Sessions

Details of the Ambassador Program

Description:

The basics of setting up a store on WooCommerce

Learning Objectives:

• Know how to get rolling with WooCommerce
• Know what to think about that’s not in the plugin

Prerequisites

Know how to install and configure plugins

Growing Your Business by Finding Your Niche

Description:

If your marketing isn’t working, it might be because you haven’t properly branded your business. This session will cover how to develop your own brand, how to position it in the marketplace and attract the right clients. We’ll also cover ways to develop messaging for your business.

This session will be a condensed version of the work we do with all new clients to prepare their business for effective marketing. This will be easy to understand and practical.

Intended Audience: This session will help small business owners and leaders to improve their business with better branding.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how to position their business in the marketplace
• Know how to write and refine their brand’s message
• How to gain more business and more efficiency by finding a niche in business

Prerequisites

No prerequisites. This is geared toward freelancers and business owners to help them gain more business.

Description:

WordPress in a container. It’s the holy grail of portability in the world where Docker and its siblings exist. The talk will discuss containers in brief, then on how to make your WordPress installation in a container for various purposes – development, CI/CD, deployment.

Learning Objectives:

• know what a container is
• how can containers be useful in WordPress
• where containers fit in your development / deployment lifecycle

Prerequisites

Intermediate/advanced developers, system administrators and DevOps engineers working with WordPress

Description:

How to increase security and protect your WordPress site against possible attacks. Rodrigo Donini share some of his experiences in projects he has already worked on.

Learning Objectives:

– Improve security
– Prevent malicious attacks

Prerequisites

Developer

Continuation of previous session

Little Things Make a Big Difference

Description:

So you can build a technically wonderful website, but does it appeal to your audience? Does it have finesse? Who is it designed for: the owner, the designer/developer, or the customer/user? Are forms user-friendly? This talk will show you the things that make a website more complete, user-friendly, and user-appealing. Topics will include favicons, custom 404 pages, form buttons, footers, colors, SSL certificates, and more.

Learning Objectives:

• How to add finesse to a WordPress website
• Some of the tips/tricks that can make a site more user-friendly

Prerequisites

Basic WordPress

7 Google Analytics Mistakes Holding you Back & How to Fix Them

Description:

Your website has a powerful story about your business.  This seminar will tell you how to get that story from your Google Analytics by avoiding seven common mistakes probably holding you back.

We’ll start with installing Google Analytics and why WordPress plugins simply your life.  Then we’ll move into common errors and how to stop making them.

After the seminar you will be able to hear your website’s compelling story about your business and customers.  You will be making strategic decisions about things that matter your business.

Learning Objectives:

• Which reports help you the most
• Which performance indicators matter
• How to track online campaigns in social media, email and more.

Prerequisites

Beginner

Organizing Your Content- Pages, Posts, Categories and Tags

Description:

In this session, attendees will learn how and when to use Pages vs Posts and how to organize their posts using Categories and Tags.

Learning Objectives:

• When to use Pages
• When to use Posts
• How to organize Categories
• How to make use of Tags

Prerequisites

No prior knowledge required

Optimizing WordPress for High Traffic Websites

Description:

At BiblioCommons, we use WordPress to power BiblioWeb, a SaaS product that provides websites for public libraries and has over 7,000,000 page views per month. As our web traffic has grown, we have faced a number of scaling issues and have learned a few hard lessons. This presentation will cover some of the patterns and practices we follow to keep everything running smoothly. Topics discussed will include the WordPress REST API, caching strategies, helpful plugins, monitoring tools, and more.

Learning Objectives:

Attendees can expect to walk away with practical knowledge that they can use in their day-to-day development. They will also learn about some default WordPress behaviours which can cause performance problems, but have simple solutions.

Prerequisites

This session is primarily meant for developers, but aspects will be beneficial to a broader audience as well.

Description:

In this interactive session, Gilles will share the secrets of starting, managing and maintaining a successful website design/development business. Whether you’re thinking of starting a business or you’re currently managing one, you’re likely to learn valuable tips.  Although the session is web business-centric, the lessons can be applied to many types of businesses.

