We’re happy to have a well rounded series for designers. Most of the sessions below are applicable to people who create or work with themes. Please note that the sessions are not necessarily in the order they’ll be presented and are subject to change.
So You Want to Sell a Theme or Plugin
The WordPress ecosystem continues to expand, due in large part to an ever-increasing array of themes and plugins that are released on a daily basis. And while there are plenty of free options out there, many WordPress companies are doing quite well selling themes and plugins, and you’ve decided you want in on the action. But just because you can write a plugin over a weekend, do you know how to sell it? How will you market it? Will you offer support? How will you handle refund requests? Have you even thought about those things?
This session will talk about all of those things and more when it comes to selling a premium WordPress product. Come learn the mistakes and success I’ve had trying to build Max Foundry into a sustainable WordPress business and how those things can help you.
Designer vs Developer: Creators in WordPress
Are you a Designer or a Developer or both? – This talk will explore myths & preconceptions about roles.. And how when we push these boundaries, we can achieve greater things. Because, if you understand what you’re trying to accomplish both technically and visually, you will have fantastic a outcome.
We’ll touch on “crossover” (golden unicorn) topics such as UI, UX, trusting instincts, user testing, wire framing, information architecture, typography, front end structure, form, and the mindset we need to have in order to challenge both sides of our brain.
WordPress is a great place to put this into practice: as its a perfect environment for leaning php & css, but also its surrounding community support helps us achieve greatness.
Weather you consider yourself a Designer, a Developer, or both: this talk is for you.
Use LESS, Do More: Getting started with a CSS Preprocessor
LESS & SASS are awesome technologies that allow you to write CSS extremely fast with a ton of awesome features. A perfect intro for anyone who wants to get started writing CSS faster, better, and stronger. Get ready to start being crazy productive and writing more manageable, modular CSS with SASS & LESS.
More than a Pretty Comp
There’s a lot of work that goes into designing a website and it’s what you don’t see that is probably the most important. This session will cover the important steps to designing an effective website that truly solves client’s problems. A must hear for freelance designers, professional designers, and anyone that wants to put web strategy on their LinkedIn Profile.
How to Make Six Figures in Web Design
Learn the secrets of how to build a profitable web design business with WordPress. James Dalman will share his expertise and insights into how he created a successful and fulfilling web design business from home.
Making the Plunge into Freelancing
I will be sharing firsthand advice on the tools and skills necessary to be successful as a freelancer. This will include advice on client relations, work habits and running a business. While focused on developers this talk can apply to anyone with a useful WordPress skill that they can use to make a living while being their own boss.
Using Javascripts the “right way”
Learn the “right way” to include javascripts in your theme or plugin and how to pass variables and translated strings to your scripts. We’ll include topics such as:
- Registering and Enqueuing Scripts
- Localization
- Minify
WordPress Navigation in Responsive Design
This presentation covers the many options of how to format navigation when building a responsive site. It touches on user experience as it relates to your navigation and site architecture. We’ll be going over several ways to modify your theme’s menu to optimize it for different navigation patterns as well as the CSS and JS used to make each one work. Additionally, we’ll cover the use of hover properties (and why not to use them) and a walk-through of live examples. Afterwards, we’ll do some team building exercises – trust falls! 😉
What You Should Know About Responsive Web Design
Responsive web design has been around for a few years and with all things web it usually takes 2-3 years before ideologies begin to be widely accepted. So here we are, it’s 2013 and Mashable has labeled this as the year of responsive web design.
So what does that mean for us as web designers? Responsive web design is about much more than building a website that adjusts based on screen size. It’s about overall strategy from business requirements to media queries. We’ll be going over responsive design as a whole and discussing what it takes to launch a successful project.
Color Theory for Site Design
Color is powerful; it affects our moods and can bias the opinion that we develop about a website. If used well, it can turn a website into a beautiful and effective piece of design. Color is an essential part of the design process. It is important to use color effectively as a good web designer.
Your firstborn child theme. Child themes 101+2
Learn how to mod themes the right way. Using child themes you won’t loose your edits when there’s a theme update. (101) We’ll go over the advantages and how to set up a child theme. (102) Plus we’ll cover some tricks to make the process a bit easier.
Designers Toolbox
A discussion of tools, workflows and frameworks to take your idea from conception to finished product. Would love to have an open dialog of some of your favorite applications as well.