🇦🇺 WordCamp Sydney 2024

The Gutenberg project has ushered in a new era for WordPress theme development, opening up many new opportunities, but also creating new challenges as well.

In the good old days of WordPress, things were simple. You had your theme, you had your content, and sometimes some custom fields.

Things aren’t so simple anymore.

One particular challenge is how the line between content and layout has been blurred so much that it might not even be there at all. Nothing exemplifies this quite as much as the humble post thumbnail.

Join us as we take a deep dive into the WordPress template structure as we try to untangle the layout from the content, and find a solution to the Post Thumbnail Paradox.

The layout feature is most visible in the Group block variations: Row, Stack and the brand new Grid. But it’s also used in other core blocks, and it can be added to any custom block. To a limited extent, it can also be customised in a theme’s `theme.json` file.

This talk walks through what can currently be done with layouts in core, what new features can be expected in 6.7 (TBC) and how you can help shape the future of layout by trying it out and giving feedback!

We’ll also showcase a few different ways of creating cool and useful layouts for both templates and content. No plugins required!

* How to build a page layout with patterns
* Sharing pattern developer sites to show the breadth of selection in the community
* Discuss latest core features for working with pattern styling
* Discuss latest core features for working with patterns (syncing, editing, etc)

This talk/workshop will help attendees establish or improve the systems and processes for WordPress website projects. It will cover:
– The importance of systems and processes
– The secret sauce to creating systems and processes that allow you to breeze through your projects with ease
– A guided walk of the systems and processes I use in my WordPress website projects, from onboarding to offboarding (and everything in between!)
– A practical workshop section where participants will be guided through taking the first and hardest step to building their systems and processes. (Make sure you bring something to write on and with!)
– Where to from here? Practical next steps to take to get the most out of your systems and processes and set yourself up for project success.

“Ugh, I hate WordPress.” and “Why would you use WordPress, anyway?” These were just a few of the comments I heard as a fresh-faced developer entering the industry. So, why does WordPress have this reputation, and how can we change it?

I graduated from She Codes Bootcamp in early 2024, where I discovered my strengths in HTML/CSS and React. Eager to start my development career, I landed my first junior software developer role two months before the end of the boot camp. That’s when I encountered the reality of working with WordPress in the developer world. The experience I had as a graphic design student creating a website with a theme builder did not prepare me for the steep learning curve I faced.

There’s a lot to learn about WordPress, and as a junior developer, it can be daunting. I’ll guide you through my journey of navigating WordPress, sharing the humorous pitfalls I encountered and the lessons I learned. I’ll provide practical tips, walk you through debugging basics, highlight common knowledge gaps, and offer resources that helped me work with WordPress more effectively. If you’re a junior developer feeling overwhelmed by confusing interfaces, unexpected bugs, and the platform’s complexities, you’re not alone. My goal is to help you avoid the frustrations I faced and shift away from the negative perceptions of WordPress.

By the end of this talk, you’ll leave with a toolkit to streamline your workflow, avoid common pitfalls, and boost your confidence in tackling WordPress projects. If you are starting your dev journey and looking to refine your skills, I hope my story will help you navigate WordPress with greater ease and confidence.

Using a design system approach, learn some useful principles and tools for creating and testing consistent, maintainable, reusable custom design and layout elements. Aimed at developers of custom themes.

Once upon a time there was a legacy CMS causing their website owners all sorts of trouble! The owners wanted to move their blogs and data to WordPress, but they didn’t know where to start. They were worried that all of their data would be trapped forever. Along came a crafty WordPress developer and database wizard, and with the help of her SQL & Excel magic she freed them from the clutches of their old CMS.

1.- Familiarise yourself with Facebook’s API, 2.- Create a test app on Meta’s framework, 3.- Call the API from your WordPress page.

XWP addresses many corporates and enterprises who are exploring WordPress for the first time. Often the first conversation is ‘Why is WordPress better than other CMSs?”. This is a non-technical talk as it takes a view from the Customer’s lens on what they need to know to address internal stakeholder objections. It will cover areas such as:
– the value customer’s are looking to provide their customers
– the value propositions for key internal stakeholders (CEO, CTO, CMO, Procurement, Chief Architect, Senior Users (Marketers, Editorial, Product)
– how the WordPress project and ecosystem is optimal for addressing this value

There is no silver bullet and it needs a honed narrative, that it would benefit us all if we were more consistent in our messaging.