In this dynamic session, audience participation amplifies the learning possibilities. Come learn the secrets and have fun!

Learning objectives:

• Learn the Number 1 Quality most successful business owners possess
• How to overcome common challenges
• Have a clear understanding of the challenges at start-up
• Learn Tricks to maintain the business and make it prosper

Prerequisites:

A curiosity to learn about starting and/or maintaining a web building business.

Description:

As the WordPress community and its users increasingly become more transnational in its breadth and reach, new issues and challenges have begun to arise. With his experience working from behind the Great Firewall of China, John will discuss the current status of global Internet censorship, the rise of “Internet Sovereignty”, and how web site owners and developers can best reach users and community behind restricted national networks. This is intended for WordPress developers of all skill levels, WordPress beginners, business people and those interested in the greater climate of the Web.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how web access is restricted in major business markets around the world (China, Turkey, Russia, US, India, S. Korea, etc) and how it affects WordPress
• Understand how a growing acceptance of “Internet Sovereignty” in some countries, a “sovereign” Internet defined by physical borders, can threaten open source projects and communities like WordPress.
• Understand how the Great Firewall of China differs from other methods of global censorship using personal anecdotes from time working there and data collected afterward.
• Learn how to build a WordPress site so as to reduce the likelihood of a site being blocked or have access restricted in countries with changing laws around internet access
• Design tips on which plugins cause issues, what functionalities decrease performance due to in-country restrictions, and what may block a site.
• How you can get involved in keeping an open web through various organizations around the world.

Prerequisites

Accessible to All

Template code in functions kills kittens: using MVC in WordPress Plugins and Themes

Description:

A primer for using MVC in WordPress. A path to cleaner, more readable and maintainable code. Definitely for intermediate developers to hone their skills further.

Learning Objectives:

• create plugins and themes that not only adhere to WP coding standards but standards of Object Oriented PHP as well.
• be a good citizen of the open source community by creating readable code.
• learn how to not kill kittens

Prerequisites

PHP/plugin/theme development experience.

Description:

Open discussion about programming planned for WordPress Toronto: Teaching Kids Code, Content for Coders, Outreach to BIAs. Everyone interested in WordPress is welcome to attend and share their opinion.

Learning Objectives:

The desired outcome is to know what members of the WordPress community want, and give everyone an opportunity to participate in the discussion and the community.

Prerequisites

Everyone is welcome

Description:

You have a plugin, but you want users to be able to use it in their native language.  Learn how to get it ready for translation, things to watch out for, and tips for maintaining it as you change the plugin over time.

Learning Objectives:

Be able to take a plugin with strings that can’t be translated, and be able to go through and add the ability to translate

Prerequisites

Some code/development experience

An introduction to Syntactically Awesome Style Sheets

Description:

My intention is to introduce developers to Sass and task managers , which will make their lives a lot easier when designing their sites

Learning Objectives:

• i want them to try sass because once they do they will never go back
• it will make their understanding of css better because they can test things on the fly and see the results instantly.

Prerequisites

Ideally a basic understanding  of html css, and js

Fast & Deadly: WordPress Websites Need To be Mobile Friendly: An Advertiser’s Perspective

Description:

The core principles of a great user experience are Content, Design & Functionality, and Speed. Some people say that we are living in the golden age of user experience but far too often we are technically trudging behind in providing rich and useful experiences and we especially lag behind when it comes to mobile-friendly websites. In fact, 53% of people will abandon a mobile site if it takes more than three seconds to load. Speed is a developer’s problem, a designer’s problem, and also a marketer’s problem. This presentation provides global and Canadian-specific facts and figures about how we are failing people visiting our websites and also covers the ways we can be improving our WordPress websites.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand that our websites are slow
• Understand that our websites are not mobile friendly
• Understand why these two things are problems
• How we can go about fixing our slow and mobile unfriendly websites
• The importance of all getting our WordPress websites to be mobile friendly and load quickly

Prerequisites

All Levels

Description:

Intermediate Users would be the intended audience. This session I will be talking about how to utilize  your content, re-purpose it to become known as an expert in your field – no matter what you want to do or where you are in your career. The process is the same. I say Intermediate users because they have content to use – however, any audience will get something out of it. I will discuss how to move from their WP Website to utilizing plug ins and social media to create and repurpose the content.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify what they want to be known for
• Understand HOW to repurpose content they already have the right way
• Discover how combining relationships with content drives influence
• Understand how to reach international influencers In Real Life starting from online ground zero.

