Sessions

Presented by Neha Patel in 3 – Rideau Room.

People are scared of 404 pages, but at times they overlook how important it is to optimize the 404 error page.

Pages get renamed, content changes, links break and the inevitable happens, your visitor lands on a 404 error page.

But, what if we could leverage it to start a conversation instead?

Presented by David Bird in 2 – Bytowne Room.

Your website has a wonderful story to tell you about your business and your customers….. You just need to uncover it.
But here’s the problem…

Google Analytics is only probably providing passive data about page views and traffic sources, which is not enough to make strategic decisions about how to expand or invest. Actionable data comes from avoiding common Google Analytics mistakes like:

• Proper installation with WordPress Plugins
• How to segment your website visitors
• Having Google organize your data so it’s useful

This beginner level Google Analytics seminar will examine common mistakes and how to fix them. After the seminar you will be able to hear your website’s wonderful story about your business and customers. You will be making strategic decisions about things that matter your business.

Presented by Jeremy Josey in 3 – Rideau Room.

I will present and introduce how adding Sass to their workflow can make their life much easier and improve their CSS.

Presented by Mike Dickson in 1 – Parliament Room.

This talk aims to pull back the curtain on how WordPress wrangles images behind the scenes. Topics include:

• intro to the media library
• what formats are supported
• where images are stored / why you should sort by date
• what WP does with uploaded images
• derived intermediate sizes
• inserting images individually
• inserting as a gallery
• adaptive images in wp
• what “regenerating thumbnails” does
• questions

Presented by Daphnée Laforest in 2 – Bytowne Room.

Better data enables better decision making, and it begins with how you track it – to provide more context to what’s already out there. Event tracking is a feature of Google Analytics that allows site owners to trace actions on their site, even when a URL change is not recorded. Instead of only tracking page views, Event Tracking is a method available in the ga.js tracking code that you can use to record user interaction with website elements, such as a button click on your website. This is accomplished by attaching the method call to the particular UI element you want to track. During this session, you will learn how you can boost your WordPress website analytic using Event Tracking.

Presented by Paul Bearne in 3 – Rideau Room.

There are a number of ways to add custom meta boxes to WordPress admin, from coding against core functions, through code API frameworks, to GUI interfaces. All of these have a place, but which is the right one for your project, code style and coding level? In this talk I will provide code examples and illustrations of the code techniques for each of the methods. By the end of the session I would hope that you would be able to make an informed decision as to what will work best for you. Time permitting, I will also show you how to extend the frameworks.

Presented by Paul Bearne in 3 – Rideau Room.

All of us as WordPress users rely on the open source WordPress Core code.

It might not have occurred to you that you could help improve the the code or you may feel that this would be difficult. It’s not! There are a few simple steps you need to follow – the hardest thing is always finding the time to do it.

Come to this interactive session and learn just how easy it is to contribute to the core code. You don’t need to be the world’s best coder, just to be prepared to learn how to help to make WordPress even better.

And there’s more than just coding in terms of opportunities to contribute to WordPress development – marketing, translation, documentation and more all make use of volunteer input.

Presented by Meagan Hanes, Christie Witt, Miriam Goldman, Shannon Smith, Christopher Ross in 2 – Bytowne Room.

Designers and Developers discuss their experiences working together, including advice for one another and communication techniques.

Presented by James Koole in 2 – Bytowne Room.

An explanation of how DNS works to get your WordPress site to show up when you type your domain name into the URL bar on your browser. From the root servers to your browser, what happens to make the internet work.

Presented in 1 – Parliament Room, 2 – Bytowne Room, 3 – Rideau Room.

Presented by Ivan Kruchkoff in 2 – Bytowne Room.

The talk will cover experiences learned over the course of several large data migrations into WordPress. We focus on:

• Single site to multisite, some shortcuts and some of the pitfalls
• Exporting large amounts of content (1 milltion+ posts) from any CMS.
• Migrating the content into WordPress and how to handle the above posts in less than 2 hours.
• Handling content deltas.
• Moving assets to S3.
• Some WP CLI scripting tips and the same for shell scripts.
• Handling redirects.
• Updating post content to handle changed asset paths.
• Validating migration success.
• WP-Config tips to speed up the jobs.
• When your Macbook Pro is the BEST option for migrations, and when it isn’t.
• How to handle the migration process and timeframe with another engineering team / the client / the hosting provider.

Presented by Jer Clarke in 3 – Rideau Room.

Do you love hot, fresh trends in web publishing technology? Dream of implementing proprietary API’s and hitching your site to commercial entities over which you have no control? Get soft in the knees thinking about your web site being read without the web being involved? Me neither, but we have to do it anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Facebook Instant Articles make your posts show up lightning fast for mobile Facebook users in exchange for handing over some control. Users love it, it looks great and ultimately you still use WordPress to create and publish content. The problem: It’s a pain in the butt to get it set up, the documentation is half-hearted and the whole concept is mind-bending.

