Learn how non-profits can utilize WordPress as a powerful communication tool and as the foundation of a flexible online presence. WordPress as a publishing tool for web content provides an easy to use, powerful platform for your organization’s messaging inclusive of event and program promotion, membership management, fundraising activities and more.

Topics will include:
– Best practices for setting up a functional & secure WordPress site.
– Managing Content with multiple contributors
– Utilizing tools such as CiviCRM for constituent management
– Recommended plugins

It’s a dangerous (cyber) world out there, and your WordPress website is a target whether you like it or not. Keeping your website and data secure isn’t just about installing a plugin and forgetting about it, it’s a philosophy. We’ll review best practices on admin accounts, updates, firewalls, passwords, 2 factor authentication, SSL encryption, file permissions, free & commercial plugins and most importantly backups. We’ll go over some tips on how to configure popular plugins, what to do if one of your sites (or one of your clients/friends/family’s sites) has been compromised and other advice on how to keep your site and yourself safe online.

This talk will go over how we approached building a plugin to add support for the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project (https://www.ampproject.org) to WordPress sites.

The requirement was to provide an alternate presentation of the WordPress site’s content to match the very restrictive AMP spec. During the talk, we’ll discuss the various WordPress APIs that the plugin relies on (rewrites, kses, etc.), some the design decisions we made, and the various challenges we encountered (and still do, in some cases).

Hooks in WordPress are a foundational reason for the success of the platform. WordPress hooks (actions, filters) are essential for extending WordPress in your themes and plugins without interfering with the core code base. If you want to write future-ready code, hooks are your best friend. There’s a slight learning curve to hooks but we’re going to cover that, the philosophy behind utilizing/implementing hooks, and (way) more. If you have any questions you’re hoping get covered, be sure to post them at least a few days before the meetup and we’ll be sure to make sure you have answers!

Building on my talk from last year, I will describe advanced methods of incorporating object-oriented PHP development into a WordPress theme or plugin using model-view-controller (MVC) methodology and utilizing Composer for dependency management.

Want to draw people to your website? Simple changes can make a big difference in your site’s popularity. Discover ways to attract readers by tweaking your content structure, fine-tuning visuals, and maximize WordPress sharing tools. Use Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that isn’t subject to the whims of algorithm changes by employing the best plugins and learning how to keep your writing strong. You’ve got great content, now it’s time to share it with others effectively.

You learned a little code you built up a WordPress site, people liked it, someone gave you $300 to build one for there doggy day care and then it hit you, I could do this for a living! You dig in the first few months, are exciting, client meetings, new projects, a overwhelming sense of newness and then it hits… Web design sucks! Okay not totally but you know it does a little. Client demands that are just out of this world, invoices getting argued about or worse not even getting paid. Now your an entrepreneur and thats a scary thing. Now how in the world am I gonna pay my rent? How do I make this a profitable business. This session will cover the 5 things i’ve learned the hard way that help take the hassle out of freelancing and add cash to your pocket.

Patrick will show how to build an online store with WooCommerce. We’ll look at how to add products to your site, how to charge shipping, the right way to accept money online, and some marketing tips for first time store owners.

Whether you are a weekend warrior building sites for your never ending ideas or a freelancer that has an ongoing list of clients using WordPress, it is soooooo important that you provide support for these sites.

This talk will share tools and techniques for making sure you can support your WordPress development for as long as it is online. Knowing the tools is one thing but knowing how to use them effectively is key.

Writing code is only part of the equation. Our ability to get in the right mindset and the efficiency at which we write our code play a large part in delivering quality projects and solutions. There are many factors that play in to this, from our sleep schedules, diets, activity, time scheduling and ability to prioritize, to the space we work in, our desk setups, the developer tools we use, and the resources we utilize when we hit a wall. We’ll touch on all of these as we look at ways to make our days more productive and keep our heads in the game.