Do you have a form builder? Gravity, Ninja, WP, Caldera, etc. Did you know that it can do a whooooole lot more than just contact forms?

That’s right. And many of the jobs you think you need a “specialized” plugin for, or have to hire a custom developer to achieve, your little form builder can do just as well. With no custom code needed.

Yes, your form builder can do that.

And doesn’t it make sense to get the most out of the investment you’ve already made?

Sometimes what you’re looking for is sitting right under your nose, ready to go to work for you or your clients. Come see me, and I’ll show you around. #Facts.

I’ll provide an explanation for why WordPress is a great option for a web application foundation. First, I’ll talk about what a web application is. Then, I’ll cover the difference between a foundation and a framework. I’ll cover how it relates to WordPress (and what we can use out-of-the-box), what we may need to develop on our own, common practices for building such applications, and what a basic project may look like. Some very, very basic object-oriented practices for approaching a project is a help, but not necessary.

If you’re building profitable WordPress sites for yourself or client, you can increase their value and improve user experience through A/B testing. This talk will walk you through the basic technical, statistical, and strategic concepts you’ll need to get started and close with a survey of tools you can use – including one that’s fully integrated into WordPress.

WordPress has some great internal APIs to work with WordPress things. Sometimes we need to move beyond $wpdb. We will take a high-level walk through the benefits of things like custom tables, ElasticSearch, Redis, and other external services. Some specific implementation examples will be provided along with learning curve, risks, and potential real world use cases.

Whether you manage a large site or a small one, if you write your own code one of the most tedious parts can be getting started. This talk will show you techniques such as scaffolding tools and others to get you a fully functional WordPress plugin with unit tests, continuous integration, a local development environment and more with just a single command. It will help you stop rebuilding the wheel so you can focus on the functionality you need and can be extended to themes, libraries or whatever else you need.

Do you constantly feel like you are hacking code together? Do you find it difficult to maintain, adapt or even read code you’ve written previously? Chances are, you are not taking into consideration some of the basic principles of software architecture. Come learn how some simple habits and changes in perspective can transform you from a 1x developer to a 10x developer!

Performance is something at the forefront of every site owner’s mind. A slow site will always scare off impatient users and customers. But how can you make your site faster without adding hardware? The answer: caching.

Let’s roll up our sleeves and dig into the different types of caching and how they relate to your WordPress site. If you are wondering how to improve your plugin or site’s performance, then this is the talk for you. Leave with an understanding of the different types of caching and when each type is appropriate so you can improve your site’s performance and conversion rate and start cashing larger checks.

Do you hate writing proposals? Not sure what you should include? Learn to quickly create website proposals quickly and confidently using various tools available to a freelancer.

Session Includes: Sections to consider for your proposal, popular tools that contain templates, or creating your own template from the ones provided.

Being a blogger sounds like fun, but not when you are staring at an empty calendar you have committed to filling with content. April will walk you through planning your content for the next 12 months, so you always know what you are writing about. Walk away with a solid plan and the confidence to start creating great value for your readers.

Does this quote resonate with you…

“Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.”

Given the amount of data available today, you need to know what marketing endeavors are working for your business. With this information, you will be able to focus the marketing budget toward what is working and identify where things need to be changed.

The options, tools, and technologies available to developers seems to be ever increasing in today’s development world. In fact, it’s become almost overwhelming, even for those focused just focused on a particular area of development. Anxiety and confusion can effect one’s professional career and mental health.

What People Will Learn
This talk will walk through simple but important steps that can apply to both beginner developers and senior developers in terms of how to determine what areas that they might want to focus in, and where they can go. Those that manage remote teams can also learn how to encourage developers and individuals on their teams.

Why It’s Important
Work/Life balance is important, but the “fear of missing out” is a powerful and many times an overwhelming emotion. Especially since many developers appreciate that they can’t learn everything, especially if they have a family and social life. So many in our industry are overworked, fearful on some level, and feeling they are not putting the right priorities first.