This talk will walk you through all the headaches iA gave me and help you avoid having them yourself while you get set up. We’ll cover the concepts behind iA, nuances of the Automattic iA for WP plugin, and how to make the most of the tools on offer in the plugin to make sure all your posts get delivered to your Facebook readers “instantly”.

Presented by Chris Yee in 3 – Rideau Room.

In the age of responsive design, images need to look great on any screen size and need to be optimized for mobile devices. By using SVGs you can accomplish these goals while making a better WordPress site in the process.

In this session we will cover the basics of SVGs and how to use it on your WordPress site. We will also explore great resources to get started using SVGs today.

Presented by Sam Lalonde in 2 – Bytowne Room.

The core principles of a great user experience are Content, Design & Functionality, and Speed. Some people say that we are living in the golden age of user experience but far too often we are technically trudging behind in providing rich and useful experiences and we especially lag behind when it comes to mobile-friendly websites. In fact, 53% of people will abandon a mobile site if it takes more than three seconds to load. Speed is a developer’s problem, a designer’s problem, and also a marketer’s problem. This presentation provides global and Canadian-specific facts and figures about how we’re failing people visiting our websites and covers the ways we can be improving.

Presented by Daphnée Laforest in 1 – Parliament Room.

Today’s technology and connectivity allows us to achieve the extraordinary. Remote work not only enables WordPress companies to access the best talents in the world, but, is also becoming an incredible opportunity to empower work-life balance, and happiness at work. It’s definitely changing the rules for the future generations. However, it also comes with a big list of new challenges, including miscommunication, and isolation. The aim of this talk will be to discuss best practices and tools to succeed at online collaboration when scaling a WordPress Agency remotely.

Presented by Rick Radko, Miriam Goldman in Users.

Location: Carleton University,  Senate Room, 6th Floor – Robertson Hall, University Drive, Ottawa, Ottawa, ON

The goal of Introduction to WordPress for Beginners, is to introduce new and nearly new WordPress users to the terms and concepts of WordPress before the weekend sessions.

In Introduction to WordPress for Beginners, you will learn:

• What the WordPress dashboard is
• About WordPress content types
• How to add content to a WordPress site, including images and video
• How to add and manage menus, sidebar widgets, themes and plugins

The details:

• Introduction to WordPress for Beginners takes place Thursday, July 20, 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m at Carleton University, Senate Room, 6th Floor – Robertson Hall, University Drive, Ottawa, Ottawa, ON
• You need to register for this session separately. To register, please select or add the Pre-camp “WordPress 101: Introduction for Beginners” option to your ticket.
• You can attend this session without attending the main WordCamp on the July 22nd weekend.
• WiFi will not be enabled during this session.
• There are no prerequisites for this session.

Presented by Michelle Ames in 1 – Parliament Room.

So you can build a technically wonderful website, but does it appeal to your audience? Does it have finesse? Who is it designed for: the owner, the designer/developer, or the customer/user? Are forms user-friendly? This talk will show you the things that make a website more complete, user-friendly, and user-appealing. Topics will include favicons, custom 404 pages, form buttons, footers, colors, SSL certificates, and more.

Presented by Lorraine Murphy in 1 – Parliament Room.

WordPress has been a key component of several recent revolutions and resistance movements. I’ll cover the history, from the Iranian resistance to Arab Spring, to Occupy, Anonymous, Bahrain, and more recent examples. I will review the ways in which WordPress can support online privacy and protection, and can be used to generate social change and provide a safe space for dissent.

Presented by Lucas Cherkewski in 3 – Rideau Room.

We hear that the future belongs to those who can code. But many of us don’t know how to code, and fear losing out in an increasingly technical world. We’ll debunk some common fears and misunderstandings about code, consider a learning framework, and find resources to help out along the way. We’ll talk about learning to code in a WordPress context, with its specific challenges and opportunities. We’ll also talk about some of my personal coding failures through the years, and think about how we can turn would-be failures into learning opportunities. By the end of the presentation, you’ll have a simple set of steps and a list of resources to help you learn to code.

Presented by Stéphane Boisvert in 1 – Parliament Room.

Mental health issues are often overlooked or stigmatized. I’ll go over my own personal experience with mental health, depression and anxiety. How to (try to) overcome the Imposter Syndrome and tips and tricks for working from home.

Presented by Shannon Smith in 1 – Parliament Room.

Check out all newest things that CSS can bring to WordPress theme development: CSS Filters, Feature Queries, Native Mixins, Grid Layout, Native Variables, and more. The W3C’s CSS Working Group is introducing a ton of new CSS modules in 2017. Learn how they work and when to use them. We’ll look at real examples that you can start using right now.

Presented by Bianca Welds in 1 – Parliament Room.

Audiences for creative artists live online, and the modern creator must engage them accordingly. For any creative entrepreneur, an online presence is no longer optional. Through an online platform, creative artists can connect with a global audience previously unavailable to them. WordPress is the perfect tool for creative artists to build their online audience platform for content, communication, commerce, collaboration and community. This presentation will look at how to use WordPress to facilitate creative artists connecting with their audience and building their business online.

Presented by Bilal Hassan in 3 – Rideau Room.

