Speaker: Bronson Quick – Using WordPress As A Headless CMS

Posted on August 8, 2016 by DeveloperWil

Meet Bronson. When he isn’t collecting Smashing Pumpkins memorabilia he’s coding WordPress goodness with the wonderful team at Human Made.

He also talks about WordPress on the WP Dev Table podcast and maintains Chassis, a lightweight WordPress + Vagrant development environment.

Bronson is going to take us on a wonderful tour of the new WordPress REST API and how it can be applied to MVC frameworks using JavaScript.

The WP REST API infrastructure was introduced in WordPress 4.4. The introduction of this infrastructure allows WordPress developers to now use WordPress as a headless CMS. A headless CMS has its frontend component (the head) stripped and removed from its backend, and what remains is a backend delivering content via an API. Some common use cases for headless CMS are as follows:

Serving data to other web applications
Mobile Apps
Websites and web apps built with MVC-style JavaScript frameworks

Developers can install the WP REST API plugin to expose endpoints for WordPress for posts, pages, media and users. Developers can also extend the WordPress core REST infrastructure to register their own endpoints for custom post types and WordPress options.

The WP REST API plugin will expose database content via JSON. This data can be used by developers to create sites using JavaScript frameworks such as React and also use the JSON data in mobile apps.

Bronson will explain and demonstrate how you can use WordPress and the WP REST API to create a website that uses React on the frontend and WordPress on the backend as a headless CMS.

You can follow Bronson on Twitter.

Speaker Submissions Are Closed

Posted on August 6, 2016 by DeveloperWil

Speaker submissions are now closed for WordCamp Sydney 2016.

We’ve had an overwhelming influx of submissions so thanks to all those who put together a speaking proposal.

We’ll be in touch soon if your proposal has been accepted.

We’d love to let every one of you speak but we just don’t have the schedule so don’t worry if you haven’t been chosen to speak at this year’s WordCamp Sydney.

It’s not because your proposal was bad. In fact we may get in contact to see if you would like to give a talk at our WordPress Sydney meetups.

Thanks again.

WCSyd

Speaker: Nik Cree – Anatomy Of The Perfect Website – Building a Powerful Profitable Website For Business

Posted on August 5, 2016 by DeveloperWil

Heads up, it’s Nik Cree. He designs and builds business websites that generate leads and sales!

He’s also active in the WordPress community, a co-host on WP Bosses and a veteran WordCamp speaker.

Unlike most web designers and developers who look at the aesthetics and functionality, Nik focuses on the end goal “What is the ultimate purpose of your website?“.

Most businesses answer:

Get more customers
Make more sales
Provide information

…but in almost every case their answer is WRONG!

The primary purpose of a website to to get prospective customer to take one of two actions:

Pick up the phone and call
Leave their name and email address

That’s it…goal accomplished!

Having built hundreds of websites for clients over the past 8 years Nik has noticed some things that work exceptionally well every time and other things that are invariably almost always failures.

He admits that putting a website together is a science but not rocket science and in this session he will show you how he does it with his clients.

Simple things like…

How big to make the logo and were to place it
Why you should never use stock images
Why the worst place to start is to replicate competitors websites
How to automate your marketing

to…

The most effective call to action
The highest converting instruction on a contact form
Optimal layout of the header, sidebar, footer, body
Quick hacks to getting high converting copy

You can follow Nik on Twitter.

Speaker: Jack Skinner – Make the web fast with jelly snakes and raspberry twizzlers

Posted on August 5, 2016 by DeveloperWil

Meet Jack. He’s a Senior Web Developer turned API Evangelist who’s been coding over half his life and long standing colleague and supporter of the WordPress Sydney community.

During the evenings he’s found organising community tech events & conferences in Sydney, and teaching/mentoring at the University of Technology Sydney.

Jack is passionate about code, PHP and the wider tech community. He organises SydPHP (Sydney’s PHP User Group) and is dedicated to empowering developers to learn and grow their own personal strengths.

In this fun and playful session Jack will take you on a journey from HTTP/1.1 to HTTP/2 enjoying the sights and delights of its new features along the way.

With features like multiplexing, yesterdays best practices are now tomorrow’s anti-patterns – so what does this mean your app or API?

His talk explores the best and worst practices of the way the web worked and how HTTP/2 is changing the game for performance. And it’s all explained of course, using jelly snakes and raspberry twizzlers.

You can follow Jack on Twitter.

Speaker: Kate Toon – How to make Google love your WordPress site

Posted on August 5, 2016 by DeveloperWil

Introducing Kate Toon, an award-winning SEO copywriter and SEO consultant with almost two decades of experience in all things advertising, digital and writing.

Originally from the UK but now based just outside Sydney.

She has worked with big brands such as eHarmony, Curash and Kmart. And she’s helped countless small businesses produce great content and improve their copywriting and SEO.

Kate is also the founder of The Clever Copywriting School and The Recipe for SEO Success eCourse, as well as co-host on the Hot Copy Podcast.

She presents the Write for Business show for the Dale Beaumont’s Business Blueprint channel.

Kate will be telling us all how to make Google fall in love with our websites.

We know that WordPress is one of the most SEO friendly CMS platforms out there.

So why do so many website developers build websites that make Google cry? ;-(

And why do business owners think that applying SEO to a WordPress site is as simple as installing the Yoast plugin?

In this presentation, Kate will tell you the tips, techniques and tactics that she uses to help make sites 100% Google lovable, including: