WordCamp Milwaukee 2014

While SVG isn’t exactly new, browser support is just getting to the point that we can use it without much worry. Even if we do need fallbacks for older browsers, modern tools make it easy. This makes now the perfect time to learn about SVG and how it can help you in everyday web design. Perhaps the most compelling reason: SVG images look sharp at any dimension with tiny file sizes—which is great for making responsive websites responsibly.

You’ll also learn how SVG helps make otherwise awkward shapes easy to make, and how to use it to make icons that are more accessible than with any other web-based icon creation technique. You’ll learn how SVG can make customized complex graphics on the fly, create compelling animations and other interactions, and empower some pretty great designerly effects. We’ll end by discovering a cornucopia of SVG source materials that are easy to find and even easier to work with.

With the popularity of responsive design, it seems like the process and tools that have been used in the past are certainly not ideal for the present. So what is the best solution?

Lets explore the available options and discuss how we communicate with our client as well as our developers in this ever changing world of web design.

This talk will cover UW-Milwaukee’s experience evaluating, selecting and implementing WordPress multisite as a platform for hosting and maintaining University websites and blogs for schools, colleges, administrative units, academic centers, research labs and other university-sponsored initiatives, programs and collaborations.

The following topics will be covered in brief, touching on challenges and lessons learned: selection method, phased implementation (alpha, beta and general availability), service policy and guideline development, high-availability hosting architecture design, UWM-branded theme implementation, plugin request and review, plugin catalog curation and long-term management, distributed web developer services, campus learning services, ongoing service management and support, and governance.

The talk will touch in greater depth on challenges encountered and solutions developed to guide reluctant learners, prevent plugin proliferation, manage load balancing, balance security with agility and access, and make the service sustainable in the long term.

The topics will be of benefit to individuals who are considering or actively using WordPress for hosting websites and blogs for medium-to-large organizations with distributed content owners, editors and IT/web development teams.

We’ll also discuss the increased efficiencies we’ve realized since implementing WordPress, and talk briefly about several grant-funded projects that we were able to get back on track by using WordPress as a platform in place of writing custom Web applications as originally planned.

You can read more about WordPress at UW-Milwaukee by visiting the UWM WordPress Guide site at: http://uwm.edu/wordpress

You have less than 20 seconds to engage the people who visit your site and capture their interest so they will stick around. Usability is the key to your success. Have you ever thought about older users whose vision might be degraded or who may not be accustomed to using technology? What about individuals who need assistive technology to navigate your site? Most developers are now aware of the need for accessibility but many see it as a three-headed monster that they are not ready to tackle. Participate in this session to learn about a practical new method to consistently check your site for accessibility and engage and retain visitors in the process.

Teacher: Emma Edgar

Repeat after me: WordPress is not an image editor. If you’re still uploading images straight from your camera or stealing them from Google, we’re here to set you on the right path.

We’ll cover:

• Image size and “weight” and why that is so important to the speed of your site
• Different ways to prep your images BEFORE you upload them to WordPress
• How the media library in WP works and how you can adjust settings
• What you can do with an image on the page to change the size, layout or setup a gallery
• How to deal with showing PDF’s
• WordPress 3.9 has some nice new features and we’ll look at those.

This session is for anyone who has images on their site!

In this session we will be talking about how to design interesting and useful WordPress widgets. When creating a mockup or building a theme, it is easy to neglect widgets. You might design or style a few widgets for the mockup or demo, but what happens when your client adds the Calendar widget?

This talk will cover designing for a wide range of widgets, exploring different widget designs, planning responsive widgets that scale well, thinking about animated and interactive widgets, and upgrading your widgets with plugins.

Many users know how to put together a gorgeous and functional site, but quite often it is heavy and uses more resources than it needs to. This talk will show users simple ways to optimize WordPress as well as their web hosting environment to cut down resource usage and page load times.

Numbers Used Once (NONCE) are important tools for developers. Many developers however don’t understand them, or how to use them. In this session we will take the red pill and dive headfirst into the rabbit hole. When we emerge, you’ll know the tools available to you, both built-in and add-ons.

Along the way we will stop for tea and discuss Sessions, just because the rabbit hole wasn’t deep enough.

Join me for this enchanted journey, learn something new, refresh your knowledge, and groan at the bad jokes and tortured metaphors.

