Tom McFarlin is a self-employed developer who works at Pressware where he works with his team to build software and provide services for others.

He’s worked with companies such as Envato serving as editor of Tuts+ Code, WordPress.com where he sales WordPress Themes such as Mayer, and worked as the technical editor on Smashing WordPress, Fourth Edition.

He also maintains a number of free plugins and tools including the WordPress Plugin Boilerplate, and he blogs daily.

When he’s not at his computer, you can usually find him playing music, hanging out with his wife, his two daughters, and his two dogs, running, reading, or catching up on movies or episodes of some of his favorite TV shows.

WCATL 2015 Session – TL;DR: We’re going to be talking about the reason for and the significance of coding standards.

Sounds boring, right? Maybe.

But how many times have you inherited code from someone else only to find yourself spending half the time on the project trying to figure out what was going on with the code.

This is a point of frustration that developers have all felt at some point or another especially when inheriting projects from another agency or another group of programmers.

But it doesn’t have to be this way! In fact, coding standards make it possible to actually minimize frustration both for us and our peers.

We’re going to talk about:

• why coding standards are important
• why you should be using them
• the dangers of not using them
• how they contribute to the maintainability of your code over time

Additionally, we’ll take a look at some of the WordPress Coding Standards, important pages for reference, and talk about why these should be a standard part of any WordPress development project.

Stefanie Newell began freelance writing in 2005 and became a published author in 2008. Her exposure to branding, marketing and publicity fueled her desire to help other writers to gain exposure and attention for their books. As a book coach, Newell has successfully assisted writers since 2008 with writing their first book, book marketing, publicity and the like. Newell has spoken at numerous book and film festivals including the National Black Book Festival, Bronzeville Film Festival, and the Los Angeles Black Book Expo. Stefanie’s website is Write One Publications. Her blog is TheWriteOneBlog.com and you can follow her on Twitter, Google+, YouTube, and Facebook.

WCATL 2015 Session – Using Your Platform To Write Your First Book

Like most writers, you may find yourself stuck before you even begin setting pen to paper, simply because you don’t have any idea the steps to write a book.

This session will help you to bring your book idea to fruition. If you aren’t sure what to give thought to first, the Writing Your First Book session will take away the guesswork and provide all the essential steps to write a book. From the writing process to choosing a publishing route, your writing and publishing related questions will be answered.

Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, this session is designed to help you begin your manuscript and complete it! It will walk writers through the first year of writing including: the dreaded procrastination, never having time, fleshing out ideas, writing the first words, writers block, and more!

You will learn:

• How to get started writing
• How to outline your manuscript
• How to make time for writing
• How to cater to your target audience
• Manuscript formatting
• Choosing between self-publishing and traditional publishing
• The basics of editing your first draft and more!

Julien Melissas is a web developer from Asheville, NC, with a passion for clean, efficient code, and re-doing things until they’re just right. Julien loves to learn about new technologies and development workflows. He has been working with WordPress for 5+ years now and has grown quite fond of it.

Julien is a co-founder and technical director at Craftpeak, a creative agency in Asheville. Formally he was a freelancer and independent contractor for companies all over the US, where he built tons of custom WordPress themes and other solutions tailored to the client’s needs. He’s on the Roots development team, and was also an organizer of the 2014 WordCamp in Asheville, NC. Julien loves JavaScript, information architecture open source, the Roots/Sage starter theme, the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, mobile-first web design, and Pit Bulls. When Julien is not in front of the screen working on building beautiful websites or that “next big thing”, you can find him making music, cooking, wrenching on a car since he’s had since 15, or out in the yard gardening with his girlfriend, Hana, and their dogs, Dina and Wilbur.

WCATL 2015 Session – Using Roots/Sage 8.0.0 – A Modern Developers Starter Theme

Roots has always offered awesome tools for theme developers who want a great head start and aren’t afraid to try the latest and greatest. The latest version of the very popular Roots starter theme has been renamed to Sage and now has even more magic to make your life better when developing WordPress themes. We’ll cover some of the newest changes in 8.0.0, including:

• How to install Sage and it’s requirements
• Some of the tools that are used (and how they work)
• How to use Sage
• The name change to Sage and the future of Roots

We’ll also talk about some caveats, requirements, and how to get help and contribute.

Please note: you will get the most out of this talk if you come with some prior knowledge or experience with creating custom WordPress themes, using CSS preprocessors as well as some of the latest front-end tools like Bower, gulp, and Grunt. Or, if you want to come and learn about those things that’s ok too! Keep in mind, this talk is just as much for designers as it is for developers, so devs, don’t be afraid to get up and walk over to the designer track!

Melodye Hunter is an international digital strategist. She empowers savvy entrepreneurs all over the world with the tools to stand out online and claim their expert status.

Melodye is founder and chief creative officer of personal branding firm, Melodye Hunter Creative + Consulting, where she designs and develops stylish and strategic websites and online marketing plans for empire building entrepreneurs.

To learn how to build your brand with class and authenticity online visit MelodyeHunter.com

WCATL 2015 Session – Creating Websites with Style and Strategy

Let’s talk “Website Strategy.” If you’re creating content to attract business, position yourself as an expert and grow an online business, you have to blog differently. You have to blog with a strategy.

You also need a great website that infuses your style and personality with attractive visual elements. Your site should flow so that visitors can purchase your products or services easily. It doesn’t have to be complicated. Your website can be simple, stylish and strategic. I’ll show how to use WordPress to do just that.

Gone are the days where all you need is a cute lil blog and the customers come rolling in. Today there is so much noise online, your competition is fighting for the attention of your potential customers. You need to stand out…and fast!

The best way to do that is with a strong website strategy.

We’ll talk social media, opt-ins and calls to action so that your website grabs your visitors’ attention and moves them to take action.