Data Hierarchy is a web series turned (free) E-book that helps companies understand how to work with data they are collecting. As websites become the leading edge of that data collection its important for the company to know how to leverage it for future success. Working with clients to help them gather the right kind of data makes developers even more valuable, and referable. 

Also, developers already have a background in programming to some degree or another, its a short step to also becoming a data analyst for nearly double the hourly rate. Helping “tee up” data for the company will lead to future projects and repeat business for web designers.

Data Hierarchy is a 6 tier process that helps everyone from the hardcore data user to the most out of touch CEO understand data projects. The tiers include Reporting, Business Intelligence, Descriptive Data, Predictive Data, Prescriptive Data, and Artificial Intelligence. Once you understand what you need to collect for data points, you can do more with less in your data. The series was purposely written to be entertaining and educational without getting bogged down in the technical elements. 

Grow your marketing list (or your client’s) like a boss. Web design veteran, Mat Casner, will break down the power of marketing funnels and show you, step by step, how to build high-converting landing pages in WordPress using the DIVI page builder. He will show you how to connect your landing page directly to your email marketing provider, help you start attracting more clients and give you a powerful new skill to market to your customers.

Manually copying or moving a WordPress site seems so easy, but it has some pitfalls. Abby’s presentation and discussion will include the high-level concepts of why we need staging/testing sites, how to complete a migration, helpful (and unhelpful) plugins, various gotchas, and a short discussion of managed hosting services that include staging/migration features. All types of WP enthusiasts (developer, designer, webmaster, biz owner, etc) are welcome, and hopefully there’s a little something here for all levels of expertise from the beginners who don’t even have a WordPress site yet to the experts who have done many migrations already.

In this talk, Patrick will give 10 simple steps to set up a WordPress site for SEO Success. He will start with why SEO is important and then break down, step by step, how to set up the site for immediate and ongoing SEO success.

 Learn what it’s like to make the jump from a design to a development career, where a keen eye for detail is essential for keeping creative clients happy.

April will take us through an introduction to good working practices for remote tech work – for employees as well as companies. Discussion will draw from personal experience working as a web designer designer, and cover topics such as finding remote jobs, staying sane and healthy, remote team work, and effective communication.

Glen will explain what web accessibility (WCAG 2.1) is and why it is so important we understand it and be compliant. People with disabilities ranging from blindness, deafness, dyslexia and others may navigate and consume content in different ways with assistive technology.  Web accessibility is not just for developers, it is just as important for marketers to make it part of their digital marketing to ensure that opportunities for success aren’t missed.  When 1 in 5 people have short or long term disability, creating accessible websites can increase your conversions by 20% by being accessible.

Sergio will be telling us all about the WordPress Rewrite API, (a topic we often don’t hear of). Specifically, he’ll show how to set a custom permalink structure for a custom post types. This will cover wp_query, query vars, permalinks, pre_get_posts hook, rewrite rules and tags.

This session will discuss how you build your personal or professional brand to reflect your values, define your voice, and drive your business. Values based marketing can help you authentically connect to customers and allow you to share your unique perspective to grow your career.

The new WordPress editor—“Gutenberg”—makes building web sites almost as much fun as playing with Legos. Beautiful digital experiences in record time that give you a decisive market advantage and help you grow your business faster. David Vogelpohl will explore use cases across media, ecom, campaign sites and he’ll explain how new possibilities are now unlocked for end-users, developers, and agencies thanks to blocks.

Have you ever wanted to know what it was like to build a custom theme? Yeah me too! I have worked on many themes and customizing them but never actually created my own theme. Very recently I thought I needed to learn more about it and I am happy to be here talking about what I have learned. This topic will cover just the basics. If you’re like me and always wondered what it’s like to start creating a custom theme, this topic is for you.

People think that Marketing is synonymous with VooDoo. It’s not. Marketing is a series of well-made, precise, decisions executed in a systematic and structured way. WordPress allows for some great marketing automation tools and process that can help you grow your business WITHOUT losing your brand voice or human touch. Learn more from Larissa’s talk!

New to WordPress? Then this session is for you! Get tips on how to build your first self-hosted WordPress site.

The term “Managed WordPress Hosting” has been a buzz word in the WordPress community for some time now. What does it really mean? How do the well-known “Managed WordPress Hosting” companies stack up against each other?

More importantly, how can small WordPress agencies provide a much more robust service offering than these big companies and create a significant value-add for their current and future WordPress website development clients?

Travis Pflanz, of Search Centered Digital Marketing, will walk attendees through 20 feature-rich and SEO-focused points of service every WordPress professional should include in a monthly Managed WordPress Hosting & Maintenance Service for clients – or to use for their own website.