Prerequisites

An idea of what they want to be known as the expert for.

Description:

WordPress is a great platform where you can quickly create a web presence, but do you want more engagement? Do you want to take your web presence to the next step and build an online community? If this direction sounds exciting, then BuddyPress is the right plugin to get there with minimal fuss!

BuddyPress is a fun and flexible plugin that can be used to build online communities, teams and groups on top of the WordPress platform. BuddyPress lets you add extended member profiles, activity streams, user groups, messaging, notifications and more.

Although the installing and configuring BuddyPress is not hard, you probably want to consider adding the plugin after you already have a basic understand of WordPress.

Learning Objectives:

• BuddyPress Introduction
• BuddyPress Site Examples
• How to install BuddyPress
• How to configure BuddyPress
• Demo of the BuddyPress User Experience

Prerequisites

Intermediate WP operational knowledge

Creating WordPress community with the human voice

Description:

Description: People in the WordPress open source project spends a lot of time and energy supporting live events, like meetups and WordCamps. In this talk we’ll talk about the science of human connection, and how live events support the WordPress project by creating a participatory and welcoming community, by talking!

Learning Objectives:

• If you’re a talker, make some space with your ears and learn what other people have to say.
• If you’re a listener, share your thoughts and enrich someone else’s understanding of the world around them.
• If you’re an organizer, make the space for people to feel safe to open their mouths in a way that helps everyone.  

Prerequisites

none

A Primer into what Headless and Brainless WP even means

Description:

Now that WordPress has an amazing Rest API, there is a lot of buzz around “Headless” or “Decoupled” sites. However, these are mostly covered with “how-to” and not “what this is” articles. My presentation aims to provide a higher level insight into what it means to be using WordPress, JavaScript and the Rest API, all in tangent. It will go into the Pros and Cons of using Limbless, Headless, and Brainless WordPress.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the differences between Limbless, Headless, and Brainless WordPress configurations
• Structure their next non-traditional WordPress site with confidence using the proper solution for the task at hand
• Begin using WordPress as a development platform for cutting edge web solutions

Prerequisites

Basic Plugin / Theme Development

Everything I needed to know about life, I learned at coding school.

Description:

This session is for those that are thinking of upping their coding game and attending a coding bootcamp. It is intended for anyone who wants to know more about those coding camps and whether it is right for them or not.

Learning Objectives:

• What level of skill do I need going into this?
•  What kinds of schools exist?
• What questions should I ask before I sign up?
• What can I expect to learn?
• What are the pros and cons?

Prerequisites

None

And an Execution plan for your WordPress Website

Description:

Before starting with keyword research, writing great content or even looking for links to reference your site, the most important thing is to make sure that your site has passed the health standards for SEO.

SEO without implementing certain fundamentals will lack results.

If certain health checks are not conducted on your WordPress site, it can completely destroy your SEO.

In this session, we explore on what health checks and resources you need to review prior to launching your SEO efforts for your website. In addition, we go through a proper SEO execution plan that you can implement to help your WordPress site rank higher in the Search Engines.

Learning Objectives:

• Checklist that helps with better SEO with a WordPress website
• Overview of the best plugins used for SEO
• Implementing patches for a better side performance which in turn helps in SEO
• SEO execution plan for any WordPress site

Prerequisites

Anyone can benefit from this talk.

Description:

A required feature of any website these days is a contact form. There are many free and premium plugins for WordPress that can be used to create simple contact forms, surveys and quizzes, user generated content, email marketing captures, or even complex conditional ecommerce checkouts.