We’ll cover a range of common JS/jQuery pitfalls and best practices, including variable/function declaration and scope, caching, naming conventions, and code linting. Whether you’re familiar with jQuery and want to learn more about potential ways to improve the performance and readability of your code, or even if you’re just starting out with front-end JS, this talk will provide you with some helpful tips and useful links for further learning.

There are many ways to get to a destination. Similarly, there are many ways to get to your goal professionally as a developer. But being a developer is hard work, and starting your career as a developer on your own can be even harder. With experience as a freelancer, a brick-and-mortar in-house developer and a remote full time developer at Alley Interactive, I will outline the pros and cons of each option you may be considering for your next professional move. Hear from my mistakes, successes and utter failures over the past five years, and learn which path might be right for you as a developer.

Nonprofits of all types and sizes are discovering the power of WordPress. Its cost (as low as free), ease of use and highly customizable functionality make it a great choice for nonprofit organizations. For everything from nonprofit board management to accepting donations through your website, WordPress has nonprofits covered. This session examines some of the powerful WordPress themes and plugins designed especially for nonprofits, WordPress hosting options available to nonprofits, and other ways nonprofits can get the most out of WordPress in order to meet their mission and specific needs.

Custom theming can be daunting to those developers used to relying on premium themes and frameworks for client projects, but the benefits to custom theming are clear. I’ll help the beginner to intermediate developer understand why custom theming can provide a more solid end product for their clients, and will help them get over the hump and start building their first custom theme using _s (the Underscores starter theme from Automattic).

One of the most exciting changes coming in WordPress 4.1 is the addition of a JSON REST API. Rachel Baker and Ryan McCue will be presenting on WP-API, the current plugin-based version of the API. Through the use of the plugin, developers and users can begin using the API today, with backwards compatibility assured in the future.

This talk will introduce WP-API, and give an introduction on how to interact with it to programmatically communicate with your WordPress site from other WordPress sites or other applications. Using the API you can interact with resources such as:

– posts
– pages
– media
– taxonomies
– users

Learn how to:
– authenticate using basic or OAuth authentication
– retrieve resources using GET requests
– create or edit resources using POST requests

Every website has a purpose. What is your website doing for you? A lot of people have a great looking website, but they wait for it to do something for them. What would happen if you clearly defined your sites goals and focused on converting those goals? In this session we’ll talk about how to define clear goals for your website and we’ll look at how you can optimize your site to achieve these goals.

Are you a seasoned blogger or experienced writer struggling to meet the challenges of producing authentic content for a diverse base of clients? Writing about highly technical products or specialized services? Struggling with deadlines? This session will provide you with tips and strategies to better manage this process.

Every web host has its pros and cons – and not all are evident until after you start hosting your website.  I’ll discuss the differences of hosting with a generic shared host versus a managed WordPress hosting company and my experiences hosting multiple sites at web hosts such as Hostgator, Media Temple, WPEngine, Pressable and Flywheel.

So many devices, so little time! Learn how to efficiently and effectively design your website so it will look amazing… from mobile to big screen (and everything in-between)!

4 years ago I co-founded a company called Tuna Traffic. I learned fast that a key factor to our success would be our ability to customize WordPress Themes and Plugins without writing a lot of code. I wanted to be an SEO Super Geek, but I couldn’t accomplish that without being able to build the site that met my list of requirements and crushed the customer’s expectations….Thus, I started my path to become a world class “WordPress Hacker”.

Generally speaking , you have 3 different places where “hooks” live (not counting near fishing poles or on Captain Hook): WordPress Core, Themes and Plugins.

You will learn 3 things from from me during this talk:

• Why the struggle is part of the journey.
• How an “action” allows you to “do something” to insert something at a “checkpoint”.
• How a “filter” allows you to “filter the result” and return something different at a “fancy checkpoint”.

When you walk away from this discussion, you will be ready to enter the world of world class WordPress hacking. Think of me as your expert angler or, dare I say, WordPress Hacker, here to guide and inspire you as you start “hooking” all on your own.

JavaScript and the web have arguably progressed faster than any other technology in the last 5 years. What was published as best practices only a few years ago could, in many cases, now be considered anti-patterns or bad advice. This talk will bring you up to speed on the latest best practices in client side development, including new language features, browser APIs, and fresh development practices to keep your client side code fast, maintainable and secure.

A high level, introduction to WordPress theming with Sass. Greg will cover basics such as: Variables/Mixins/Nesting/Inheritance/Compilers and file structure.