My Experience With This Topic
It’s simple – as a developer for 11+ years in the PHP, JavaScript, WordPress, tech conference, and other communities (and 25+ years in general)… as someone who has a family of three children and other responsibilities… I can personally relate.

We’re all humans, right? The primary way we exchange information with each other is by having a conversation and that’s what users expect from websites and apps. Everything from lead forms to error messages are a part of the conversation. And just like a conversation, the flow of information is expected to go both ways.

In this talk, we’ll discuss the art of designing the words people see when they interact with software and how to craft a genuine conversation with your users.

Are you at the point in your web business where you can use some help, or know you will be soon, yet think you can’t afford it? Think again! At some point, if you want to get a part of your life back, and actually be able to relax, sleep, and not worry so much about your business, you’ll need to delegate your work to someone else. So why not build a capable but affordable virtual team to help? This presentation shows you how to get started with one or more virtual assistant as well as some great tips for making them, and yourself, as productive as possible.

What about those who use screen readers? What really drives them crazy? What do they wish web designers knew? Come learn what the visually impaired want most from your website.

This session is for Website Developers and Designers who are looking to provide a more personalized customer experience. The tools and technologies have advanced now to the point where, with a little work and patience, you can provide a personalized customer experience that speaks directly to your customers’ needs and desires on an individual, customer-by-customer basis. No more one-size-fits-all.

We’ll review, on a high level, the tools and strategies you can begin to implement today to attract and build a loyal customer base by providing each customer with a REMARKABLE, personalized customer experience.

As more people across the world start using WordPress, the more we will all start to work with people that have different world views. There’s nowhere that makes that more clear than in the global WordPress community. Join Josepha, the new Executive Director of WordPress, for an interactive discussion of learning to work across cultures, whether in a single office or across the globe.

A sort of 101 on what General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) means for developers (and site owners), and how to approach certain aspects of it.

Rather than waste money on magazine ads and coupon books, you’ve invested in a website to promote your business. I’m sure it’s a beautiful site. You might even get some traffic. Congratulations!

Is that traffic beneficial? Are your marketing efforts actually working? Is it helping grow your business?

I’d like to show you what you can do to better understand traffic to your site. I’ll explain the different ways you can measure your site. I’ll show you which are helpful, and which are distractions. In fact, we’ll start to develop a digital measurement plan for your website (and your business).

Consultations, estimates, proposals, contracts, oh my! If onboarding your clients is a struggle, this session is for you. I’ll share my super straightforward system and break everything down into actionable steps you can put in place to get clients to sign on the dotted line. When you have a buttoned up client onboarding process, your clients will have confidence moving the project forward with you. It’s how you set the stage for a smooth and successful project (and keep yourself efficient, calm and sane).

Imagine a website that is getting 1000 users a day. Now imagine that about 50 of them are spending money on the site. You probably want to get more of the users that are spending money on the site but how do you know where these users are coming from? Maybe you know that all of them are coming from Twitter or Facebook but do you know which post or tweet refers the most people who actually convert to customers? Or, how do you know how many signed up to receive your lead magnet? This is where analytics comes in.

In this talk, we will discuss:

• How to see where your users are coming from
• What pages/posts your users most spend time on
• What actions your users do on your website
• What UTM codes are and how to use them
• How to see exactly which links in your marketing drives the most traffic and conversions
• And much more!

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In the life of most WordPress business owners, there is an ongoing battle between strategy and execution. We struggle with trying to improve our business with better systems and processes in the middle of the chaos of daily activity. This talk offers a simple strategy that you can implement to move your business forward in the middle of the whirlwind.

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The new WordPress block editing experience, code-named Gutenberg, was released the end of last year. At the time, some people chose to temporarily opt out of using the new editor. As the WordPress ecosystem introduces better and better integrations with the new editor, let’s take a closer look at what it looks like to use the block editor today.

This session will be a live demo with opportunities for interactive Q&A during the presentation.

You’re a WordPress developer who wants to use object-oriented programming in their next project. You’re already familiar with concepts like inheritance. The issue is that you’re not sure how to apply those concepts to design classes that feel useful.

This isn’t something to feel ashamed about! In fact, it’s a common problem when trying to use object-oriented programming with WordPress. It’s hard to know how to design classes that work well with WordPress.

Well, you’re in luck! This is what we’ll go over during this talk.

We’ll start by going over the prevalent class design in the WordPress ecosystem. We’ll analyze what it’s doing and why it leaves you feeling unsatisfied.

Then we’ll look at how object-oriented programming expects you to design classes. We’ll finish by looking at strategies that you can use to design classes. This should let you finally design classes that feel meaningful to use!

When it comes to talking about their businesses, many people are so close to their products or services they don’t know where to start. The StoryBrand Marketing Framework helps companies understand what customers are looking for so they can tell their story in such a way people listen. The human brain is drawn to CLARITY and away from confusion. If customers are confused about what you offer, they’ll look past you for somebody who can say it clearly. The StoryBrand Marketing Framework will teach you how to clarify your message and communicate to customers in a way that gets them to respond. Once you clarify your message, your marketing starts working for you, your team members are converted into a sales force and your customers speak a viral message that spreads. Companies that clarify their messaging win in the marketplace. Visit storybrand.com to learn more about how you can clarify your message so customers listen.

It is well known in the software and website development world that scope creep is the primary cause of projects running over time and budget. At the very least, uncontrolled scope creep will impact your project profit margin as you try and accommodate both legitimate and impractical client requests for change.

In this presentation, we will discuss how to minimize scope creep by acknowledging and planning for change instead of penalizing the client for it. We will cover the elements of a good change control plan and how acknowledging change up front can actually set you ahead of your competition and get you more clients.

Attendees will learn how to craft a good change control plan, how to educate the client regarding change, and how to use the change control plan as a selling feature. Attendees will leave with a sample written change control plan they can take and modify to meet their specific needs.

I am the CEO of a digital agency (Sideways8) and CTO of a nonprofit (48in48). I host two podcasts (soon to be three), work out regularly, read a book every week or two, and write two to three blog posts per week. 95% of my work days end at 5pm. I also have five kids, never work weekends, and I don’t consider myself to be busy. In this talk I will discuss my philosophy on getting things done and the strategies I use to get a lot done in a short amount of time. I believe every person can be insanely productive when given the right tools, mindsets and strategies.

The blogging world has changed. The words “build it and they will come” no longer works for us bloggers. If we want to reach our goals we’ve set for this year we need to focus in a few key areas; and make sure we have the right goals set. If done correctly, we will be set up for a substantial blogging WIN in 2019!

Note for WordCamp Organizers: My talk will be about creating blog posts with a strong call to action (images, titles, formatting), how to properly share your posts on social media and other places and how often, best content SEO practices and basic understanding, and lastly, link building along with building a community/team around your blog.)

Does your business serve a specific geographic location? If so, you need to focus on Local SEO and particularly your Google My Business (GMB) listing.

Claiming, setting up and posting weekly to your GMB account up can be crucial to your Local SEO (ex. dog groomer near me) by increasing your chances of showing up in Google’s Local Pack, Local Finder and Google Maps.

Whether you have a special to promote, a blog you want to get eyes on or simply want more traffic to your business or WordPress site, you should optimize and post weekly to GMB.

GMB is NOT a set it and forget it platform for your business. Tricia will share Local SEO tips, tricks and best practices to get your local business found. This will include: claiming your GMB account, optimizing your GMB account, posting to GMB, getting reviews, your NAP, citations and much more!

Key takeaways:
• The keys to properly optimizing your GMB Account
• Best practices for on-site SEO for your Local Business
• NAP and Citations – how to get it right from the start

Video improves all types of website metrics, including visitor engagement, time spent on page, clickthrough and landing page conversion rates. It can also improve a site’s Google Page Ranking. In this talk, I will show examples of videos, and look at how they’re used, where they appear on a site, and results.