WordPress has evolved a lot as of late, especially since the API endpoints became available. In this presentation I want to discuss how to use WordPress as a development framework to build custom web and mobile applications. I will also speak about leveraging JavaScript frameworks when building applications in WordPress. Finally I will touch on building mobile applications with WordPress as the back-end.

Presented by Remy Perona in 3 – Rideau Room.

Having your premium plugin, with which you make money, be available on a public GitHub repository seems a bad move. But in fact we’ll see how it has multiple benefits for you and the community, outweighing the potential bad side.

Presented by Sylvie Hanes in 1 – Parliament Room.

Providing stellar customer service in an IT type environment. Tips and proven best practices will be shared to help manage client expectations, increase strong and effective communication, and turn even negative situations into a good client/customer experiences. Although it will not be specific to the WordPress world, it will help in many types of client/customer interactions.

Presented by Bridget Willard in 1 – Parliament Room.

WordPress-based businesses need customers the same way brick and mortar businesses do. But what are the pain points of your customers? Are your audience personas accurate? How do you build relationships in a digital world? My answer: Twitter.

Twitter serves several marketing purposes including brand awareness, customer service, public relations, networking, and, of course, sales. Our customers are tweeting and they’re telling us about themselves daily. They give us valuable insights that can’t be found elsewhere. These insights help us shape personas into more accurate reflections which influences our content marketing tactics.

Presented in 1 – Parliament Room.

Bring your website to the experts and they’ll offer design advice!

Presented by Erin Blaskie in 1 – Parliament Room.

Establishing a blog or website is one part of the puzzle but the other part is figuring out how to bring readers to the site and keep them interested for the long-haul. In this presentation, we’ll chat about storytelling, social media and digital marketing to understand how all three can help you build and grow a community around your work.

Presented by Kyle M. Brown in 1 – Parliament Room.

This talk will cover best practices that you can use to get effective support from theme and plugin shops as a freelancer, blogger, agency, or enterprise.

From the other side as a customer support provider, this talk will also discuss best practices that you can use to provide effective support to your customers for your theme, plugin, or service.

Presented by Matt Graham in 2 – Bytowne Room.

You’ve seen it before, one big file of PHP code and HTML all mangled together like a coughed up furball. There’s another, dare I say, a better way of structuring your code so that not only you as the developer can go back and make updates with ease, but others can as well.

Presented by Jason Knill, Brian Rotsztein, Bianca Welds, Erin Blaskie in 2 – Bytowne Room.

This is a panel discussion meant to help anyone (such as freelancers, content creators, and small business owners) with questions about WordPress-related business issues.

Presented by Christopher Ross in 1 – Parliament Room.

The theme of my presentation will be themes. Learn how to plugin(to) the power of WordPress with a dozen tried and true shortcuts. Hook into some powerful actions, filter out excess work, and treat yourself to some childish tricks.

Presented by Thiago Loureiro in 3 – Rideau Room.

In this presentation, you will learn how to use Docker to quickly create your development environments avoiding some common problems. It will cover:

• Common strategies/comparison of local environment styles
• Docker basics
• The official WordPress image for Docker
• Other ways of creating your development environment with Docker
• Creating a fresh and disposable WordPress installation
• Adding tooling to your Docker environment: wp-cli, debugging, node, etc
• Cloning/versioning local environments
• The future and stuff

Presented by Laura Gauthier, Tina Todorovic, Kathryn Presner, Meagan Hanes, Christie Witt, Miriam Goldman in 2 – Bytowne Room.

A frank, honest discussion platform with a panel of women who are, and have been involved with WordPress for a variety of different lengths of time.

Presented by Brian Zerkler in 2 – Bytowne Room.

Powering over 28% of all online stores, WooCommerce is an incredible WordPress plugin which can turn your site into an e-Commerce store…and it’s free!
Together, we will set up WooCommerce entering taxes, shipping classes, selling locations, payment options and more. Let’s build an e-Commerce store from scratch with different product types including variable, downloadable and virtual. What about sales and coupon codes? Yup, we’ll cover that too!
Come join us for this hands on workshop and learn how we can use WordPress and WooCommerce to sell anything, anywhere…beautifully!

Make the most of this workshop by downloading the exercise files and setting up a WP test site at LearnShareGrow.bz

Presented by Shawn Hooper in 3 – Rideau Room.

Yes, your code works, but is it the best it could be? This talk will guide you through tips and tricks to make your code efficient, safe, and easy to read. It’s a great primer for new developers, and a good reminder for those of us who have developed bad habits over time.

• Understand the WordPress Coding Standard
• Write Short, Reusable Functions
• Begin using Unit Testing to ensure code functions as expected
• Begin using UI testing to ensure pages behave as expected
• Discuss benefits of code review

Presented by Shanta Nathwani in 2 – Bytowne Room.

Ever wonder what a Custom Post Type is? Why would you want to use them? How do they work with Custom Fields? What’s the difference between CPT’s and Posts? Many of these questions will be answered in this beginner talk, meant to improve your knowledge of content architecture. A basic knowledge of pages, posts, tags and categories would be helpful.