Presented by Kathleen Kuznicki in Room 422.

Building and maintaining a website to market a business, to promote a cause, or to just blog an opinion is fraught with intellectual property (IP) issues. Protecting the content and branding on the website is one concern; making sure you are not infringing someone else’s copyrights and trademarks is another. In our globally connected economy where a strong internet presence is necessary for success, trademark bullies and copyright trolls are ever-watching; ready to pounce on unsuspecting infringers. We will discuss exactly what is protected by copyright law and by trademark law; common infringement risks seen on websites (and how to avoid them), and the fair use defense.

Presented by Ben Dunkle, Andy Staple in Room 442 & 440.

We’re going to step into the process of starting your own WordPress theme by taking a basic html and css site. The main goal is to show folks that making your own isn’t difficult with a little knowledge of HTML & CSS, and diving in is the scariest part, and shouldn’t be. If you’ve ever developed a website from wireframes or mockups to html, turning it into a WordPress theme is just a few extra steps. Watch how Andy and Ben do it, and take your web skills to the next level with your own custom theme. Even if building custom themes isn’t a future goal, getting in and doing this can help when editing other themes and understanding the inner workings of WordPress.

Presented by Christie Chirinos in Room 422.

Whether we know it or not, most of the time that we open a website, see an advertisement on social media, television, or even in print, we are taking part in some sort of split test. If your business isn’t yet using some form of A/B testing or multi-variant testing, it’s time to start.

In this talk I will cover using testing to improve your services and increase the conversion on your eCommerce sites and lead generation forms. In addition I will cover when to test and where, as well as how to use split testing to validate or invalidate ideas about your business as early as possible.

Presented in Room 422, Room 441 & 439, Room 442 & 440.

Presented by Amanda Narcisi in Room 441 & 439.

Get ideas on how to make your owns logo, banner images, profile pics and how to embrace your brand and make it a business.

Presented by Kevin Hoffman in Room 442 & 440.

Whether you are an advanced WordPress theme developer or simply editing content from the dashboard, there is one question that everyone asks at one point or another:

What size should my images be?

This already complex question takes on a whole new dynamic with the recent addition of responsive images in WordPress 4.4. While the basic concept of responsive images may be easy to grasp, a true understanding of the inner workings is far more elusive. In this talk, we will demystify responsive images and learn how to strike a proper balance between image performance and image quality within any context.

Below is a brief overview of the main points we will touch upon throughout this talk:

1. Introduce the Responsive Image Spectrum that ranges from high-quality at one end to high-performance at the other. A successful responsive web site delivers images that hit a sweet spot between performance and quality.
2. Compare the differences between a static image and a responsive image by inspecting two image tags with and without the srcset attribute.
3. Learn how a web browser chooses which image size gets loaded using a calculation known as the Perceivable Limit (Container Size x Display Density). This formula helps us determine the ideal image size within any context.
5. Identify the use cases in which WordPress can and cannot assist us with responsive images.
6. Discuss the practical application of responsive images when setting image sizes within a theme.
7. With our new understanding of responsive images, we will revisit the original question: What size should my images be?

The talk should last about 35 minutes with remaining time open for Q&A.

Presented by Angie Bergmann in Room 441 & 439.

That crazy SEO thing everyone tells you you need? WordPress makes it pretty easy for even the most basic users. I’ll walk you through the basics anyone can do to help their website rank better. It isn’t all smoke and mirrors, and it isn’t snake oil. Content is king and I’ll teach you how to tackle your website like a true SEO.

Presented by Will Reynolds Young in Room 441 & 439.

Are you ready to make the leap to self-hosted WordPress? I am going to show you how to…
1) Choose a domain
2) Choose hosting
3) Choose a theme
4) Move your current site
I will also answer any questions you may have about self-hosted WordPress,

Presented by Michelle Ames in Room 441 & 439.

There are WordPress Features You May Not Know.

If you are like many, there always seem to be things you wish you could do with WordPress, but maybe can’t quite figure out. This session will provide you with some great tips and tricks for you to make working with WordPress even easier.

From changing the number of posts on the dashboard page, to adding a target to link to on the menu dashboard, there are many things that are easy to accomplish — if only you know where to look. Not only are there screen options on almost every dashboard page, but there are help pulldowns, too, helping to answer questions before you might even need to turn to help in a forum.

We will also cover shortcuts for use in the editor window, and a quick and easy way to save your favorite plugins to find at a click to upload to your site.

Bonus – I will also provide a site info sheet I created for each site I build and maintain. I have found this makes my life much easier.

Presented by Devin Walker in Room 422.

Did you know that people tend to donate more online than in person? You may be leaving money on the table if your online gift processes aren’t operating according to best practices for user-experience and donor stewardship. Your website is more than just a tool to raise awareness for your cause. Whether you’re a nonprofit, religious based organization, or individual, online giving is a vital part of furthering your cause.