Internationalization (I18n) is important for plugins and themes as it helps your published plugin or theme reach international audiences. How do you internationalize your themes and plugins? Why is it important? Why should you care? Come find out these answers and how to get started internationalizing your themes and plugins. We will look at practical steps and real code to see how everything fits together.

Don’t you wish there was a way to write content faster without having to log into your WordPress site? Turns out there is and it is called Markdown, which can be written in any text editor you choose. Based on the basics of HTML and with a goal of making marked up content as readable as possible, Markdown takes only minutes to learn and is the most transportable way you can write your content. Sites like GitHub, Bitbucket and Reddit already expect it and now WordPress does too.

Walk away with

• A working knowledge of how to notate plain text to be rendered as beautiful HTML
• A Cheatsheet for everything else
• Strategies for content curation a storage using Git

If you’ve ever wanted to build your own plugin for WordPress, this is the session for you. We’re going to start from scratch and work our way up.

First, we’ll take a look at the basic requirements of a plugin. Next we’ll take our example plugin idea and break it into the various components and steps that we’ll need. We’ll code up the plugin together and install it on our sites, debugging any problems that arise. Finally, we’ll look at ways that we could further extend our plugin.

This tutorial assumes some HTML and CSS knowledge, but you don’t already need to be familiar with writing PHP or JavaScript.

Building your freelance business starts with a purpose and a focused plan for getting there. This workshop is designed to help you set your business goals, and develop the concrete steps you need to take to hit them. By focusing on a few strategic goals, you’ll be able to prioritize your time on the areas that will bring the greatest impact to your business.

I recently joined Dow Jones as a WP developer. I discovered not everyone was a WP developer but PHP or other developers who did some WordPress. I had to figure out how to win adoption of ‘the WordPress way’ across multiple countries, devs, stakeholders, & online publications. We also had to make sure that legacy plugins, tools, etc kept up with the new changes of WordPress 5. I’ll share how I won adoption and coordination by using Git for collaboration, regularly scheduled meetings (without death by meetings), & creating standards. I’ll also give a peek at pitfalls to avoid when trying to work within org that never did remote before & worked with multiple outside agencies.

You know security is important and want your site to be secure, but what will actually help? There’s so much information to be found on securing your site, but what are the myths and what actually helps? Find out how to avoid the myths and implement real security.

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You don’t need a long, complicated sequence or hundreds of emails in order to convert your prospects to buyers. Discover how to quickly and easily make sales without complicated programs or software. Sometimes the shortest marketing funnel is the best…and it’s only one step.

Did you know that website structure is good for your visitors and for SEO? We’ll discuss why having a good site structure helps visitors find your content and inform search engines what your content is about. We’ll discuss the how to configure WordPress for optimal site structure, what plugins to use, and the difference between categories and tags.

Attendees will learn about the two different types of site structure, what search engines look for, and most importantly why good site structure is good for usability. We’ll dig into designing permalink structure, slugs, and breakdown taxonomies and when to use them appropriately. This session will help both developers and users understand how to best structure their websites for both visitors and search engines.

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The WordPress community has spoken, and both Elementor and Beaver Builder have edged out as the page builders with the most active installs. Then along came Gutenberg last year, causing us to all rethink our life. In this talk, we’ll compare Beaver Builder, Elementor, and Gutenberg side by side, discussing their strengths and weaknesses. We’ll rate each one based on multiple factors such as stability, options, and ease of use, then declare a winner. There can only be one.

The best tools, tips and tricks to podcasting with WordPress.

Recent laws (with more on the way!) make it a requirement that even the most basic of sites and blogs have a Privacy Policy and follow best privacy practices. And working with a law firm or consultant can prove to be costly and overwhelming. Luckily, recent WordPress updates have done much of the hard work for us, but we still need to spend the time to document our practices and policies, which isn’t always a straightforward task. We’ll discuss the requirements of a Privacy Policy, how to use the new built-in WordPress privacy tools, and provide open-sourced examples that you can take and make your own. You will walk out of this session with everything you need to publish or update your privacy policy with confidence.

