You may have heard about React.js and the WordPress API, but how do you get started using these new technologies? We’ll cover a simple, practical example of how to start using React.js with the WordPress API in a traditional PHP templated WordPress Theme.

My presentation will be ultra-visual, and I will be exploring actionable changes that attendees will be able to make immediately to improve their client relationships as well as their launch/site management workflows. Finally, I will address the financial benefits of offering a better user experience – in other words, how much more money freelancers and agencies can make by providing a solid user experience for their clients.

Many non-profits don’t realize that they have a problem until a volunteer half-finishes a website and disappears. Whether you create WordPress sites for others or as a non-profit employee or volunteer, this session will help you use WordPress to engage donors and volunteers, represent the organization as a good steward of donors’ money, and protect its security and reputation. Non-profits also have unique project management and maintenance needs, and we will discuss these as well.

In this talk we’re specifically going to look at how a combination of REST principles and modeling our processes and dialogs as state machines can dramatically simplify our client applications and API exchanges. Why would you want to hear more about this subject? As we all start working more in the browser and communicate back to WordPress via API calls it’s easy for the complexity to start stacking up and overwhelming us! In fact, API design isn’t necessarily intuitive and the web is full of noisy advice. We’ll use an example Gutenberg plugin to walk through a very common scenario dealing with interactive processes and we’ll see how a few design principles can save us the headaches of race conditions, code bloat, and changing requirements. We’ll examine how “state machines” can guide us and simplify complex business logic and we’ll explore how “HATEOAS” and REST pair with these machines to simplify complex application and UI logic. Whether you are just starting to write your own APIs and API clients or you have been churning them out for years I invite you to join this design session; we’ll stay away from nitty-gritty code details and instead focus on general principles we can apply in any coding environment. It’s my hope that after participating in this session you will be able to confidently work with: indicating loading states; testing and debugging forms, processes, and uploads; untangle complicated business rules dealing with things like authentication, limiting, validation, and triggering related activity; and end up with well documented means of doing so.

Amnesty International USA launched a website redesign in May 2017 based on a six month journey of defining a design pattern that would reinforce our branding and making it easy to implement on any page of our website using WordPress, Bootstrap 4 and Advanced Custom Fields. We’ll take a look at the journey of defining the design patttern and why it’s important for every website to have one. Then we’ll explore how ACF uses Flexible Content and Repeater fields to create an infinite amount of design possibilities while still remaining within a brands aesthetic design guidelines. Code, design and process will be shared.

Balancing life as a freelancer in the real world. From surviving to thriving in business, relationships, and health. Note: due to an operations glitch we did not have video for this presentation, so we’re paired the slides with the audio.

In this presentation I will demonstrate a simple install script that will have a fully functioning, customized WP website in about the same time than it normally takes download the WordPress.zip file. We will also look for how third party tools and hosts are leveraging the WP-CLI to make your life as a developer even easier. Walk away with: -A new appreciation for the command line. -The desire to script ‘all the things’ to save time. -Knowledge of serious time saving tools -Ideas about how to automate your processes to be more productive and profitable.

I have a workflow that begins with my blog posts, which I aggregate into eBooks and paperbacks, and then into audio books, and from there I use the audio to strip movie segments for YouTube and online courses. It has worked well and I would like to share the process.

It’s absolutely possible to do all your PHP programming using a basic text editor, but is it wise? If you work alone (like in a basement) it might make sense to keep things simple by using a text editor and an FTP account to keep your WordPress site updated. But, if your site has a large (code base) or you work in a team, embracing more modern development techniques will help you get more done. In this topic, I will cover some of the most useful tools included in two popular PHP IDEs – Zend Studio/Eclipse and PhpStorm and one popular design IDE Adobe Dreamweaver. Subject matter will include; file management and site navigation, code generation and completion, refactoring, debugging, and integrative source control using Git.

If you’re doing things right your website will be viewed all around the world. But what does that mean for you as a wordpress user and publisher? Internationalization is a buzz word among developers. We’ll talk briefly about internationalization, localization, and their various implications. In this workshop session, we will focus on talking about the basics of copyright and intellectual property, internet commerce, and best practices for website user and privacy policies when your website is being viewed around the world – we will address legal considerations for US, EU, UK, Australian, and Canadian based website visitors. This will not be legal advice, but rather offer general information.