WordCamp Kent 2017

Adam Silver and Kyle Maurer are the co-hosts of the Get Options Podcast which is an irreverent advice show about your life with WordPress. This session will be a live recording of the show featuring pre-selected listener questions followed by live audience Q&A. No topic is off limits. Come expecting thoughtful, expert advice with heavy doses of sarcasm and humor.

In June of 2012, podcaster and veteran web dev Ed Finkler spoke openly about his lifelong struggles with mental illness with co-host Chris Hartjes. Four years later, a non-profit corporation with a dozen volunteers is working to change the tech and open source community. In this talk, Finkler tells the story of how the episode happened, the incredible response they received, and how it grew into a charity dedicated to changing and saving lives — all by using the principles of open source culture.

In early 2017, I was asked to build a custom importer for a website. “Not a problem,” I thought. After many late nights and much frustration, I finally completed it, only to wake up the next morning and find I needed to rewrite most of it. In this session we will discuss some of the obscure functions and ways to create an importer, along with some gotchas to consider.

Online, everything’s a competition. If your website isn’t healthy enough to compete, you lose, which can be detrimental to the profitability and viability of your business. If you want your business to win the online marketing race — or at least place in the top 10 — you have to train for it, just as you would if you were preparing for an actual, physical race.

In this session, I will provide you with a five-point training regimen that will help you whip your WordPress website into shape and make it a true contender in online marketing.

1. Learn what website architecture issues to look for and what tools will help you detect them
2. Discover the role of keyword research in today’s online marketing landscape and how to properly optimize content
3. Understand content’s role in online competition
4. Learn social media’s threefold role in your website’s health and how it impacts search rankings
5. Know what usability issues you should be testing to make using your site effortless for visitors

Looking to drive more walk-ins, leads, and phone calls to you or your clients local business? You’ll see how to select profitable keywords that get you more business; tips and tricks to getting more online reviews; the most common local SEO mistakes + ways to avoid them; how to get found in mobile searche results; and how to get an easy to measure ROI from your SEO while spending as little time as possible.

Have you thought about starting a blog but don’t where to start? In this talk, you will hear the thought processes that went behind the start up of tinykitchenbigfood.com, a food blog, last year. In an easy and practical way, he will share the top four take-aways on content creation and blogging for new bloggers including: A) Avoiding “paralysis by analysis” and comparisons to established sites, B) Start writing for YOU, C) Learn more about WordPress and SEO as you go, D) How to find your voice with in your niche.

DESIGN IS DEAD!
Why does every website look the same today? Let’s take a stroll down the internet history of web design, see what went wrong, and what went right. I’ll also share some useful tools and design tricks to break free from the cliché and stand out in the world (wide web).
LONG LIVE DESIGN!

I’ll explain what a custom post type is and how you can use them the with the plugin called “WP-Views” to create a specific layout of content for your client.

Points of emphasis:
1. What is a custom post type and why would you use one?
2. Advantages of customizing WordPress layouts.
3. Explain by example, how to customize a site by mocking a basic page up with some styling.
4. Emphasize how this can help separate yourself from others who just use what is available in the theme or plugins. A web designer/developer can give the client EXACTLY what they want. (Well, most of the time.)
5. Discuss simplifying the publishing process for the client.
6. No PHP experience needed

Running a successful WordPress business involves more than just building great websites (although that helps)! There’s a lot more that goes into it. This talk will cover how to get (and qualify) great clients, great tools to speed up your workflow, and how to manage client expectations.

Is sitting really the new smoking? Will a standing desk save your aching back? Sort of…but not entirely. It’s not which position we’re in, but rather how long we stay that way, that can negatively affect our physical, mental and even emotional states. Those of us who spend long days stationed in front of a computer may know too well the day’s end result of stiff muscles, tired eyes, sore joints, and foggy brains. This presentation will provide a basic introduction to biomechanics and ergonomics, and include brief protocols for rest and movement designed to help recharge the mind, body and spirit. Takeaways may include reduced fatigue, clearer thinking, tension relief, and, ultimately, increased productivity.

UI, UX – what’s the difference? Great web design happens around the content and put the focus on enhancing customer satisfaction by providing ease of use and enhanced usability.