Transform Google Analytics from a maze of baffling figures to a robust optimization tool that drives the success of your WordPress projects. In this session, you will learn how to “cage the beast” that is Google Analytics allowing you to achieve insights that actually matter.

We will cover how move beyond stock metrics to track meaningful engagement and conversions. Start scoring referrers, content, website changes and much more allowing you to uncover the most effective opportunities for improvement. Finally, learn how to integrate reporting to empower smarter data-driven decisions.

For those who are determined to create impactful websites with online marketing that maximizes results, this talk will deliver actionable items you can implement as soon as you get back into your office.

Securing WooCommerce can sometimes feel like a moving target. In this talk, We will review some easy and actionable steps for securing your store without annoying or scaring off customers. You’ll also learn to integrate free services that will improve the security of your website or store.

This session will help you find answers to these common questions:

1. Do I need to worry about security? I don’t get that many visitors.
2. My site keeps getting hacked, what should I do?
3. Do I need to do anything if I am using managed hosting?

Websites with a contact form, order forms or e-commerce solutions, it is important that the customer receives a response. It has become more difficult to make this happen every time. I’ll walk you through setting up DNS correctly dealing with SPF, DKIM, DMARC and the like. I’ll also touch on 3rd party mail services and plugins you should use.

Modern browsers, JavaScript libraries, and CSS3 have made it easier than ever to create exciting, dynamic animated experiences within web interfaces. But we have also seen the unfortunate side effect of trying to do too much: websites that are resource hogs, eating up bandwidth and slowing load times to a crawl, all for effects that are ultimately just there for the “show” factor. This talk will discuss how to use these animation skills for good: to establish context, convey status, give feedback, and yes, even add a little delight. Along the way, we’ll discuss the principles of animation that guide everything from your favorite feature films to the actions of a button on your screen, and learn how deliberate animation choices can improve the experience for your user.

WooCommerce is currently the most powerful tool to build an online store. Harnessing the power of WordPress as its foundation, WooCommerce adds all the functionality and freedom business owners need to build the perfect store. With all this freedom through themes, plugins, and extensions, it can be overwhelming to get started.

But it doesn’t have to be. Setting up an online store can be summarized in a few important steps and we will go over them together so you can start selling and building your online business as quickly and as easily as possible.

We will go over a bunch of “How To’s”
Choose a quality theme for your WooCommerce site
Properly setup your shipping and payment methods
Add your products and describe them in the best possible way
Setting up promotions, discounts and other extra features
Adding additional protection for customer data

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Ah, clients—we need them, we crave them. WordPress consultants and freelancers mostly live in attraction mode, constantly building a vibrant roster of sweet-spot clients. But not every client is a good client. So while you’re courting new relationships, beware of the challenging types of clients almost never worth the trouble.

After this session attendees will be able to:

• Identify danger signals before engagement
• Learn 5 steps for handling difficult clients
• Discover how to politely fire a challenging client
• How to prevent future nightmare clients

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Do you constantly worry about making deadlines, avoiding scope creep, staying in budget? No matter how big or small your digital agency is, I have tips, tricks, templates and tools that will help you develop processes to allow you to relax and enjoy your work again.

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With the glut of information and competitors online, how will you engage busy buyers who have such short attention spans? Two ways: by using design to draw folks into the key messages on your website; and by crafting those messages to make a genuine connection.

We’ll look at a pile of before-and-after examples to explore some surprisingly simple ideas and insights that really can help your site stand out. The trick, as we’ll see, is to approach things from the buyer’s perspective instead of the seller’s perspective.

What is a featured snippet and why should you care? If you woke up today thinking you can succeed in SEO doing the same thing you did yesterday, you would be wrong. In 2019, the answer to ranking at the top of Google and driving more traffic is this: optimize for featured snippets (aka “Position 0.”). Come to this session and find out what featured snippets are and how to optimize for them, how to start showing up for voice search, and how to drive more traffic without creating new content or getting more backlinks.