Creating effective video for use on websites and social media is a great way to communicate on the internet.

Using 30 second videos allows a single subject to be explored and understood. Adding a call to action makes this a great way for you to communicate with your customers, or your customers to communicate with their customers.

Before our team can say that a project is complete … before we even hand the project over to the client and say “”We’re done!”” – we have put it through the paces of an internal QA process that checks and double checks the site to make sure that we’ve met the client’s requirements.

In this session, I share some easy methods that you can start doing with your projects today to improve overall client satisfaction and try and eliminate that dreaded list of things that just ‘aren’t quite right’ on a project you thought was done.

People put a lot of effort into putting a website together, but often stumble at the finish line when it comes to making their final design decisions. Learn how seemingly minor design choices have a huge impact on how people interact with and understand the content of your site. We’ll go through specific examples of simple design tweaks that make a big difference.

How would you business benefit from an dramatic boost in website conversions? Would you be interested in learning tactical methods for maximizing the results on your website? If so, this talk is for you.

Join us as we reveal psychology, neurology and conversion rate optimization tactics proven to dramatically increase conversion rates on your WordPress websites. You will walk out of this talk with a list of marketing, website design and content tactics you can takeaway and start implementing tomorrow.

To be a good developer, you only need to know PHP, HTML and CSS. But you will never be a great developer without a good foundation of ethics. Join me for a discussion of what may seem like trivial matters, but when considered, might make a lot of us feel like hypocrites.

This session will teach you how to use the power of WordPress categories to set up a recipe directory and show you how to use plugins, widgets, and shortcodes to customize the User Administration interface to be easier and more relevant to use, all without digging into code.

Launching a website is a huge undertaking that requires meticulous planning, stake holder management, resource management, budget oversight, ever dreaded content and many other variables that if not properly accounted for will cause your project to come crashing down in flames and will ruin your nights and weekends to come.

In this session Savvy Panda President, Gabe Wahhab will introduce The Power Launch Formula a step by step guide he has developed over 13 years and hundreds of website launches that will guide you through launching successful WordPress websites that exceed stake holder expectations. Both beginners and tried and true veterans are encouraged to attend.

The convergence of building native mobile apps, growing WP design agencies and acquiring enterprise projects empowers WordPress to the next level. Now is the time to step up our game with a Lean UX workflow. Lean UX is a fast design process with focus on a sequences of sprints to define, prototype, test, and refine user experience. Team collaboration, customer learning cycles, and design thinking are key. Find out how Lean UX creates the best user outcomes.

Getting started with WordPress Development is a talk exactly as the title states. This talk will introduce the basics of getting into development in the WordPress platform itself. This will include examples of code used in WordPress, languages that need to be known, resources to get started, what users need to know about development, and more. This talk will also incorporate examples from my experience working with WordPress and learning how to develop on the platform to give the audience a better idea. (This talk can range from beginner to intermediate)

So you built a WP site great! You tell all your friends and family to check it out and spread the word. A month goes by and your analytics only shows 3 visitors (you, your mom, and your cat).

Many bloggers think that building a WP site is like Kevin Costner in the Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” But anybody’s that built a site knows that is far from the truth.

In this talk I will show you how I built a small niche site to 200 visitors per day withOUT having to be a SEO or PPC ninja.

I will go over the basics of using WordPress to build web applications. Web applications differ from traditional websites and blogs due to the amount of user interaction and data generation. WordPress has the capability to be a great platform to build a web application off of, and I will go through some of the functions that make this possible.

We’ve all heard that the customer is always right, but what if they’re wrong?

Many times, it is just a matter of education for correction and other times, the customer is just plain out of line.

In this session, I will take several real life tough case studies in which the customer needed correction, and the methods used to take that once upset customer and turn them in to a fan for life.

I will address everything from the single client, to a group of clients to all the clients.

Chances are you’ve worked with Linux in some capacity whether you’re a developer, designer, or content editor. That’s because Linux powers over 38% of the web. In this session we’ll cover exactly what Linux is, why it’s important, and why server admins are flocking to the platform. We’ll take a look at how you can use Linux in your daily development life and why you should for the betterment of all humanity.

Yes that’s right, our future depends on you, our developers. If you were cutting the grass and your mower broke, the most logical thing to do is to fix it. For anyone that’s mechanically inclined this can be an easy task. However, what if someone put a lock on the mower so you couldn’t access any vital components? That doesn’t sound very pleasing does it? So why would you use an operating system that does the same?