The “F” words of web design are sure to hit the mark on providing interaction between you customer and the products or services. Flow, function, and form are the cornerstones of effective website design at any stage of business.

In this session, Lee discusses beginning steps to the design process that will give your customers the experience they deserve. Every web design project needs to start with strategies, processes and the perfect customer experience.

Covered in this session will be audits and review, strategy and content, wireframing and prototyping and your role as designer, strategist and project manager.

The process of building an effective website starts long before you even touch a WordPress installation. The simple truth is that your audience will construct a story about your business or organization. If you want that story to match the vision you have for it, you’ll need to put some thought into how to talk about yourself to your users. In other words, you must consider your brand. Whether you’re doing it yourself, or hiring professionals, this talk will give you guidance on designing an authentic, intentional, brand that attracts ideal customers, and translates well both on and off-line. We’ll talk about what should inform your brand choices, and how to effectively communicate to your audience with your site’s design, content, and functionality. We’ll also discuss ideas for how you can go about infusing your brand into offline interactions for a consistent user experience.

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.

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

During the redesign/development of a site and migration to WordPress, we ended up creating a custom plugin, after custom plugin to handle various post types and other custom functionality. After a period of a few months it became evident that we had too many plugins, updating code was beginning to become a logistical nightmare, not to mention some things didn’t really constitute a full plugin. While tweaking some JetPack settings one day, I thought to myself how can I emulate the JetPack feature manage page, with our own plugins. I remembered a session from a previous WordCamp about the Custom Fields API and set out to create my own merged plugin.

In this session I’ll describe some of the custom code challenges we had, and how I used the Settings and Options APIs to create a control panel to enable and disable specific plugin features. The control panel allows the site to turn on or off specific sections of the plugin. I also added in a default features section for features that should always be on.

I’ll walk through the code, show the basics of how to create a version of your own, and answer any questions.

Growth Hacking isn’t just a buzzword, and it’s not just for startups. You can use the same tools and tactics to attract more readers to your blog, users for your app, and customers of your products. In this session you’ll learn what growth hacking is (and isn’t) and how you can become a growth hacker too. We’ll also cover tools and plugins you can easily integrate with WordPress to power your site and grow your business.

Various “dos” and “don’ts”.

Computers have one job: to read and process data. One job, and sometimes they *still* need help!

Structured data puts you in control, ensuring that search engines and other parsers aren’t misreading your information. Get your events recognized as events, your business address as a location, and those product reviews working to attract customers!

Implementing good, structured data is also the first step into the Google Knowledge Graph, the Holy Grail for content marketers. Better yet, with modern standards, it’s easier than ever before to get started!

Responsive web design changed the way that we think about the web by allowing UI components to adjust in response to viewport conditions. While responsive design was a major step forward for the web in general, it has one glaring limitation.

The Problem:

Responsive design depends on global viewport conditions that don’t always reflect the local context.

For example, even though the viewport might be 2000px wide, our shortcodes and widgets could be displayed within a 400px sidebar. The limitation of responsive design prevents developers from targeting their styles to specific contexts like the one described here.

This limitation is even more problematic for WordPress developers who may be designing for contexts that are completely unknown. Our shortcodes and widgets could be placed anywhere within any layout, so how can we possibly base stylistic decisions on the global viewport? We can’t.

The Solution:

Contextual design differs from responsive design by removing the dependency on global conditions. In doing so, the component becomes fully independent and far more capable of adapting to various contexts. Through the use of element queries, contextual UI components become “self-aware” of their own dimensions and can therefore apply the most appropriate styles for any situation.

To revisit our example from above, a contextual UI component would “know” that it exists within a 400px sidebar and apply appropriate styles for that width. These might even be the same styles used for mobile devices. The point is that devices and viewports no longer matter. Only context matters!

In summary, the audience will walk away from this discussion with an understanding of:

– The current state of responsive design and its one glaring limitation.
– How contextual design addresses this limitation.
– Why contextual design is especially important to WordPress.
– Best practices to follow when designing for unknown contexts.
– How to take advantage of element queries and create contextual UI components today.

There is a lot of talk in WordPress circles about the WordPress Community but is that Community just for “insiders”? Why should a business owner who uses WordPress to power the business website care about a WordPress Community? If a Healthy Lifestyle blogger uses WordPress what possible reason would they have to care about a community of WordPress nerds?

