WordPress is an extremely flexible, powerful tool that millions of people use to do everything from make a living, to pursue their passions, to simply have a voice online and be heard. But possibly the most amazing thing about WordPress is that it’s built and supported by a host of volunteers! People who, together, help to consistently make it better. Anyone, yes you, can be a part of that!
In this workshop, the team behind the contributor day here at WordCamp US will walk you through the various ways you can get involved in the WordPress project. Don’t write code? No problem! Don’t have a lot of hours to dedicate? No problem! There are MANY ways to get involved in improving the product that powers over 34% of the internet, and we’ll help you find the one that’s best for you!
Are people with visual impairment able to use your website? What about people with hearing impairment, mobility issues, or cognitive disabilities? 1 in 5 Americans has a disability of some kind, so it’s important to make sure that your website is usable for everyone. An accessible and inclusively designed website respects the civil rights of everyone, expands your reach, downloads faster, is more usable, works better in different browsers and on different devices, has better SEO, is easier to manage, and demonstrates your commitment to social responsibility.
But how can you be sure your website works for everyone? In this workshop, we’ll walk you through testing your website, identifying potential issues, and fixing the most common accessibility problems. We’ll cover the basic principles of accessibility and inclusive design and share tips and tools for making and keeping your website accessible.
WordPress as a platform is growing and changing at a pace we haven’t seen in quite some time. This evolution presents huge opportunities for taking WordPress and our projects to new heights, but change can be hard to navigate. This workshop will showcase some of the different approaches we might take to building resilient, scalable and forward-looking sites on WordPress (including headless!). By the end you should understand how to set a solid foundation for your projects and feel more confident about the work you deliver to your team or your clients.
When designing WordPress themes, one of the biggest challenges stems from a core component of WordPress itself: the ability for site owners to change, modify, and build new content themselves. This simple yet powerful capability was a driving force behind the adoption and popularity of WordPress, but theme designers are faced with a difficult task: designing for content and functionality that doesn’t yet exist.
As content and functionality become even more modular thanks to advances like the Gutenberg editor, theme designers will have to accommodate even more flexible ways of visualizing and presenting information. How do we anticipate and accommodate the needs of a constantly evolving website while providing visual solutions that are clean, thoughtful, and consistent?
We will walk through the entire design thinking process as it relates to themes, and you’ll leave with a thorough checklist of steps and tools for designing themes that support WordPress core functionality, custom templates and content, common plugins, and an array of standard and custom Gutenberg blocks. This process is useful both for custom theme builds, and designing themes for sale as a product.
When I started my business in 2011, I didn’t think I needed a business plan. I only needed clients, tons of clients. Even though my title was Web Designer, I took every job that came my way. I made WordPress websites, of course, but also did graphic design, print design, social media management, training — basically anything!
In less than eight months, I had to go back to work as an employee because I managed to spend way more money than I earned. I kept freelancing on the side with no direction whatsoever and finally, I realised that I needed a plan.
It doesn’t matter what your financial goal is for the year or your mission for your small business. Having measurable goals and a clear strategy will allow you to do what you love and make a living out of it.
In this workshop I will go over the basic sections of a business plan and show you some examples of how you can make one that represents you and your business. There will be worksheets to help you draft your first business plan and crayons and markers to make it more fun!
Let’s dive in and learn how to build Gutenberg blocks for WordPress with Javascript. We’ll explore the foundations of the block development, how to setup a local block development environment and actually build a block or two using the latest techniques, block controls and settings panels. You’ll leave the workshop with a clear understanding of the building blocks of building blocks.
Your brand is your core business asset. It is the reputation you have in the market, the perception your audience has about your business, and the feelings and thoughts they associate with your products or services. With a strong, clear brand, decision-making is easy, your value is clear, and you can charge your worth with confidence and certainty.
When you have brand clarity and know exactly who you are selling to, what you need to say, and how to communicate all the important details with ease your sales marketing efforts will become less stressful and more enjoyable.
In this hands-on workshop session, you won’t be sitting back and relaxing, you’ll be neck deep in your brand, gaining clarity and getting things done. You’ll walk away with a deeper understanding of your brand, a powerful, refined marketing message, and new ways to speak and present your offers—all so you can boost referrals, attract clients, and expand possibilities.
After running WordPress updates most of us go look at the home page, and other templates, to make sure things are okay. It’s a cumbersome task that, let’s be honest, we probably can do more thoroughly.
In this workshop, we will look at how to use visual regression testing, which uses a headless browser to compare URLs, to automate this process and let the robots do the work, saving you both time and mental energy!
There will be lots of demos and hands-on examples, so you can walk away from the session with the knowledge and tools you need to automate your visual QA testing.
Required Skill Set
To get the most out of this workshop, attendees should be comfortable editing JavaScript files and running commands in the Terminal (command line).
Technical Requirements
To follow examples in this workshop, attendees need to have a computer with Node.js installed, a code editor, a Git client (command-line or UI).
To test your own site you will need a WordPress site with two environments (e.g., production and staging or production and local).
We have a tendency to write our online biographies as if they are resumes. Even worse is when we write them full of inside jokes or self-deprecating humor.
We do business with people we know, like, and trust. Your online bios need to show your human side. Are you into golf? Let’s talk about it. Do you have children, design tattoos, or grow watermelons? Let’s talk about your PHP skills in your case studies and leave the resumes for LinkedIn.
In this workshop, we will all rewrite our bios. I’ll be helping you with the formula I came up with for over 40 speaker bios I’ve written for WordCamp speakers. You will leave this workshop with a finished product you can apply to your sites immediately.
In this session, we will review what matters in today’s search and explore how this relate to website owners. The session will walk through keyword research, evaluation and selection of keyword phrases, and mapping of preferred keywords to website content. Attendees will receive templates to use throughout the process, as well as checklists for use in post-workshop implementation.
Workshop material is applicable to both end users and developers, as well as those who are new and inexperienced in search engine optimization. This workshop’s education style is designed to teach advanced SEO topics at a level everyone and anyone can understand and implement.
Attendees are encouraged (but not required) to bring a laptop to the session and have ready access to their Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts.