In brief, we will cover:

• What Linux is
• Why it is important
• What tools are available to you, the developer
• How you can contribute

It’s free, easy, and literally takes less than 10 minutes to set up your business on Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+. The world of local search is only growing and can help your business get found by searchers faster than they would have.

Senior Search Marketing Specialists, Rachel and Renee will walk you through the basics of setting up your Google Local profiles then cover the following topics:

•  Enhancing your listings
• Building local citations
• Acquiring external links 

Even though Google’s algorithms change hundreds of times each year, there are some things that remain constant…links…the currency of the web. Yes, even when it comes to local search, links still make up a large percentage of the pie.

Whether you are an online retailer, or brick-and-mortar shop, don’t miss out on this session!

It’s free, easy, and literally takes less than 10 minutes to set up your business on Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+. The world of local search is only growing and can help your business get found by searchers faster than they would have.

Senior Search Marketing Specialists, Rachel and Renee will walk you through the basics of setting up your Google Local profiles then cover the following topics:

•  Enhancing your listings
• Building local citations
• Acquiring external links 

Even though Google’s algorithms change hundreds of times each year, there are some things that remain constant…links…the currency of the web. Yes, even when it comes to local search, links still make up a large percentage of the pie.

Whether you are an online retailer, or brick-and-mortar shop, don’t miss out on this session!

Like WordPress, Joomla! has a unique history in the CMS marketplace.  In this session, Michael Babker of Joomla’s Production Leadership Team will be visiting Joomla’s history, highlighting similarities and differences in each project’s philosophies and practices, and showing how open source projects can learn from each other by discussing recent Joomla development strategy changes inspired by the WordPress community.

Learn how to apply the principles of co-design and co-creation to create better support systems for WordPress products and services. Business owners will learn how these tools can not only save money, but also create better support and user education that will strengthen the thing that is most important to their business–their user community. This talk will focus on how to improve both your support, and your product itself while increasing user loyalty, by engaging your users in an ongoing, directed conversation about how to better serve them.

I will break down specific tactics to engage your audience, generate consistent visitors, improve your bounce rate, and convert your traffic into customers. All with an emphasis on WordPress specific solutions.

This talk will cover UW-Milwaukee’s experience evaluating, selecting and implementing WordPress multisite as a platform for hosting and maintaining University websites and blogs for schools, colleges, administrative units, academic centers, research labs and other university-sponsored initiatives, programs and collaborations.

The following topics will be covered in brief, touching on challenges and lessons learned: selection method, phased implementation (alpha, beta and general availability), service policy and guideline development, high-availability hosting architecture design, UWM-branded theme implementation, plugin request and review, plugin catalog curation and long-term management, distributed web developer services, campus learning services, ongoing service management and support, and governance.

The talk will touch in greater depth on challenges encountered and solutions developed to guide reluctant learners, prevent plugin proliferation, manage load balancing, balance security with agility and access, and make the service sustainable in the long term.

The topics will be of benefit to individuals who are considering or actively using WordPress for hosting websites and blogs for medium-to-large organizations with distributed content owners, editors and IT/web development teams.

We’ll also discuss the increased efficiencies we’ve realized since implementing WordPress, and talk briefly about several grant-funded projects that we were able to get back on track by using WordPress as a platform in place of writing custom Web applications as originally planned.

You can read more about WordPress at UW-Milwaukee by visiting the UWM WordPress Guide site at: http://uwm.edu/wordpress

This talk will cover UW-Milwaukee’s experience evaluating, selecting and implementing WordPress multisite as a platform for hosting and maintaining University websites and blogs for schools, colleges, administrative units, academic centers, research labs and other university-sponsored initiatives, programs and collaborations.

The following topics will be covered in brief, touching on challenges and lessons learned: selection method, phased implementation (alpha, beta and general availability), service policy and guideline development, high-availability hosting architecture design, UWM-branded theme implementation, plugin request and review, plugin catalog curation and long-term management, distributed web developer services, campus learning services, ongoing service management and support, and governance.

The talk will touch in greater depth on challenges encountered and solutions developed to guide reluctant learners, prevent plugin proliferation, manage load balancing, balance security with agility and access, and make the service sustainable in the long term.

The topics will be of benefit to individuals who are considering or actively using WordPress for hosting websites and blogs for medium-to-large organizations with distributed content owners, editors and IT/web development teams.

