WordCamp Johannesburg 2018

Going to the office at 9 and coming back at 5 daily is not my cup of tea. Also, I am a student so I can’t afford to miss my classes on a daily basis. So what I do is that I work remotely with companies.
In my walk-through, I will be covering topics like How we communicate in remote companies, what tools we use, the joy of working at your own ease. I would also love to include how I travel around the globe and work remotely.
Through my walk-through, I want to help people to connect to remote companies and earn without sacrificing whatever they are doing full time.

A panel discussion on the different types of WordPress agencies/businesses including WordPress products, SaaS services, working as prof freelancer for example Codeable and other ways of delivering services.

As we move closer to the next major release of WordPress, the more anticipation grows around the impact Gutenberg will have on past, current and future WordPress sites. Not only will this revolutionary change effect the overall experience of WordPress as a platform, but it will also open a wave of questions, challenges and hurdles for WordPress developers, business owners and end users. In this talk, I will give you the low down of everything you need to know to prepare for the release of Gutenberg in WordPress core. Everything from how Gutenberg will change your business model, what WordPress developers need to know in terms of technical skills to keep up to date, and how it will dramatically change how we think and deliver content through WordPress

A short story on how to ‘hack’ together a secure web application with the power of WordPress features (Plugins, API and User Roles) with a tight deadline at a 24 hour hackathon

A panel discussion on the different types of WordPress agencies/businesses including WordPress products, SaaS services, working as prof freelancer for example Codeable and other ways of delivering services.

As the world becomes more interconnected, there are multple opportunities for freelance developers. You may be thinking that striking out on your own is easy. The truth is that there are a number of factors to be aware of, and the modern freelance developer needs to be prepared in order to succeed.

Starting 2016 I left the world of employment to become a full time freelancer. I was fortunate in I had another source of income, but as a husband and father of two, with all the usual bills to pay, I was not prepared for the effect working for myself would have on my mental state, my health or my family.

Towards the end of 2016 I joined Codeable, a freelancing platform for WordPress. Where Codeable was different from all other platforms was that it held quality and customer service/communication as the most important factors of freelance development. Since joining Codeable I was able to turn my work situation around such that I now earn 3x as much as I did when I left employment and I am in the favourable position of being able to turn work away.

While Codeable had a big part in bringing me leads to quality work, it was the lessons I’ve learned since joining Codeable about being a successfull freelancer that are the focus of this topic. Being a part of the Codeable community means I have learned so much from other experienced freelancers about things like work/life balance, how to communicate with clients pre hire, how to prevent scope creep and how to manage time and projects on my own.

My talk will be split into two parts, The first will be around the 1st year of my time as a freelancer, scrounging for whatever work came my way because I wasnt in a position to say no, essentially all the things I was doing wrong. The second will be around my second year, when I learned from Codeable, and other Codeable developers, and how these lessons lead me to where I am today.

Over the last few years the team at Castos took an already popular free WordPress plugin, Seriously Simple Podcasting, and built a successfull SaaS app around it using Laravel. This workshop will dive into some of the reasons why SaaS is a great option for earning income in the WordPress space, and dig into the technical aspects building your first SaaS for a WordPress product.

During this workshop we will build a simple Saas app for an already existing WordPress plugin. We’ll start by building the Laravel app from scratch, including a simple API for third party access. We will then move onto using the WordPress HTTP API to connect our plugin to our Laravel app, in order to provide the premium service for plugin users.

By the end of the workshop you should have a basic understanding of building a Laravel SaaS app and connecting your WordPress plugin or theme to it.

Let’s face it, being an entrepreneur, a solopreneur, a small business owner – whatever you want to call yourself – if you are running a small service-based business, it is stressful and time consuming!
So much of your time is spent on admin, chasing clients for payments or information, and EMAILS!
As small businesses, we waste so much time on tasks that have no real value to our business, our clients or ourselves.
If you want to simplify your business, you have to start by setting up business systems and processes.
There are many customer relationship management and project management tools out there – and believe me I have tried most of them! Many are amazing, but I found all of them to be too clunky for little old me.
Until I discovered Dubsado!
Dubsado gives you all the tools you need to run your business efficiently so that you not only save time, but can even help you close clients faster, which means more business!
In this workshop I will take you through a case study example of setting up a business workflow and lead generation using Dubsado and WordPress.

