evolving managed WordPress hosting space.

This will be a non-vendor biased presentation but will help web developers, designers and their customers understand the value proposition that a Managed WordPress hosting company can offer.

Objectives:

Describe the difference between shared hosting & Managed WordPress. Demonstrate some of the very cool features in several Managed WordPress systems including GoDaddy’s Managed WordPress Solution (part of GoDaddy Pro), DreamPress from DreamHost, FlyWheel, Pantheon and WPEngine. Present a new survey of more than 20 Managed WordPress hosts across the world.

WordPress theme designers and developers too often take an overly utilitarian perspective in designing and developing websites – form over function.

If you stay here, you’ll find yourself unable to charge premium rates for your services and probably facing a lot of frustrated customers that expect their websites to generate revenue.

In this talk, I’ll take WordPress professionals into the mind of the web visitors they should be serving. We’ll discuss some basic, but very powerful UI/UX patterns that consistently get customers dialing phone numbers and filling out web forms.

We will walk through very specific design elements, functionality, and the plugins that should be used on every WordPress website that we build.

“What’s the difference between .org and .com?” If you’ve asked this question, you’ve probably received a vague answer that was more confusing than it was helpful. And the answer changes too. Since new features are being rolled out on WordPress.com so fast, there’s even more to be confused about.

So, let’s cut to the chase, and let’s SEE how both of these platforms work. Real demos in real time. With expert commentary from a pro who can point out the key differences in language we can all understand.

We’re going to set up 2 website in real time, one with self-hosted wordpress.org and one with a wordpress.com account. Watch a pro install a theme and finish setting up the basic website on both platforms. Ask your questions, get real answers.

Don’t get me wrong, UX is very important. However, we cannot neglect the developer experience either. Poor DX creates an unpleasant barrier to developers, making it difficult to work efficiently. This can lead to less code being shipped, or worse, bad code being shipped. This talk will cover tools and tricks to provide a better workflow for developers. A main focus includes setting up various development environments for both individuals and teams to use for collaboration.

Freelancers and small agencies typically don’t have the luxury to hire a dedicated sales representative or experienced executive. That doesn’t make business development any less critical. In this session, I will breakdown some practical sales techniques for any free-lance developer or small agency to begin implementing right away. We’ll touch on ways to manage a pipeline, how and where to find new opportunities along with some easy marketing and brand tips. This lesson will help all those technical focused free-lance developers and business owners, who don’t want to become sales professionals themselves but understand finding the next project means you get to sustain your business for the next few months.

This talk will include: – lessons learned from our personal experiences looking for work at everything from partnerships to VIP agencies – when to work for yourself and when to hire on with someone else, – and then job trends in 2019 that open up opportunities for people interested in moving away from the traditional opportunities in development and design.

OOP VS Dopamine Lead Programming

Do you remember when you wrote your first line of code? Or solved fizz-buzz? What about programming the Fibonacci sequence? I’m sure you felt like the smartest person that ever used an IDE (maybe replace with laptop). But how long did that feeling last? Maybe a few seconds – a minute, I’m sure it wasn’t a week, right? You went scurrying along to find the next “big thing” to crack. To prove to yourself that” I’m smart, I’m a programmer and I know things”! But did you realize that you were in a loop? Not a lame Do While loop or the far superior enhanced for loop, I’m talking the Dopamine Loop. Instead of learning how to break out of the infinite loop of (insert infinite loop prob) you are continually feeding the infinite Dopamine Loop. Dopamine is a chemical that is produced by the body that pretty much gives us a “gold star” for ever time we get something right. It helps us chase the next “gold star” but not the same gold star, oh no, this time the star must be bigger and brighter. Sounds a bit more powerful than the enhanced for-loop! With any loop, you need to create a break and step away from the computer. During my talk, we will discuss “breaking the loop” by

*Understanding Dopamine *Understanding Cortisol *How These Chemicals Interact with the Body *Mindful Work *Meditation *Taking Breaks

How do you design an interface that people love to use? You can probably recall a half dozen times where you were frustrated trying to figure out a particular website or web application. It turns out it’s not that difficult and you don’t need to be a designer to craft an interface that allows users to accomplish their goals with minimal friction.

In this talk, I cover 10 universal design principles that anyone can use to improve the quality of a user interface.

Podcasting is a growing medium and a perfect means to build a following around your service, product, or idea. In this session, you will learn how to use a branded podcast to build authority in an industry, learn more about your target audience, network with the right people, and make more sales.

Way back in 2009, PHP 5.3 was released to the world and with it brought support for PHP namespaces — a way of easily separating your code from other developers’ code, which has since become the de facto way of encapsulating functionality across the PHP ecosystem.

With namespaces, multiple packages could use the same class and function names without conflict, because each one would operate in their own PHP namespaces. Unfortunately, many PHP developers who focus on WordPress development may be in the dark on this extremely useful language feature.

This talk aims to shed light on PHP namespaces, especially targeted at WordPress developers who haven’t yet encountered them. Attendees will leave the talk with a firm grasp on PHP namespaces, how they work, and how they can be implemented in plugins and themes.

In this talk we will go over the basics of designing, developing and testing for accessibility. We will cover accessibility principles (POUR: Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, Robust) and approaches to achieving accessibility guidelines including: Color Contrast, Sizing & Spacing, Device Independent User Input, Page Structure, Headings, Testing Tools, Extensions, Testing with a Screen Reader.

When thinking of a business, the most important part is formulating a solution to a problem that consumers have. However, it’s very hard to try to and satisfy the needs of consumers, when you’re unaware of what their needs are, how you can satisfy them, how they’re responding to your offering, and how to make changes according to how they respond.

The first half of the workshop is where we get into fine detail of the importance of these relationships: what strategies to use to obtain them, how to manage them, a few pro tips and much more!

The second half of the workshop will be where you put your knowledge to good use. You will be split into groups, given a scenario and asked to create a step-by-step process on how you will generate leads, communicate with those individuals to understand their needs, and fulfill those needs.

This workshop is open to everyone! There’s knowledge that can be acquired from all ends of the sector. Whether you’re a graphic designer with a freelance business, or full stack developer with a development agency, this can assist you in building relationships, trustworthiness, and ultimately leading to a substantial increase in annual revenue.

Lunch is a buffet of Afro-Caribbean fare from YumVillage:

Lemon Pepper Jerk Chicken—HALAL

Jerk chicken kicked up with lemon pepper

Suya Chicken—HALAL

Fried chicken (contains peanuts)

Ankara—VEGAN

Black-eyed Pea fritters

Ginger Curry Chickpeas—VEGAN

Fried chickpeas tossed in ginger, garlic, curry, and a light agave syrup.

Sweet & Spicy Plantains—VEGAN

Fried Plantain tossed in spicy sweet glaze. Somewhat Spicy

Sweet Pepper Salad—VEGAN

with mixed greens and vinaigrette

Tumeric Rice—VEGAN

Rice with a subtle earthy flavor and a vibrant yellow color.

These are 6 trends seen in ecommerce drawn from the annual data gathered during 2018. They’re not platform specific, and the suggested actions based on them will work with any ecommerce platform in the world. Included are actionable suggestions based on hard data.

As a partner at AMBR Detroit, we’ve worked with many different clients in the past 7 years. One of things we’ve learned the most is managing client expectations is a huge part of we do and sometimes not easy. I’d love to share some of the things we’ve learned that have made it easier for us to do the thing we love to do most, build amazing websites!

During this session we will demonstrate:
– How to set up a page template to use Vue
– How to handle text search and filtering by category submission
– Pagination
…all without ever reloading the page!

How to build a WordPress plugin business and the pitfalls you should avoid while doing so. I will explain my personal journey on what it took to build a business while battling the challenges of life.

Dropshipping is a supply chain management method in which the retailer does not keep goods in stock but instead transfers the customer orders and shipment details to either the manufacturer, another retailer, or a wholesaler, who then ships the goods directly to the customer.

What does that mean in regular English? In short, it means that dropshipping is a method of fulfilling store orders without having the inventory on-hand. This new method of ecommerce has emerged with the rise of suppliers like Alibaba, Amazon, etc., who can fulfill orders for a smaller, well-branded store.

A common way to set up a dropshipping store is to set up a Shopify store, but Shopify is inflexible, difficult to customize and integrate, and not open-source – definitely not the WordPress way!

So, I set out to find out whether we could open-source a dropshipping store. What I learned is: yes, maybe, sort of. I had a lot of frustrations, but I also eventually succeeded in setting up the store. In the process, I learned about the differences between Shopify and WooCommerce, where WordPress shines, and where it could do better – and how to talk about those differences with potential WooCommerce clients.

Learn from my adventure in this talk.

There is about 1.6 billion websites on the internet with millions of new pages created every day. Considering that 65% of search traffic is coming from the first 5 positions of Google and that it can take nearly a year to rank a new page on page 1, the likelihood of launching a website and getting non-branded search traffic to your website is pretty small. We’ll take through the best practices for optimizing and structuring a website as well as properly submitting a website to Google to ensure your website and content is relevant to what your target audience is searching.

The reality of domestic violence doesn’t disappear when people leave enter the digital world. Abusers use technology to exploit and control their victims, meaning that technologists have a responsibility to ensure that users of our products are empowered to protect their safety. How can we build our products to prevent interactions that are harmful and dangerous, and encourage ones that are honest and positive? There is no silver bullet, but thoughtful considerations and small changes while designing and building products make meaningful contributions to people’s safety. This talk will explore how to consider the reality of violence, design against abuse, and identify and provide intervention points.

This presentation will deal explicitly with domestic violence and may be triggering for some attendees. Please do not hesitate to leave the room at any time should you need to.

With the new Gutenberg editor, the possibilities for visually striking and engaging storytelling in WordPress have grown exponentially. For marketing content creators, journalists, and bloggers, harnessing the power of Gutenberg can improve the effectiveness of your messages, elevate your designs, and save you time. This talk will include an overview of marketing and content creation trends, as well as an introduction to block-based design, and how to make it work for blogs and content-heavy sites. Key takeaways: In this talk, you’ll learn about current marketing trends in content design and how to put them into practice on your own site using Gutenberg. You’ll be introduced to wireframing content with block design and how to find and use popular third-party blocks. I’ll share blogging and page design tricks that make the most of block design and can help your content pop and help your site be more successful.

When it comes to search results, sometimes the competition against your website is in the millions, and sometimes earning the top spot is downright impossible. Learn how to make your posts stand out, especially with structured data, even if you can’t gain that coveted number one position.