Check out the folks who attended WordCamp Asheville 2018:
You can mark yourself as going to this camp in your account settings!
My favorite WordPress/Business life hacks (Lightning Talk)
We all like to learn some handy tips and tricks, right? How about a huge list of all the ways I have personally improved my workflows, processes, production quality, and even lifestyle?
I’ve been building WordPress sites, working remotely, and generally doing all things WordPress for years now and I’ve discovered a whole lot of cool stuff in that time.
Come see the curtain get pulled back and learn which tools I value the most and the good habits I’ve developed which have made the biggest impact on my life.
Takeaways:
Julien Melissas
Advanced Gutenberg Block Development
Rachel Cherry
Daniel Swain
How To Get Your Second Client (Lightning Talk)
I will discuss how to secure your 2nd client using three techniques: your family/friend, your 1st client, and the WordPress Community.
Takeaways:
Sam Jadali
GDPR – Continued Preparation & Compliance
With GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) now in effect, what does this mean for your site? Is the GDPR law geographically limited? Sam brings his 20 years of cybersecurity experience to discuss how you can protect your client data, what to do in the event of a data breach, and how you can prevent one. We’ll answer your questions and more including how your plugin choices can affect GDPR compliance.
Takeaways:
David Zimmerman
Stop It Now! Things Well-Meaning WordPress Developers Do That Hurts SEO
Have you ever launched a website only to return to find some annoying SEO has come after you and destroyed it? Has some obnoxious marketer bugged you for lots of little changes- outside the client’s scope and budget?
I’m sorry. That might have been my fault.
Let’s work together to help our clients. I’ll share my secrets on setting up a WordPress site for SEO success. While this won’t guarantee SEO results, but it will set up your clients for optimal Google love.
Micah Wood
Basic Principles of Software Architecture
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!
Takeaways:
Making Security Make Sense to Clients
As someone who builds WordPress websites for clients, you’ve probably learned that offering (or requiring) monthly maintenance contracts is smart business. It’s likely you’re including core software, plugin and theme updates as part of your maintenance plan, which ensures a steady income stream you can rely on and helps with your financial forecasting. But are you including website security as part of your project proposal and scope?
The security of your clients’ websites is often not a priority or is left till the end of a project (or sale?) as an optional add-on for the client to consider after going live. The value of a strong website security posture can be difficult to explain to clients, but when put in the context of their business and possible loss of revenue, it can become an integral part of your offering that separates you from the rest.
In this session, Adam will cover simple website security best practices that you can implement immediately for your own site and those of your clients. In addition, he’ll also offer advice and examples on how to best present the importance of website security during the proposal, scope, and maintenance package stages to your clients. Not only does this ensure your maintenance plans offer what every website needs, but also presents an additional revenue stream opportunity for your business.
Takeaways:
Susan Schaer
Logo design tips for WordPress….and Beyond!
What makes a logo effective on the web and in print? I’ll share tips for logo creation, color and typography selection, placement and more to make your brand work better online and elsewhere.
Takeaways:
Janine Paris
SMTP WTF BBQ??
Whether it’s form or order notifications, marketing emails or newsletters, websites send email to us and our visitors. These messages are important for conducting any kind of business online. You don’t have to be a server admin to make sure your websites’ emails get delivered! Understanding a few basics will give you the tools to setup and troubleshoot all manner of email communication from your WordPress website.
Takeaways:
Beth Livingston
How to Stop Scope Creep Once and For All
This session will provide actionable steps for implementing some proven (and easy) project management techniques to stop the dreaded “scope creep” that so many WordPress practitioners struggle with when providing services for others.
Takeaways:
Benjamin Kucmierz
Have You Tried Plugin’ it in: Client Support in WP
The purpose of this talk is to discuss potential events, situations, and problems that can arise when clients come into contact with WordPress and the best practices to overcome those issues. Additionally, it would cover how to ‘user-proof’ your site to help minimize client-caused damage. Learn how to properly address and handle client complaints and problems.