Whether your customer is a local dentist or a multinational corporation, this talk will show how WordPress can be the hero a company’s digital story.

There are so many pros to being a freelance web designer — the freedom to be your own boss! The chance to work on creative client projects! 🙌

But one thing that’s frustrating about running a web design biz, is the anxiety-inducing, unpredictable income 😧

Falling into cycles of feast and famine, going between booked-out for months and scrambling for last-minute work. 🙋🏻‍♀️ We’ve been there and it ain’t fun.

Aside from raising your prices, creating opportunities for recurring income is key to your long-term success.

Enter… Website Maintenance Packages!

In today’s digital age, creating an inclusive online experience is not just a choice but a necessity. In this session we explore practical strategies to ensure that your WordPress site is accessible to all users, regardless of their abilities.

Learn six straightforward techniques that you can implement to enhance the accessibility of your WordPress website covering a range of actionable steps that you can take to make your site more inclusive and user-friendly.

In this session you will learn:

Optimizing Content for Accessibility
Enhancing Navigation and User Experience
Ensuring Media Accessibility
Testing and Maintaining Accessibility

By prioritising accessibility, you not only create a better experience for all users but also demonstrate your commitment to inclusivity and equality on the web so please join me as I empower you to make a positive impact and build a more accessible web with WordPress.

Artificial intelligence is often seen as a threat to human creativity, but what if we could leverage it to build deeper, more meaningful connections with our audience? This talk will explore the integration of AI into content marketing, emphasizing the importance of human creativity and how AI can enhance, rather than replace, our creative efforts. I’ll cover topics such as:

* How AI fits into content marketing
* The value of human creativity
* The limitations of AI
* Using AI to build human connections

I have been teaching PHP application development for over a decade to various organisations, government departments, and the public. In 2022 I officially became a teacher and joined a local college. Over the next 12 months I taught programming languages (PHP and others), frameworks and content management systems to different student cohorts. I’m going to share a number of exciting and concerning takeaways I learnt while teaching PHP (with focus on WordPress).

The goals of my session are to strengthen the link between the WordPress community and academia, to question a few educational institution stigmas, and to improve the way we as a community present WordPress to teachers and students.

I will touch upon important topics such as Artificial Intelligence AI (the good and the ugly), open source indifference, proprietary software vendor dominance, quality documentation, student reflection on real life projects, and how different content and context can change student perception of the technology.

The Code Company has been working with global enterprise brands for a decade, and one of the keys to being able to share developer knowledge and efficiency across projects is by using a consistent project framework.

Our core framework at TCC, unofficially named “WPMVC”, is a basic, unopinionated PHP framework that leverages a basic Model-View-Controller structure that works for any project that we’ve encountered (so far).

As part of this talk we’ll cover:
Some background on how we developed this framework
Comparison to other popular PHP frameworks
Why we have chosen this specific approach, and the benefits we’ve seen
Some real-life use-cases
Upcoming features and improvements

In addition, as part of this talk we will be making our “WPMVC” framework open source and available for you to use in your own projects.

In this talk, I will share an overview of the custom WooCommerce features we developed for a large Australia travel agency brand. These features now allow the brand to take direct bookings on the website, which has unlocked large amounts of new revenue for the business and saved 100s hours of manual effort. I believe this project can demonstrate the amazing flexibility of WordPress / WooCommerce compared to other platforms like Shopify.

Key Points:
– Project Overview: Introduction to the project and custom features developed.
— Live Availability Calendar: Demonstrating the live availability calendar functionality.
— Fare Types: Handling multiple fare types.
— Add-On Integration: Incorporating add-on features.
— API Synchronization: Syncing with the booking system through API integration.
– Off-the-Shelf Plugin vs Custom: Why we ended up choosing a custom integration instead of calendar or booking solution plugin.
– Business Benefits: Outlining the advantages these features brought to the business.
– Why WooCommerce: Reasons why WooCommerce was the ideal platform for this project.
– Implementation Details: The technical aspects of how we accomplished this integration.

