ASK WCSYD – your chance to ask the hard (WordPress) Questions
Due to some unfortunate family circumstances our Speaker Dan Milward has had to pull out of WordCamp Sydney.
This gives us an exciting opportunity to give you the delegates a chance to ask your questions and have other members of the community give you answers. Tweet your questions to @wordcampsydney add the hashtag #askwcsyd, or if you need more than 140 characters – leave us a post on our facebok page (http://facebook.com/wordcampsydney) during the course of the weekend and we’ll sort through them and pose some answers for you!
No Ordinary WordPress Blog
Phil Peet is going to take us through simple ways you can make your standard WordPress blog/site look and feel like a whole new site.
Stop Hacking WordPress and start Working with it
Many developers know how to write code in php but that doesn’t mean they can write code for WordPress.
When developing sites for clients in WordPress, it sometimes preferably to write a custom function that will simplify data input, management and display.
The WordPress coding framework is continually evolving and provides a number of hooks (through actions & filters) to allow developers to quickly and easily grab functions to create world class websites.
Charly will speak about the power of hooks and filters and explain some of the most common ones to use if you want to write your own custom functions, to make the management of your wordpress websites a breeze.
Child Theming
If you’ve been building WordPress websites for a while you may already be familiar with Child Themes. They are the recommended way of making modifications to an existing theme.
Chris will bring us the basics of Child Theming, including the why it is so recommended and how to actually make your first WordPress Child Theme.
Theme Frameworks Explained
There’s been a fair bit of talk in the theme development community in recent times about Theme Frameworks for WordPress. This session will gather together some of the theme development gurus who use theme frameworks in our WP Community to explain a bit about why they use them, which frameworks they use, and their benefits and drawbacks in a Theme Development workflow. Our panel includes
Dee Teal – The Web Princess who uses Genesis Framework by StudioPress
Bronson Quick – who uses WordPress Twenty Eleven and _s (underscores) the starter theme developed by Automattic
Tony Cosentino – who uses the iBuilder framework by iThemes
Peter Wilson – who built his own ‘Big Red’ framework
The panel will be chaired by Peter Bui who doesn’t use frameworks at all.. actually, Pete doesn’t even use WordPress… so you can’t get more impartial than that (not that there’s any kind of competition at stake… or mediation likely to be required… )
Demystifying Custom Post Types and Taxonomies
You’ve heard about them… Custom Post Types and Taxonomies have been available since WordPress 3.0 – and once you start using them you’ll use them for everything… but until you get familiar with them they can seem a bit daunting.
Tracey will introduce Custom Post Types and Taxonomies, outline why they’re so great and what you can use them for and will introduce some of the cool tools available to make using them both easy and expedient.
TurboPress: The High Performance Guide to WordPress
A technical deep dive into performance analysis and optimisation for WordPress sites large and small, from the front-end to the back-end… and the official launch of the TurboPress blog! 🙂
The Power of Your Story Through WordPress and Social Media
Have you noticed what’s going on online lately? Your friends and family tell you to check out this website or you have to read that blog, you may be doing the same thing, everyone these days is trying to get everybody else’s attention, why? Why should anybody care what you have to say? Why do you want to be noticed? Why should anybody listen to you? Why should they check out or even buy anything you’re selling?
That’s where your story comes into play. People are tired of the spam, they want to really connect with you and the best way for them to connect is through your story.
This session will teach you the power your story has to connect with your audience through a WordPress website and how social media can help spread your message.
Do you want to build a platform, do you want to start a thriving business, you have to give people a reason to listen to you, and it starts with your story!
Siloing your site for SEO success
The Silo model is an old-skool SEO technique, used to create strong keyword related themes on your site, improving the relevancy of your site in the eyes of the search engines. It also lines up surprisingly well with traditional information architecture (IA) principles.
Stephen will look at the benefits of using the Silo model, how it is still relevent in 2012 and then show you how how to implement the model in WordPress.
The Plugin Spectactular
A plugin filled presentation where as many plugins as humanly possible will be presented. Areas like eCommerce, Membership site, Forums, SEO, Security will be covered.