I’d like to tell about the importance of community in general, and then bring the focus down to the WordPress Community in particular. The business owner, by becoming involved in the WordPress Community, will find new solutions for problems they may not have even realized they had. There are also numerous networking possibilities that would remain totally hidden without being in the WordPress community. The same holds true for the blogger using WordPress.

And for those of us who may be “WordPress Nerds” – are we welcoming to ALL users of WordPress? We must be if we truly want to be a community. We also stand to gain by exposure to other ‘worlds’ that we may not be exposed to by any other means.

Let’s explore the WordPress Community and find out how to dive deeply into that community and benefit everyone.

WordPress 101 is a full-day workshop designed for people who are brand new to WordPress, or who would like an A-Z overview of what WordPress can do! Please note: this will be presented workshop-style where participantes will all build a sample website in order to gain hands-on experience with all topics. Participants must bring a wifi enabled laptop and have access to their email account during the entire workshop.

Topics including:
– What is WordPress
– Understanding domains and hosting
– Understanding the WordPress dashboard
– Pages, Posts, Categories and Tags
– Setting all the settings!
– Choosing Themes
– Selecting Plugins
– Adding Content
– Building Menus

WordPress 101 is a full-day workshop designed for people who are brand new to WordPress, or who would like an A-Z overview of what WordPress can do! Please note: this will be presented workshop-style where participantes will all build a sample website in order to gain hands-on experience with all topics. Participants must bring a wifi enabled laptop and have access to their email account during the entire workshop.

Topics including:
– What is WordPress
– Understanding domains and hosting
– Understanding the WordPress dashboard
– Pages, Posts, Categories and Tags
– Setting all the settings!
– Choosing Themes
– Selecting Plugins
– Adding Content
– Building Menus

WordPress 101 is a full-day workshop designed for people who are brand new to WordPress, or who would like an A-Z overview of what WordPress can do! Please note: this will be presented workshop-style where participantes will all build a sample website in order to gain hands-on experience with all topics. Participants must bring a wifi enabled laptop and have access to their email account during the entire workshop.

Topics including:
– What is WordPress
– Understanding domains and hosting
– Understanding the WordPress dashboard
– Pages, Posts, Categories and Tags
– Setting all the settings!
– Choosing Themes
– Selecting Plugins
– Adding Content
– Building Menus

WordPress 101 is a full-day workshop designed for people who are brand new to WordPress, or who would like an A-Z overview of what WordPress can do! Please note: this will be presented workshop-style where participantes will all build a sample website in order to gain hands-on experience with all topics. Participants must bring a wifi enabled laptop and have access to their email account during the entire workshop.

Topics including:
– What is WordPress
– Understanding domains and hosting
– Understanding the WordPress dashboard
– Pages, Posts, Categories and Tags
– Setting all the settings!
– Choosing Themes
– Selecting Plugins
– Adding Content
– Building Menus

WordPress 101 is a full-day workshop designed for people who are brand new to WordPress, or who would like an A-Z overview of what WordPress can do! Please note: this will be presented workshop-style where participantes will all build a sample website in order to gain hands-on experience with all topics. Participants must bring a wifi enabled laptop and have access to their email account during the entire workshop.

Topics including:
– What is WordPress
– Understanding domains and hosting
– Understanding the WordPress dashboard
– Pages, Posts, Categories and Tags
– Setting all the settings!
– Choosing Themes
– Selecting Plugins
– Adding Content
– Building Menus

There are more ways to share WordPress content every year. WordPress offers a range of solutions, ranging from the old RSS standards to newer REST approaches and even templated caching strategies like AMP. Making sense of it can be hard. Matt Bakaitis will share his experiences and observations managing a content engineering team for Cleveland Clinic, serving almost 70 million visitors per year via WordPress.

Adam Silver and Kyle Maurer are the co-hosts of the Get Options Podcast which is an irreverent advice show about your life with WordPress. This session will be a live recording of the show featuring pre-selected listener questions followed by live audience Q&A. No topic is off limits. Come expecting thoughtful, expert advice with heavy doses of sarcasm and humor.