WordPress is amazing, but sometimes the client just needs a custom site built. If you’re a javascript developer, you’d love to be able to reach for ${JS_FRAMEWORK} to build out the site, but don’t want to write PHP code or deal with having to write a custom backend data management either.

The best solution may be to split the front end from the back end, entirely. WordPress has a fantastic admin dashboard and the UX for adding and updating content is very simple for non-techies to grasp. How about we let the end users continue to use the WordPress dashboard to edit content, and we’ll build a snazzy the front end using javascript. The lone problem then becomes ‘how do we get the data?’.

The WP JSON API is nifty and could work for smaller projects, but eventually all of those network requests get a little overwhelming. Enter GraphQL. GraphQL is a query language spec developed by Facebook (don’t hold that against them…) that allows you to request what you need for each request. It cuts down on HTTP traffic and makes the dev experience a heckuva lot nicer.

In this talk, we’ll do a crash course on GraphQL and the ecosystem that’s been built around it, making use of the WP GraphQL plugin, and building out a front end using Stencil JS, a web component compiler* (*=BONUS DEV CONTENT!)

We go meeting to meeting, let our inboxes fill-up, and impulsively check Slack for the next emergency. What would work be like if we were able to choose what to work on instead of reaction dictating our work? In this breakout, learn tips to leave Slack channels, ignore email, and thin your information intake. Do it enough and you might just find yourself asking: what should I do now?

Many devs and content managers are handed the keys to HTML, CSS and other front-end layout technologies without really knowing exactly what to do with them, or how to best utilize them toward their website’s goals. This talk aims to give a quick crash-course on design for web developers and content creators to help them avoid the biggest mistakes in design and give their users the best experience possible.

Using integration and automation can be a powerful way of doing more with the resources you already have. In this breakout session, Andy will share a client case study where WordPress was heavily integrated with third-party services to automate over 1,000,000 tasks each month. If you’re not currently automating your organization’s digital workflows…then you won’t want to miss this session!

Have you been thinking about launching an affiliate program for your brand but have no idea where to start? This is the talk for you! Stacy will walk you through what to look for in an affiliate platform, how to recruit new affiliates as well as understanding how best to nurture and build the loyalty of your affiliates.

Large companies have used WordPress as a headless CMS for a few years now, but lately it’s easier than ever for developers to leverage technologies like the WordPress REST API and WP-GraphQL with React and Vue to build JavaScript frontends instead of traditional WordPress Themes. There are some great performance, security and developer experience upgrades gained from decoupling, but also some hazards I wish I knew before starting headless projects. In this presentation we’ll explore a few of the best tools for going headless and how to solve some of the problems you’ll encounter along the way.

The importance of a website strategy and how to create one. A website is more than just a to-do to cross of your list. While working with a variety of clients at Skwintz, a common problem emerged. Many businesses have done little if any planning when starting a website project and have no idea where to start. Websites without a purpose have a hard time succeeding. So, if you want to create a successful website but don’t know where to start, this talk is for you.

Gutenberg is upon us. Developers: you can not put off learning how to make blocks any longer. I’m sure you’ve looked into it – and let’s be honest…it’s complicated. Making something simple is manageable. But making something more complex is almost unimaginable. Well what if I told you there was a solution that offers a workflow that allows you to build your block OUTSIDE of Gutenberg first. Then putting it in Gutenberg is SUPER fast. Too good to be true? Think again…

At this talk, Rob will be discussing a workflow that seems like a match made in heaven. Learn to build complex, completely self-contained, and extremely reactive WordPress page elements as Web Components with Stencil.js. Then see how stupid-simple it is to convert these into Gutenberg Blocks. It’s almost too beautiful. Want to gain an edge in the new Gutenberg space with your own complex blocks? Then this talk is for you.

If you’ve been contemplating making the jump from your 9 to 5 job to full time freelancer or business owner but worried about how you’ll make ends meet, then this talk is for you. 

In this short session we’ll discuss strategies to help you prepare financially for leaving the comfort of a secure paycheck to budgeting for your very own business and walk you through a budgeting exercise that will leave you with a plan for financial stability in the freelance world. 

So…you’ve jumped into the world of WordPress. You’re starting to get the hang of how to build pages, make some posts, and all of that jazz. The beauty of learning is that naturally, you will make a few mistakes along the way. This presentation is designed to teach you a few lessons from the mistakes I’ve made through working on WordPress sites. Things that took me hours to fix/solve, that if I had known better, would have avoided altogether. 

Color touches literally every pixel of digital products. That’s why it is so important to get color right in a design system.

In this talk, John Henry Müller (former Design Director at Hudl) divulges mistakes made and practical lessons learned about color while creating Uniform, Hudl’s design system.

What you’ll learn:
• Tips and tricks creating a durable color scheme
• Common pitfalls when defining a color palette
• Understand color contrast for accessibility