We’ll go through the options in what forms plugin will allow you to make the form that suites your needs. Also, we’ll look at some features that makes your forms easier to fill out than others.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand that not all form plugins are created equal
• Understand what challenges users have in filling out forms
• Be able to pick the right form plugin for your needs

Prerequisites

Be able to install plugins

An example with WP Rocket

Description:

Releasing a new version of a plugin for more than 200 000 websites is a sensitive process that needs to be carefully planned out.

In this presentation, I’ll talk about the structure & processes that our team has put in place for releasing a new version of WP Rocket, as well as the tools we use to plan, track & test to ensure a release as smooth as possible for our customers.

I’ll get into development workflow, but also everything that happens before and after: release scope, translations, communication planning & more

There is something for everyone, but it’ll be most interesting for teams or agencies creating a WordPress product

Learning Objectives:

• Learn the work involved behind the scene of a big WordPress product
• Discover new tools & ways to improve your workflow
• Benefit from our experience

Prerequisites

Accessible for everyone

How WordPress can help stop the extinction of the independent local business.

Description:

A storm has arrived. An avalanche of technology has emerged that engages consumers differently and these changes are impact the way consumers experience shopping in-store and online. Kiosks, online shopping tools, recommendation engines, influencers.

What is needed are strategies and affordable tools to ride this wave. If local businesses cannot keep with the consumer’s taste in these shiny new objects, they will wilt away. It’s not about reinventing the wheel, but about keeping place as a key spoke in the structure.

As a WordPress expert, you have tools that can help these businesses stay as an essential spoke in that wheel. What you need is a road map to help navigate that journey, and you need tools that can deliver the plan.

Learning Objectives:

• Shared knowledge on consumer technology tools that are being implemented…
• Know how to create a “doable” plan to help a local independent business
• Actionable tactics that can be done for short term and long term benefits for the business
• Ideas on how to stay in tune and evolve the plan and execution over time

Prerequisites

Experience with WordPress and a desire to continue to leverage this platform.

Description:

WordPress is software like no other. Businesses harness its versatility. Creative skills are mastered with it. It unifies individuals from diverse backgrounds. Yet to so many, it remains “just” software. As a blogger, web designer, marketer, educator, and entrepreneur since long before its existence, I’ve watched it grow into a worldwide phenomenon. My own path to success is intertwined with a decade of WordPress use. Clearly, there’s more to this software than just a free install. Discover how WordPress will completely change your personal and business life for the better, if you let it! This is an introduction to my concept of The WordPress Lifestyle (#wplife) which is all about community. It goes far beyond merely using WordPress to support one’s livelihood. It includes education, inspiration, art, experiences, relationships, and so much more.

Learning Objectives:

• Be shocked and amazed at how amazing people in the WordPress community are
• Find out about the power of the WordPress community
• Improve your life
• Actually meet someone new in the WordPress community to network with
• Learn about work-life balance
• Determine how you fit into the WordPress Lifestyle (#wplife)

Prerequisites

Just use WordPress.

Description:

Check out all newest things that CSS can bring to WordPress theme development: CSS Filters, Feature Queries, Native Mixins, Grid Layout, Native Variables, and more. Learn how they work and when to use them. For theme designers.

Learning Objectives:

• CSS Filters
• Feature Queries
• Native Mixins
• Grid Layout
• Native Variables

Prerequisites

A basic understanding of theme development.

Description:

Get a quick intro into the online advertising world.  Then, get a crash course in putting advertisements on your website.  Learn what free plugins are available, and how you can best work with them.

Learning Objectives:

• Basic Ad Industry terms
• How to put AdSense on a site
• Plugins for optimizing ad placement
• Segmenting your site into multiple revenue categories

Prerequisites

They should know how to make a site and navigate the admin

Description:

The tools you’ll need to monetize effectively on your plugins. What the plugin purchase journey should look like. And how to use your plugin as a lead generator for other more profitable services.

The intended audience is those considering becoming plugin/theme developers or those whom already are plugin/theme developers and are looking to turn their craft into an income generator.