We’ll also discuss the increased efficiencies we’ve realized since implementing WordPress, and talk briefly about several grant-funded projects that we were able to get back on track by using WordPress as a platform in place of writing custom Web applications as originally planned.

You can read more about WordPress at UW-Milwaukee by visiting the UWM WordPress Guide site at: http://uwm.edu/wordpress

One of the most exciting changes coming in WordPress 4.1 is the addition of a JSON REST API. Rachel Baker and Ryan McCue will be presenting on WP-API, the current plugin-based version of the API. Through the use of the plugin, developers and users can begin using the API today, with backwards compatibility assured in the future.

This talk will introduce WP-API, and give an introduction on how to interact with it to programmatically communicate with your WordPress site from other WordPress sites or other applications. Using the API you can interact with resources such as:

– posts
– pages
– media
– taxonomies
– users

Learn how to:
– authenticate using basic or OAuth authentication
– retrieve resources using GET requests
– create or edit resources using POST requests

define('WP_USE_THEMES', false);

This talk is about disabling WordPress themes and incorporating the WordPress backend into PHP frameworks (like Zend or Symfony). We’ll be covering everything from the_loop() to advanced routing to WordPress pages (and the pitfalls you’ll run into).

Do you want to get rich quick overnight? Well then you are in the wrong place. Syed Balkhi, serial online entrepreneur and professional blogger, will share his practical tips and tricks that will help you create a smart monetization strategy for your blog. This presentation will go in-depth of the available tools and plugins for WordPress which can help a blogger generate a steady flow of income through their blog.

Take your site out of the Wysiwyg box with custom fields! In today’s age
of unlimited devices, structuring your content is more important than
ever. Fortunately, WordPress has many tools for you to break your content
into manageable blocks that can be served up together on one page or
divided and sent out to mobile, API, or anywhere else.

In this session you will learn how to create custom fields with the
Advanced Custom Fields plugin. We will discuss planning out your fields
and content types (an important practice known as content modeling);
explore the code necessary to display and relate fields and posts; and
finally look at some examples of custom fields on sites to solve
real-world problems. You will leave this session with a new appreciation
for how robust of a CMS WordPress can be, and lots of new ideas on how to
structure your content in a way that is easy for you to create, and easy
for your clients to manage.

In this talk, I’ll show you how to keep attackers out of your site. We’ll talk about the common attack vectors and what your vulnerabilities are as WordPress site owners. Then we’ll talk about ways to protect yourself including: setting up your site, connecting to your host, logging in, and writing safe code (if you’re so inclined). You’ll walk away with a list of action items, and a good grasp on how to be a safer netizen. This is NOT a dry, technical talk. It’s interactive and aimed at helping people at all levels get safer.

Ever wonder if your site, your visitors, or business is safe on the internet? In this session I’ll cover various scenarios that can affect your website like Pharma Hack, SEO Poisoning, and malicious redirects.

I’ll then aid you by providing some tips to help reduce risk now and forever. Information Security is everyone’s responsibility, and should be a consideration on any web project, beginning to end.

There are many ways to add content to your WordPress website. You can add webinars, ebooks, case studies and even white papers. However, these can sometimes be very time intensive to create. One of the easiest ways I’ve found to get additional content into your website that both your visitors and the search engines will like is through blogging. But there are a few things to keep in mind when starting this kind of content creation endeavor.

In this presentation, I will discuss how to define your website marketing goals, understand your audience and how to get your executives and your team members involved in the content creation, publication and promotion process through blogging. I will touch on what makes content compelling, how to generate topic ideas and how to taking action by executing an editorial and engagement calendar.

Of course, creating content is only the first step. Your content might be groundbreaking, but the search engines & prospective buyers might need help finding it. To wrap up this presentation, I will share methods for distributing & promoting your compelling content. An outcome of this presentation is that you have an understanding of the steps required to produce and then get your valuable content noticed by search engines, key influencers and your ideal customers!

We’ve all had that “works on my machine” moment. We coded and coded, got it working the way we want, went to deploy and . . . . errors. This talk will help WP developers learn how to use Vagrant and Ansible to quickly provision a consistent, isolated development environment that moves seamlessly to production and makes deployment a pain-free and surprise-free experience.

I’ll talk (with examples) about multisite, what it is, why you might need it, and how you can use it to create simple and/or robust networks of sites.