A panel discussion on the different types of WordPress agencies/businesses including WordPress products, SaaS services, working as prof freelancer for example Codeable and other ways of delivering services.

Many freelancers and design agencies are well aware of the feast and famine cycle that exists. Finding new work is a challenge but it is a constant requirement for generating income in your business. When there is no new work there is no income and cash flow becomes a massive challenge.
The antidote is to generate recurring revenue, preferably on a monthly basis. In this talk I will cover some ways to increase MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) and how it benefits you and your clients.

In 2015 while running my previous business Action Gear we won the eCommerce Awards for “Best Customer Service in SA”. My topic would run through the key concepts for online business owners to know in order for them to be able to offer brilliant customer service too.

The talk will focus on using WordPress to test and validate ideas in an affordable manner. It will be based on my experiences of running several websites, including ZApreneur, Think Workers and WriteInvisible. I will draw lessons and outline a process and will offer a checklist. I think it kinda works.

For New Beginners that know nothing. Do you want to know how to start and make an easy webpage in wordpress?
Start with buying a domain, the step by step on how to create a webpage and the important things to know to create your first website.

A panel discussion on the different types of WordPress agencies/businesses including WordPress products, SaaS services, working as prof freelancer for example Codeable and other ways of delivering services.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to set up an online store using WooCommerce and WordPress. We will create and customize a few products and learn how to display them.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to set up an online store using WooCommerce and WordPress. We will create and customize a few products and learn how to display them.

The ability to generate and qualify leads is a key grow factor for B2B companies. The talk will present a tested integrated approach to generating leads using digital marketing, WordPress and a CRM tool that delivers tangible results.

This workshop is an introduction to the basic principals of Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and how to practically implement them on a WordPress website.

WordPress is a great CMS and platform and provides a lot of functionality to get a website up and running very quickly. However, as any plugin developer will know, you often have to write and repeat a lot of code when creating custom Post Types, Taxonomies and other WordPress entities. This talk will focus on how to build plugins in a way that uses the principles of Object Orientated Programming, like inheritance, aggregation and composition. The talk will be based around a library that we’re building at Flicker Leap that’s intended to be a collection of classes to speed up WordPress plugin development (and can be included in any plugin via Composer or manual download). I will also be going through the internal code of the library, the methodologies behind the implementation and how it can be used in practice. I will also talk about writing plugin code that is reusable and DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself).

Soon after the release of WordPress 15 years ago, support for internationalization was added to the software. This meant that themes, plugins, and WordPress itself could be translated. This was a huge deal as WordPress is used all over the world, in countries where English is not the main language. WordPress was quickly translated into German, Japanese and many more languages.

Over the years, WordPress has steadily improved the way we have to work with internationalization. However, challenges still exist and there will always be new ones ahead. Projects like Gutenberg and ecosystems beyond WordPress.org force us to continuously iterate.

In this talk you’ll learn how to make use of the latest and greatest technology to make your WordPress plugin or theme fully internationalized. Pascal is going to highlight how you can leverage the powers of WordPress, GlotPress, and WP-CLI to improve the translation workflow in your WordPress projects.

Javascript is one of the most popular languages on the planet and even though it can power backend services its true power, I believe, is client-side applications.

Harnessing the power of the end-user’s device, single-page applications (SPAs) are fast and efficient giving a great user experience whilst still being data rich.

In this workshop, we will touch on Javascript technologies and transpiling but use the Vue CLI to quickly manage that for us. We will then build a SPA that consumes the Rest API to build a blazing fast blog without sacrificing SEO.

Integrating Facebook adverts and WordPress/WooCommerce websites.
How to setup pixel on your website
How to use Facebook Ad-Manager to gain website traffic.
What type of adverts work the best.
Drive traffic to your website from Facebook
Checking the traffic on Facebook Ad Manager to your website.

A panel discussion on the different types of WordPress agencies/businesses including WordPress products, SaaS services, working as prof freelancer for example Codeable and other ways of delivering services.

Entertaining workshops -Enjoyable communication -A well designed and clear process -Over delivery and pleasant surprises. Website as a Service and DIY style + training type services. These are all new ways of delivering websites to digferent types of audiences.