When to use paid plugins and why.
What to look for in a good plugin.
And finally some plugin recipes from his upcoming Plugin Cookbook about what plugin combinations to use in different scenarios.
Security for WordPress
For a lot of users, security is the thing you think about after you have a brush with a hacker of some kind. Vlad delivered some awesome insights into getting your WordPress site secure and hacker resistant BEFORE you have an incident, at WordCamp Melbourne, and he’s bringing his talk to WordCamp Sydney with new updated insights.
There’s More than 1 way to develop a WordPress Theme
Lachlan will talk about the development philosophy and processes we use at Sennza for all of our WordPress themes we design & develop.
Because WordPress is so extendable and flexible, there are many different ways to integrate the same feature or option. At Sennza we have an emphasis on keeping things as simple as they can be, but no simpler.
Using real life case studies Lachlan will discuss, how to:
– Manage and structure your websites content for the future.
– Plan to make your themes “Client Proof”
– Develop all your themes for “Zero Support”
Inclusive Design Principles for WordPress
Can you afford to alienate a large section of your audience?
In this presentation Joe will cover what inclusive design means, why it is important to you, and how it can be easy to integrate into your template and function design. Aimed at writers, coders, designers and managers, he’ll get you passionate about accessibility with humour and brevity.
Your Blog Your Brand
How personal blogs have revolutionised publishing.
This talk will demonstrate how a WordPress blog can provide a platform for individuals and small businesses to build profile and get noticed.
It will outline:
* Key practices and principles for blogging success.
* How to use social media integration to maximise distribution of your messages.
* How to harness the power of WordPress and plugins for maximum benefit – the must-haves.
What Multisite can do for You
Setting up, configuring and running WordPress multisite and ways to use it to its full potential
Optimising SEO for WordPress
The essential way to make SEO plugins work & how to optimise a site within WordPress
Building Community with WordPress
Building community with WordPress – methods and techniques for creating digital projects for non-profits & community organisations.
Are you thinking of working with non-profits and community organisations? Good, as designers/developers it’s important that we can work with a variety of clients – from corporate to community.
Working with non-profits on digital projects is rewarding, however it can also pose some unique challenges due to the way they are structured and managed. Don’t let this discourage you though, this talk will cover some methods and techniques you can employ that will hopefully assist with some of these hurdles
Using a recent case study, I will talk about:
- the benefits of using WordPress for Non-profits/community organisation digital projects
- how to work collaboratively with key stakeholders
- how to be flexible while keeping to task
Getting to Grips with Firebug
Quite often, in the WordPress forums and the like, people post simple questions about how they can change the colour of a link or menu item, or change the background colour of something.
To new users HTML and CSS looks like voodoo, this session will try and demystify some of the common HTML and CSS tweaks people ask for and demonstrate how users can perform some basic site debugging and styling using the browser add-on, Firebug.
We will also cover how Firebug can be used to find specific css styles as well and how to test basic changes within the browser before making those changes permanent.
The Future of WordPress
WordPress has a bold history in becoming the world’s most popular web publishing software.
But what does the future have in store for WordPress?
It might not be what you think.
Responsive WordPress
Responsive WordPress will take a look at the new trend of Responsive design and its advantages, as well as a look at the options for implementing a responsive design in WordPress.
WordPress for Noobs
A complete beginners guide to WordPress. Focusing on installing, setting up and customising a new WordPress installation (.org)
From choosing a hosting solution (.com or .org), downloading through installation to installing and customising your theme.
* Isn’t WordPress just a blog?
* How to choose (pros/cons): .com or .org (.org used for remaining talk)
* Choosing a suitable hosting plan
* Downloading and installing WordPress (manual ftp/cPanel)
* A quick run through the Admin Dashboard interface:
How To Get Paid What You’re Worth
How to build the business you want, work on the projects you want, with the clients you want and for the fees you want. Because life is too short to do otherwise.
The presentation teaches how to differentiate yourself from all the other web developers and how to add heaps of value to your clients projects so you can charge the fees you deserve.