Takeaways:
Tiffany Kuchta
CSS Grid IRL
The murmuring about CSS Grid in the world of frontend development has gotten quite loud indeed. If you’ve been a developer awhile, you remember when CSS finally became powerful enough to overtake the almighty table. You probably also really love the incredible tool that is Flexbox, even if you, like I do, still need to reference the same darn CSS Tricks article every time you use it. So what’s Grid’s deal? What makes it so great anyway, and when can you start using it IRL? What if you don’t want to duplicate development, building complex fallbacks for legacy browsers? How do you decide if a project is a good fit for CSS Grid, and then how do you even get started? We’ll discuss these questions, review some tools and tricks, and look at a few examples of CSS Grid in action.
Takeaways:
Judi Knight
Pricing Websites Like a Pro (Lightning Talk)
The Bermuda Triangle of Web Designer’s Hell
Frustrated with trying to make a living building WordPress websites? Think you just need to find the right theme for a project or learn a few more design tips? You’re not alone. This presentation will show you why it’s easy to get stuck and hard to get out of the Bermuda Triangle of Web Designer’s Hell – that place where you don’t know what you don’t know.
I’ll present a framework of seven core competencies to provide a foundation for becoming a skilled WordPress Designer who can price, close, create, and deliver effective WordPress websites for happy clients!
Takeaways:
Joe Howard
Get to know (beyond a doubt) who’s visiting your website
We all want to engage website visitors, bring them value and maybe even convert them into paying customers. I know I want to do all three! But if you don’t know who the people visiting your website are or what they really want, how can you do any of this? I want to give you some actionable tips and tools that will shed some light on who’s visiting your website and allow you to get the feedback you need to turn your site into something your visitors can’t get enough of 🙂
Takeaways:
John Hornsby
Sales & Customer Service for the Introverted Designer
Sales is all about relationships and managing expectations. We are all in sales, where we realize or not, like it or not. I’ll share some personal story around my start as an introverted artists and designer who was socially awkward and how I overcame that to become a top producing salesperson. How not being a salesperson can be your strongest asset in actually making sales, if you find your authentic voice, know your craft and get interested in the art and science of creative communication and psychology.
Though I have a framework for this including practical scenarios, it will be somewhat interactive and focus driven by preferences of those in attendance. We’ll be looking at the why behind methods from which you can build on. The first step is getting comfortable with being uncomfortable. We’ll do some of that, but I promise not to make it too scary.
This is not a talk about funnels, prospects, conversions and the like though that all is super important and we’ll touch on it. This is focused on communication tools and self work to overcome your internal roadblocks.
Takeaways:
Alisa Herr
Winging it: Starting a WordPress Agency
I’d like to do a talk about how I started, built, and grew my own WordPress agency. Unity is a completely bootstrapped business (no startup funding) that I founded in 2016. Since then, I’ve grown the business to 4 full-time employees. At the beginning of 2018, we became a Certified B Corp.
Russell Fair
Developing & deploying high quality code, using TDD + CI/CD
In this presentation I’ll take a deep dive into my preferred development and deployment workflow. I’ll cover how to work with code quality tools such as PHPMD, PHP_CodeSniffer and JSLint, as well as how to implement Test Driven Development into a custom plugin. I’ll wrap the whole thing up by demonstrating how to connect everything to a continuous integration / delivery pipelines to test the code and deploy automatically.
Takeaways:
Cody Edgar
Stop Designing and Start Listening
The number one complaint we hear about web designers and agencies is poor customer service. Poor communication, ambiguous expectations, and missed deadlines frustrate clients and often deliver a disappointing finished product. Service is what sets you apart as an agency. You can have incredible design work and create innovative functionality, but if your clients don’t like you, they’ll leave. And it’s about much more than getting your clients to like you: it’s about listening to your clients so that you offer a solution that actually solves their problems; it’s about knowing when to push back and when to concede; and it’s about being honest and transparent even in the face of failure. When you provide service that meets these criteria, you produce clients that advocate for your business and stay around for the long haul.
Takeaways:
John Dorner
A look at the database behind the curtain
Sometimes, it’s easier to edit something in the database than use the dashboard. BUT only if you know what you are doing!