Ever been handed a logo so dreadful it looks like it was drawn by a blindfolded monkey with a crayon? Fear not! Join Corey Dodd, a designer with more than 25 years of experience and a flair for making things sexy, as he takes you on a wild ride of transforming these aesthetic monstrosities into visually stunning websites. Whether you’re a seasoned designer, a coding wizard, or just someone who drew the short straw with a hideous logo, this talk will arm you with the skills to turn trash into treasure.

Main topics covered:

Introduction: What the hell makes logos and brand assets horrible?

Case Studies: The good, the bad, and the ugly.
• Brilliant brands with seamless websites.
• Brands that opted for a logo refresh with a new website.
• Jaw-dropping websites birthed from horrendous logos.

Design Tips and Techniques: How to make magic out of mess.
• Where to find focus.
• Clever tricks to integrate poor branding elements effectively.
• Using typography, color, and layout to distract from the disaster.

Tools and Resources.

How to turn your business services and skills into high-profit, low-effort digital products

Are you tired of exchanging your time for money?

Do you wish you could work less and earn more?

I’ve been there and that’s why I turned the skills I’d learned as a successful freelance copywriter into digital products with minimal effort. Within a few years I was making a million dollars a year without even changing out of my pyjamas.

In Six Figures While You Sleep, I’ll explain how you can transform your service-based skills into lucrative online products – from coaching and courses to digital downloads, memberships and masterminds.

Will it be an entirely ‘passive’ income? No. Will it be highly profitable? Absolutely.
No matter what your industry or skill set, you can say goodbye to the 9-5 grind and instead use this book as a blueprint to successfully create and grow a lucrative online, digital product business.
I’ll walk you through the positioning, processes, pricing and profile building – explaining the tech, the marketing, the sales tactics and how to keep customers coming back for more.

Most passive income books sell an impossible dream, not an implementable reality. Instead in Six Figures While You Sleep I’m giving you a reality-based, doable plan – that doesn’t require a rich partner, generous parents or a massive bank loan.
I provide a refreshing, complete and practical guide to creating a high-profit digital business by doing what you know and love and help you stop selling your time for money.



In a nutshell, I would like to highlight the importance of non-Coding or non-Technical contributions to the WordPress community as a whole.

These include but is not limited to documentation, translation, testing… but for me quite importantly, community building.

– discussing mentorship between working WordPress professionals and people new to WordPress
– a touch of diversity of inclusivity of interacting and engaging with other WordPress communities outside your local bubble
– share experiences from back in the Philippines on how individual WordCamps and WordPress meetups culminate with WordCamp Asia 2025 Philippines
– encourage people from different professions that there is space for them in the WordPress space, coding or otherwise

And then a special call to action for everyone to take on responsibility of leading WordPress towards its 3rd decade.

1. Laying the Foundation: Discuss the initial set-up of the WooCommerce store and the strategies employed to establish a solid foundation for growth. Also look at why chose Woo over Shopify.
2. Driving Traffic and Conversion: Share insights on the marketing and optimisation tactics used to attract and convert more visitors into customers.
3. Optimising the Customer Experience: Highlight the key user experience improvements and enhancements made to the WooCommerce store to improve customer satisfaction and retention.
4. Scaling Operations and Fulfillment: Explain the process of scaling the backend operations, logistics, and fulfilment to support the rapid growth in sales.
5. Leveraging Data and Analytics: Discuss the importance of data-driven decision-making and how it has informed the various strategies and optimizations implemented.
6. Overcoming Challenges and Lessons Learned: Provide an honest reflection on the challenges faced during the scaling process and the key lessons learned that can benefit other WooCommerce store owners.

Learn Javascript deeply, This was said by Matt and WordPress in 2015.
I wasn’t that excited about that. I ignored that advice.
I continued on my Merry Way with PHP, which is both good and bad. WordPress is made with PHP.
I like PHP, I like server side code and have spent a lot of time in it.
Now blocks came out and I was kicking myself.
I was terrified to dive into the block editor because change can be so daunting, and it’s always so much more comforting to stick with the familiar.
I struggled to understand the code inside WordPress docs and I got stuck. Fast.