Learning Objectives:

• Tools required to setup a simple payment & licensing system
• Tools and systems to communicate with purchases to maximize revenue.
• How to generate interest and traffic to your plugin
• How to find a plugin idea that’s worthwhile (create a plugin that people actually need)
• Language and strategies that maximize conversions on plugin purchasing.

Prerequisites

Should be at least a WP developer already. It’s best if the people are entrepreneurs or are looking to turn managing their plugins into a business. Must know their way around the WP dashboard.

Description:

Great content takes a long time to create, sharing it on your social platforms shouldn’t! This talk compares several popular WordPress plugins for content scheduling and automating social media posting. It will also cover other useful, non-WordPress services to help create beautiful social graphics, build your blog following, link your social accounts and automate your efforts.

Learning Objectives:

The audience will walk away with a list of free (and low cost) tools they can use to:

• create a content calendar
• build their mailing list and automatically share posts to social platforms
• knowledge of other services to enhance the look of their social posts

Prerequisites

The attendees should know how to install plugins and have a basic understanding of using the WordPress admin.

Description:

WordPress security is a growing concern, with over 15,000 hacked sites last year alone. I will cover how to keep a WordPress site secure for non-programmers. This includes an understanding of how hackers get access to your site, learning how to limit security risks, a comparison of the most popular security and backup plugins and how to use them, as well as how to get help if your site has been hacked. This talk is helpful for WordPress users, who don’t have strong programming knowledge.

Learning Objectives:

The audience will walk away with a list of immediate steps to take to secure their sites. This includes:

• know how to properly backup and restore their site
• know which free plugins to install and how to use them
• have knowledge of advanced steps to explore, after they have mastered these beginner steps

Prerequisites

The attendees should know how to install plugins and have a basic understanding of using the WordPress admin.

Description:

Have a great idea for an app?  Did you know that WordPress and it’s ecosystem can help you rapidly develop a prototype or even a production system?  See how we’ve leveraged WordPress to create a successful SaaS business and get tips on how to get your own project started.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn what makes WordPress a good app platform right now
• How will WordPress continue to evolve to be even better
• What specific plugins & resources are the most useful in a SaaS context
• Learn best practices when it comes to feature design

Prerequisites

All Levels

Website Optimization Through Quality Experimentation

Description:

I talk about quality experimentation methodology, overcoming fear and ideas about how to generate experiment ideas.  My intended audience is small to medium size businesses with functioning sites that are looking to improve through increased conversion.

Learning Objectives:

• Why we optimize
• Overcoming fear of optimization
• Optimization best practices
• Experiment ideas and examples
• Google Optimize BETA closer look

Prerequisites

Mid level.

The Future is Now! Virtual Reality for WordPress

Description:

There’s a lot of chatter about Virtual Reality (VR) at the moment with everyone from CBC to McDonalds using 360° VR content to enhance their stories and to promote their brands.

In this session we will cover the basics of creating and adding 360° VR content to your WordPress site. We will also explore ideas to creating 360° VR experiences for your audience to enjoy.

Learning Objectives:

• Learn about the necessary tools to create 360° VR content.
• Use plugins and services to add 360° VR content to your WordPress site.
• Explore ideas on how you can use 360° VR content to enhance your content.

Prerequisites

No prerequisites required to attend this session. Just bring your laptop, your smile & willingness to learn!

The cheapest wordpress ever sold

Description:

The initial premise of my project was: as a freelancer who builds websites using pre-made themes, I hear sometimes, developers say that it is wrong and that it decreases the value of the website creation process (lower prices due to less development, less flexibility, less functionality, lower performance etc…).

This statement lead me to think about what could possibly be the cheapest “professional” WordPress website could you buy?

So I created the cheapest WordPress website possible, hiring only freelancers from bottom price marketplaces.

My talk will present the different steps of this WordPress process and creation covering various aspects such as the costs, limitations and problems encountered.

Learning Objectives:

First of all an answer to the main question :What is possibly the cheapest (professional) WordPress website ? And what would you get for that price in term of quality ?