Come learn about the database that powers WordPress and how you can use it to your advantage.
Takeaways:
Introduction to Gutenberg
Gutenberg is the new WordPress editor.
We’ve heard “Gutenberg is coming!” for a long time now. It might even be here by the time we are together in Asheville.
This will give you an introduction to what the Gutenberg editor looks like and how to use it to create and edit your WordPress content.
Takeaways:
Tricia Clements
Where’s the Content? Effective Video Use in Your WordPress Blog
You’ve spent hours (maybe months) creating a gorgeous website or maybe you paid someone else to design it for you, but what’s next? How do you consistently add content to your site?
Learn tips and hacks to use video to create content for your blog, social media, newsletters and much more. Never run out of content again!
Takeaways:
Emily Breedlove
A Roadmap to Multimedia Sales Funnels
Whether you want your website to build a community, build your reputation, or build your bank account, you need to have a well defined sales strategy in place. Dynamic sales funnels aren’t just for “get rich quick” schemes or talking heads, they are a crucial component of helping you to reach the goals you set for your online presence, regardless of your industry or focus. In addition, incorporating multimedia, social engagement tools, and interactive resources will extend the length of your funnel by fostering more long-term relationships with your clientele.
Takeaways:
Sarah Bonner
Why does my website look weird on my phone? Current trends in responsive website design
A discussion on the best practices for creating a well designed responsive theme on WordPress.
Takeaways:
Sarah Benoit
Intent + Usability + Backlinks = SEO in 2018
Search engines are always changing, just like other kinds of technology. Keyword content and architecture is important for any website, but that’s not all you have to do in order to increase your authority, credibility, and rankings. Come find out what the search engines want in 2018 and how you can leverage your WordPress website to create content that matters and has an impact.
Takeaways:
Steven Ayers
Site Optimization: Page Speed, Testing, & Optimization
The lecture will cover how to get your sites current page speed score, how to optimize it for faster load times, and why its important. We will examine multiple testing services, WordPress optimization addon’s both free and paid, and web hosts.
Takeaways:
My website has been hacked! Security Planning
Learn how to handle a hacked website in a moment of crisis.
A building has an evacuation plan. A website needs a security and disaster recovery plan.
Takeaways:
Erick Arbe
Getting Started with Vue.js and WordPress
In this talk, we’ll dip our toes into the relatively new javascript framework called Vue.js. We’ll go over how to integrate Vue.js into a custom theme and use WordPress as the backend that powers a simple directory with an ajax search feature and Google Maps. We’ll cover a few basic concepts of Vue and why it can be a nice alternative to using jQuery.
Takeaways:
Aisha Adams
5 tips for increasing engagement via social media
Transformational Transactions
This talk is specifically designed to explain how to use WordPress in order to create transformational relationships between your product and service with your customer. This talk will specifically focus on tools within WordPress that make it easier for WordPress users to send their customers on a journey where the customers use their products or services in order to transform their lives.
Takeaways:
Rich Owings
SEO Goes Local (2018 edition)
This is a completely updated version of the talk given at WordCamp Asheville 2015, modified to reflect the massive changes in local SEO in the past three years. Learn how local search engine optimization (SEO) differs from traditional SEO, and why it is so important to local businesses. I’ll outline the key components of local SEO and explain how you can use your WordPress site to strengthen each of them.
Takeaways:
Cindy Cullen
Taking Code on the Road: Running a 6-figure WordPress business from an RV
I have been a freelance php/wordpress programmer for many years. The freelance world can be an exciting life of waking up unemployed every morning, having a different view every week, and finding interesting clients.
I currently run a 6-figure WordPress business with 20 team members from my RV while traveling the US. I am in a different location almost every week.
I will talk about the ups and downs of life on the road, finding clients, mixing fun, travel and code, how we get paid, and much more.
Takeaways:
These are the people that make this event happen. They work tirelessly for weeks and months to plan, coordinate, and execute the best event possible. If you get a chance to thank them, please do!
Details TBD.
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