How do I get this new block stuff to talk to PHP?
In this talk, I will show you how to go from hating blocks to loving them with these development techniques.
In this presentation we are going to make a PHP Shortcode, and then make a dynamic block to show how this works.

Let’s do this.

My talk is about what I have learned about updating WordPress:

– core
– plugins
– themes
– translations

The technical aspect of what you do is the easy part – it’s client wrangling that sucks, right? In this radically candid talk, Brook McCarthy shares the best and worst stories of working with clients. She will share what NOT to do, how to rescue a relationship when things have go wrong, and how to call in premium clients who are a pleasure to deal with.

• How to Make Your Data Work for You: Learn why understanding your website visitors and what they do is SUPER important for getting more views and sales.
• Common Mistakes: Find out why some websites DON’T DO well even when they have a lot of data, and how you can avoid these mistakes.
• The Magic of Personalization: Learn about cool tools that can help you show the right content to the right people, making your website more HANDSOME.
• Easy Steps to Get Started: Simple tips and tricks to start using your website data right away and see REAL results.

Images are the heart and soul of many websites, especially those built on WordPress. They capture attention, tell stories, and enhance user experience. But did you know that images can also be a powerful SEO asset?

In this session, we’ll dive into the world of image SEO, exploring how to optimize your visuals to not only look stunning but also rank higher in search results. We’ll cover everything from technical optimizations like formatting and sitemaps to creative strategies for crafting descriptive filenames and alt text.

As a seasoned SEO expert, I’ll share insider tips and tricks gleaned from years of experience and the latest Google guidelines. Whether you’re a blogger, photographer, e-commerce store owner, or anyone else using WordPress, this session will equip you with the knowledge to make your images work harder for your website’s success.

Main Topics:
– Image Discovery and Indexing: How to ensure search engines find and understand your images.
– Responsive Images: Techniques for delivering the right image to the right device for optimal performance.
– Image Formats and Quality: Choosing the best formats for web and balancing quality with speed.
– Image Sitemaps: Helping search engines discover images they might otherwise miss.
– Descriptive Filenames and Alt Text: Crafting informative text that improves accessibility and SEO.
– Structured Data: Using schema markup to provide additional context to search engines.
– Page Titles and Descriptions: Optimizing the text around your images for better search visibility.
– Speed and Performance: Tips for optimizing image size and delivery for faster page loads.

By the end of this session, you’ll have the skills to transform your images from pretty pictures into powerful SEO tools.

The plugin review team handles hundreds of new plugin submissions every week. 90% of those plugins fall foul of the same mistakes, time and time again.

In this talk we’ll walk through the most common pitfalls, so that your plugin submission goes as smoothly as possible.

Did you know that even if you think like the most common thinking profile, less than 20% of the world think like you? This is mind blowing when you think about it! Unlock the potential of your (WordPress) business with Whole Brain Thinking. Discover how to communicate more effectively with clients, improve sales conversions, and deliver exceptional service. Join me for this session where we’ll explore how leveraging the different modes of thinking can transform your client interactions, and those of your end client too! Key Takeaways: • Learn techniques to understand and communicate with diverse clients • Discover practical strategies to enhance your sales conversations • Gain insights into improving service delivery communication

Some digital marketing agencies are broken, and can give the entire industry a bad rap. But there are certain stand-out agencies who are changing this. Together we can uplift and support each other to do better.

– Why do agencies have so much churn, and a bad rap?
– What clients really want.
– Examples of pioneering agencies in Australia.
– Why change? So that everyone wins!

The term “sustainability” has evolved in recent years. In the context of this talk, when I mention sustainability I will be specifically focusing on emissions, particularly greenhouse gas emissions like CO2.

Together, we will take a look at some practical steps that can be taken during the design, development, hosting, and long-term management of WordPress websites to reduce their impact on the environment.

Cyber security (or lack of) has been covered extensively in the news. Hacker attacks range from bored school kids toying around to state-sponsored ransom-driven targeted strikes. As web developers it’s our responsibility to incorporate cyber security best practices into the development cycle.

In this talk I’ll cover:
– state of security of WordPress
– resources and guidelines from Australian government and The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP)
– WordPress plugins and other services to secure your website