I see this talk as being an introduction to different topics that people might want to explore in relation to WordPress design: economic, social, marketing, technical, business etc…

Prerequisites

No particular level or knowledge required
Experience in website creation would be a plus (to compare costs / level of services)

Description:

In this talk you’ll learn some very simple steps to create sketches and wireframes that you can add to any development ticket or website related problem you’re discussing.

The intended audience is non-designers who are interested in learning how to use visual aids to convey ideas and explain problems.

Learning Objectives:

1. Anyone can sketch – We’re not talking Michelangelo level work here, but if you can draw simple shapes (arrows, lines, squares) then you can speak the universal language of sketches.
2. Get started – I want people to feel empowered that they can just try a few quick sketches or wireframes and just get them out there for others to see how they want to solve a problem.

Prerequisites

No prerequisites are required for this talk.

Description:

User Experience (UX) design is such a hot industry today with no shortage of Medium articles telling you how to break into UX. There’s detailed talk about portfolios, which courses to take, and whether designers should learn how to code, among others. What they seem to miss, though, is the ‘getting started’ part: How do you do a design project and ensure that it gets from discovery all the way to deployment? If design portfolios are about the projects that you’ve brought to life, then how do we do them and build them well?

In this session, we will be looking at the design process and the Elements of User Experience. We will be reviewing the milestones inside web projects and the activities that make it successful. You will learn what makes great websites great, and what makes designers advocates for their own work.

Design is finally having its golden age. Will you be a part of it?

Learning Objectives:

• Switch from ‘design = “make it pretty’ to ‘design = problem solving’.
• Get acquainted with the design process (especially for WordPress sites)
• Apply Jesse James Garrett’s “Elements of User Experience” to deliver human-centered products and services
• Become advocates for your work through case study writing (a key requirement for design portfolios today)

Prerequisites

None

Compare and contrast custom meta box frameworks

Description:

There are a number of ways to add custom meta boxes to WordPress admin, from coding against core functions through code API frameworks to GUI interfaces. All of these have a place, but which is the right one for your project, code style and coding level? In this talk I will provide code examples and illustrations of the code techniques for each of the methods.

Time permitting, I will also show you how to extend the frameworks.

Aimed at all levels of developer because of the range of options covered.

Learning Objectives:

By the end of the session I would hope that:

• you will have knowledge of custom meta box frameworks
• you will be able to use and extend them
• you will be able to make an informed decision as to what methods will work best for you when working with custom meta boxes.

Prerequisites

Must know what a custom meta box is. This is a wide ranging talk for developers as the technical level ranges from UI configuration all the way through to advanced class manipulation.

Details of the Ambassador Program

Scheme your way to more SEO traffic with structured data

Description:

Are you serious about SEO? Do you want to attract more clicks by making your pages stand out in search results?

It began with an open community effort led by Google to promote standard structured data in a variety of online applications. Designed to give users a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to their query, this text-based organization of data is included in a page or app and served from the web.

Websites see more and better search generated traffic by adding to their pages Schema.org structured data for their products, events, organization, people, contact information and other things. By implementing Schema.org markup, you can promote the content in your site and see more attractive and useful snippets in SERPs. Google hasn’t made structured data a ranking factor yet but you can see for yourself that structured data improves your click through rate.

Schema.org markup is a must for everyone serious about their website’s search engine optimization.

Learning Objectives:

In this session, you’ll learn:

• the opportunities to outrank competitors and draw more interest from searchers with structured data
• the options that make the most sense for your website and business so you can start using structured data markup
• plugins and services to implement these techniques
• services to structure, prototype, test, analyze and report on the search-related data added to your pages

Prerequisites

This presentation is geared to intermediate to advanced WordPress folks. A basic understanding of SEO is recommended.

404 Pages are inevitable, so make the most out of them.

Description:

People  are scared of 404 pages, but at times they overlook how important it is to optimize the 404 error page.

Pages get renamed, content changes, links break and the inevitable happens, your visitor lands on a 404 error page.

But, what if we could leverage it to start a conversation instead?

Learning Objectives:

Learn how to optimize 404 pages so that it does not become a dead end but starts a conversation.

Prerequisites

Anyone can benefit from this talk.