In this session attendees will learn not only how optimize your donation forms, but also how to present your message most effectively. As well, we will examine several simple, research-backed methods that any fundraiser can make to improve their online donation process. You’ll leave with the confidence that your donation pages and forms can effectively convert visitors into donors – and keep them giving for years to come

Presented by Beth Soderberg in Room 442 & 440.

The flexible box layout model, also known as flexbox, is an alternative method of creating layouts using CSS. It has gained popularity amongst front end developers over the last year or so as browser support for it has increased dramatically. This talk will introduce the flexbox model, examine when to consider using flexbox in your projects, and will address browser compatibility issues you may encounter in implementing flexbox.

Presented by Rich Robinkoff in Room 422, Room 441 & 439, Room 442 & 440.

Rich will be calling us to action in “The Humanity of WordPress,” where he explores the human side of our WordPress communities and empowers attendees to get involved to continue to make WordPress great!

Presented by Brian Layman in Room 442 & 440.

Or ‘Stupid WordPress tricks Part 0.1b.’ Have some fun as you learn the basics of how people add new features to WordPress. Whether you want to write your own first plugin or just if you want to understand that foreign language your web developer is speaking, this is a great place to start.

Presented by Heather Migliorisi in Room 441 & 439.

WordPress is secretly running so many sites we use today. WordPress is amazing, heavily distributed, and loved by many. Heather Migliorisi explains how they can be made even better when accessibility is added into the mix.

Topics include:

-Quick and easy fixes you can do right now (contrast, colors, and :focus)
-Common mistakes we make (images, icons, placeholder text vs. label, semantic faux pas, and roles)
-Choosing accessible themes and plugins
-Where to go for help
-Giving back to the community

Presented by Anthony Laurence in Room 422.

We’ve all heard about responsive design and how important it is. But most designers and developers only use techniques to build their sites to be responsive on the client-side without even knowing about a completely different approach to responsive design: Responsive Design with Server Side Components (RESS).

RESS leverages the server to make websites and applications as lightning fast as possible. I will discuss the pros and cons of both client-side and server-side responsive design and show techniques that designers and developers can start using today.

Presented by Tom Cottrill in Room 442 & 440.

Site Speed becomes more critical every day. It’s a search ranking factor, mobile devices are now the norm, and yet our sites get more complex and complicated. It’s important that we build our sites understanding the need for speed from the beginning.

The talk will cover:
JS and CSS minification
The creative use of WP Transients
CDN implementation
Cacheing
AMP Implementation
Smart Site Structure

• Video

Presented by Josh Pollock in Room 422.

With the popularity of WordPress, the expectations of what WordPress can and can’t do — from the perspective of our clients and our end users — has solidified, for better or worse. The WordPress REST API provides an opportunity to break those expectations and use WordPress to deliver better experiences for end users and site administrators alike.

In this talk, I will cover many of the possibilities for using WordPress in new and exciting ways as well as to improve how we build the most common elements of a WordPress site. There will be practical examples of how to use the REST API and wild speculation to encourage you to imagine fun new ways to use WordPress.

This is a talk for developers, but it has no code. It is a talk about how and why to use the REST API and an exploration of the changing role of WordPress in the evolving web. Anyone with a basic understanding of WordPress will be able to follow it.

Presented by Lara Schenck in Room 442 & 440.

A slow website has serious business impacts. Period. 40% of mobile users abandon a page that takes more than three seconds to load (1). Many “Creative Responsive Multi-Purpose” themes are beautiful and flashy with their demo content, but have speed indexes of more than 50 times what is recommended (2). Are free themes any good? How can you tell good premium themes from bad ones without buying them? Never fear! There are several ways to vet a theme before shelling out the cash.

In this talk, we’ll cover strategies for evaluating themes’ code quality and performance, and creating healthy, content-oriented websites. In many ways, this is a call to action to the WordPress end user community: let’s shift our values from flashy effects to rock-solid content and fast websites. Scroll-jacking and parallax are over!

1) http://bit.ly/1LB87ve
2) http://bit.ly/1g8GH44

Presented by Krystal O’Connor in Room 422.

Many podcasters turn to WordPress to help build the website that will be the landing page for their podcast show, but did you know there were themes, plugins, and best practices geared directly toward marrying your podcast and your WordPress site?

This session will talk about some of those best practices (and some not so good practices), and will cover some awesome podcast themes and plugins that will help you get the job done.

Presented by Logan Kipp in Room 441 & 439.

Logan takes the audience through the structure of a WordPress site’s security posture, dispelling common misconceptions and elaborating on perceived security overlaps. The session explains the differences between plugin-based security and external solutions, as well as how they best work together. In easy-to-understand terms, Logan also touches on basic hosting configuration best practices and security control spheres. Whether just getting started in WordPress or a seasoned developer, this talk has something for every WordPresser.