The term “incremental website design” was first introduced to capture the reality of constant new content creation and adjustments inherent in the inbound marketing methodology. Gone are the days of building the website and leaving it alone for months on end. This workshop will focus on packaging and selling monthly retainers for incremental website design and maintenance specifically for small business owners. We will discuss contracts, monthly strategy meetings, goal setting, and the array of service options, and pricing.

Suggested questions:

• How do you manage expectations and control scope creep each month?
• What are the downside risks of incremental design?
• When is it best not to suggest incremental design?

Did you know there are mini-WordCamps that happen every month all over Atlanta? WordCamp is awesome. From the great topics and happiness bar to meeting new people & catching up with old friends, everyone has a great time. But you don’t have to wait once a year to get this experience! Come meet the organizers of our local WordPress meetups and learn how you can continue your WordCamp experience year-round.

If you’re local and applied to speak, but didn’t get accepted this year — or, if you’re thinking of applying to speak next year — this is where to start.

A short introduction to markup and CMS for creatives. A list of resources for learning more about WP, Gutenberg and editing themes. For developers looking to learn more about design; an introduction to design concepts and programs (freeware) for editing graphics.

Make sure your website is more than a brochure, make it your unfair advantage. Customers find out everything about you from your site. Making sure your site is designed to position you as the solution to your customer’s problems is a critical step in acquisition and retention. Together, we’ll define your customer’s biggest challenge and make sure your website shows why you are the answer.

As we take our first steps into a block-based editing system within WordPress 5.0 and beyond, designing exceptional WordPress experiences has never been more important.

Let’s take a look at how to level-up our design capabilities and explore strategies to building block experiences within Gutenberg that can be notably complex, yet extraordinarily simple at the same time.

In a world where the lines between design and development are blurred more than ever, we’ll dive into design patterns, user experience, and even a couple programming techniques and ideas — all to understand how to design remarkable user experiences in Gutenberg blocks.

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When a website is inaccessible, it is not just an issue of compliance, it is just bad practice on display. People with disabilities ranging from blindness, deafness, dyslexia and others may navigate and consume content in different ways with assistive technology (like screen readers, captioning or joy sticks). Therefore it is not that difficult to understand why lack of accessibility negatively impacts SEO. Web accessibility is not just for developers, it is just as important for marketers to make it part of their digital marketing to ensure that opportunities for success aren’t missed.

We explain what web accessibility (WCAG 2.1) is and why it is so important we understand it and be compliant.

Then we offer our easy and actionable steps that you can take and incorporate into your design and development process.

We also explain each step so you know exactly what they are and how to implement them.

Finally we offer some links to completely free software that will help you test and remediate your website.

With the explosive adoption of Smart Speakers, the primary interaction with your content will become auditory instead of visual. On the world wide web, your brand revolves around a URL, logo, tagline, color palette, font, images, etc., but when your audience is no longer seeing your content, traditional brand elements become invisible. In a voice first environment, when your audience just asks for what they want, they expect the answer to be returned verbally.   In a voice first world, what does your brand look like, (I mean, sound like)? In this talk, I explore the components of a verbal brand, how to prepare for the shift from written content to verbal content, as well as the future of voice technology and how to prepare for it.

While talks from Bobby and Jenny this year will help get you up to speed with some of the core aspects of SEO, Google makes subtle changes to their algorithm constantly. This talk will rapidly cover many of the changes that Google has made in the past year.

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Do you use photos on your website and social media? Are those photos helping or hurting your business? Join us as professional photographer, Maryann Davidson, reveals the subconscious messages we send potential clients with the photos we use. Your photos can turn people away or inspire them to connect to you. The right photographs can actually give you a competitive edge.

This talk will provide an overview of the planning and execution of taking over an existing website. Sometimes we don’t get to start a project at the beginning. This talk will show users what to expect, and how to be prepared for it. Topics will include: Executing a safe handoff, initial housekeeping, planning for improvements, staging and deployment of changes, stakeholder management, and ongoing maintenance.