Presented by Reid Peifer in Development.

“I can predict the long-term outcome of your success if you show me your daily habits.” Got an amazing idea or product in the works for yourself or a client? Real success in our industry depends far more on execution, and the series of small decisions we make, than the killer feature. We’re going to have a conversation about the key elements that differentiate a product in WordPress, the code patterns, the work patterns and how to engage your users.

* Planning for the ecosystem
* Usability testing
* A/B testing
* QA, testing tools and patterns
* Processing feature requests
* Unit testing
* Svn / Git patterns
* Future proofing
* And so much more

Test, Break, Test, Break, Test, Break… Fix! Test. Test. Test.

Presented by Dougal Campbell in Development.

“Warning! Massive Number of GoDaddy WordPress Blogs Hacked!”
“DreamHost: One Million Domains Hacked; WordPress Blogs Infected”
“WordPress Sites on GoDaddy, Bluehost Hacked”

While link-bait headlines scream about hacked WordPress sites, most threats actually come from outside of the WordPress core. Get a wider look at website security and learn how hackers compromise sites. Explore the tools WordPress provides to help plugin and theme developers write secure code, and learn where you can find help to make your own sites more secure.

Presented by Michael Novotny in Development.

Practical techniques, tips, tools, and resources to help test, troubleshoot, and proactively address common WordPress plugin and theme issues.

Presented by Naomi C. Bush in Development.

Lessons learned taking a plugin from a casual .org submission to a paid product.

Presented by Nathaniel Schweinberg in Development.

When working with code, version control is a must. How often do you start writing something and then BOOM: your site just exploded. Or you really want that lolcatz function you wrote back. The beauty of version control is it lets you roll back and restore old versions of code and also allows you to keep track of what you’re working on currently. We’ll be talking about how to 1) use Git and 2) see how it can benefit your WordPress workflow.

Presented by Brian Krogsgard in Development.

So many of us in the WordPress community are “self taught.” But in reality, we rely a great deal on other members in the open source community to learn from and develop our talents. In this talk, I offer practical advice for people who want to learn to develop WordPress websites professionally, but don’t quite know how to make the jump from being a hobbyist to a career WordPress developer.

Presented by Micah Wood in Development.

WordPress makes AJAX easy and all too often developers write their own code for handling AJAX. The purpose of this presentation is to walk developers through the process of implementing basic AJAX functionality in themes and plugins. Topics covered will include best practices, client-side AJAX requests via jQuery, server-side processing of requests with WordPress action hooks, proper inclusion of scripts, localizing data and implementing nonces. Sample code will be made available for download.

Presented by Cliff Seal in Development.

Especially when looking at WordPress as a potential platform for web apps, understanding proper caching techniques is a must—and the Transients API is a powerful tool that sometimes goes unnoticed.

We’ll cover the basics and see easy examples, and then discuss common places where this method can be most helpful, like large, complex queries or pulling from an external API. We’ll also get into the details of the API, covering concepts like object caching, autoloading, and see some examples of more advanced setups.

Presented by Tom McFarlin in Development.

In this session, I’ll be walking developers through a series of tips, best practices, and things to avoid.

The content will be geared towards both aspiring WordPress developers and intermediate WordPress developers. Advanced developers may even come away with something, as well.

I’ll be discussing:

– The WordPress Codex: What It Is, Why It Matters, How To Use It
– The WordPress API’s: What They Are, How To Use Them
– The WordPress Coding Standards & Why You Should Follow Them
– Identifying Your Niche: Themes, Plugins, Applications
– Educating Yourself: Find Your Following, Write, Read, & Comment
– Write A Lot of Code (Or “Code All The Things!”)

Presented by Dave Donaldson in Development.

Plugins are a major part of why WordPress powers millions of blogs and websites around the world. The ability to extend WordPress to meet just about any need is a powerful motivator for choosing WordPress over other alternatives. Having written several plugins, I’ve come to learn many of the ins-and-outs of WordPress plugin development, and this session is a culmination of several things I think every WordPress plugin developer should know.

Presented by Erick Hitter in Development.

Ever wonder what process WordPress undertakes when someone visits your site? Or how it translates that nice permalink to the database query that ultimately delivers the content your visitors requested? Or what it takes to load the appropriate template from your site’s theme?

In this talk, I’ll walk through WordPress’ loading process and shed some light on the various APIs used. I’ll also discuss how these APIs work together to make the software function.

Presented by Drew Morris in Development.

Do you have a concept for a new app idea but don’t know how or where to test it out first? If you enjoy working with new ideas and have a drive for the entrepreneurial spirit then this session is for you. By using rapid prototyping to build out your idea, you can see your app come to life and rethink many aspects that were never thought of in the initial brainstorming phase, thus giving you a fully functioning model of your idea. We will discuss methods and practices for using WordPress as a platform to develop prototypes for web applications in a quick and cost-effective way. We’ll discuss what tools you can use to optimize WordPress as a rapid prototyping platform and where you should focus your time versus things you can worry about later. We will also discuss the benefits and drawbacks of rapid prototyping and how to avoid common mistakes.