Sessions

Presented by Brian Richards in General.

Learn how to make the most of the opportunities that are in front of you. In this 15 minute introductory session, Brian Richards will give you a few profound tips that could dramatically transform your experiences at WCGR and beyond.

Presented by Benjamin Turner in Developer.

Local by Flywheel makes use of Docker to manage sites. This allows for some powerful ways to improve your developer workflow.

We’ll cover a brief intro to Docker, as well as how you can use the terminal and Docker to execute Composer commands and run WordPress unit tests in an isolated environment.

Presented by Alonso Indacochea in General.

How Gutenberg Will (Eventually) Empower WordPress End-Users AND Professionals

The new visual editor sure does inspire consternation in the WordPress community. As with any disruption, there will be winners and losers in professional world – but what about the end-user? Can the new editor make life easier for them? And for professionals, how will Gutenberg change theme development? What about page-builders – things of the past? Instead of focusing on launch and transition issues, I’ll describe how we think the fundamentals of the WordPress experience will change (for the better) for both the end-user AND the professional.

Presented by RJ Mey in Developer.

Setting up a local dev environment can be tougher than mandalorian armor! Lando simplifies this process by making it quick and easy to spin up local services and tools. Lando is so easy that even a scruffy nerf herder could use it.

Strap yourself in for a talk loaded with tips, cool ideas, and Star Wars jokes!

Presented by Michelle Schulp in Developer.

Much like playing an open world game, each of us approaches a new development challenge with different skill levels, knowledge, and philosophies. It may seem like a person starting their first coding project has very little in common with a seasoned developer, but in fact, we are all here because we see the value in using developer tools we have not written ourselves. We’ll discuss how we, as players of this game, choose from the tools available based on their strengths (value) and weaknesses (risk) relative to our own skills and ability to weild these tools. We’ll explore how these decisions change as players level up, or face different challenges. By discussing skill, value, and risk instead of code, we can gain empathy and understanding for the decisions of our fellow players.

Presented by Andrew Norcross in General.

A sort of 101 on what GDPR means for developers and site owners alike and how to approach certain aspects of it.

Presented by Jeff Large in General.

Podcasts are a great way to build authority, brand awareness, and they are fun to create. But where do you begin? In this session, we will cover the equipment, software, hosting, and WordPress plugins needed to get your podcast recorded, edited, and launched!

Presented by Tim Nolte in Developer.

Learn how to connect source code management to test automation and release deployment. You’ll learn some tips on setting up a solid plugin, or theme, workflow that will help take care of many repetitive tasks that can help with collaboration on open source development as well as deploying plugins to both private websites and the WordPress plugin repository.

Presented by Joe Casabona in General.

LearnDash is an excellent solution for adding a Learning Management System to WordPress, and had payment processing to boot. So why did I choose to add WooCommerce? In this talk, I’ll go over my reasoning for adding WooCommerce to LearnDash and the tools and plugins I use to take my online courses to the next level.

Presented by Aaron D. Campbell in Developer.

You know security is important and want your site to be secure, but what will actually help? There’s so much information to be found on securing your site, but what are the myths and what actually helps? Find out how to avoid the myths and implement real security.

Presented by Frederick Polk in Developer.

Advanced Custom Fields is a powerful plugin to add and use metadata with your WordPress site. This lightning talk will get you up and running with the plugin and an example of what you can build with Advanced Custom Fields.

Presented by Peter DeHaan in General.

A website with broken links hurts the user experience and is penalized by Google, which hurts a site’s organic search results. Identify and fix broken links fast with the Broken Link Checker plugin.

Presented by Sophia DeRosia in General.

Some of my friends were not allowed on Facebook, but we wanted a place where we could all communicate, like Facebook. So I built a BuddyPress site.

Presented by Steve Grunwell in Developer.

Traditionally, interacting with WordPress is largely a graphical affair: many users rely on WP Admin to manage themes, plugins, content, and everything else. For situations where you need to be able to script WordPress interactions, however, nothing compares to the power of WP-CLI, the official command line interface for WordPress.

This session acts as a primer for WP-CLI, scratching the surface of what can be done and how it fits into the WordPress workflow. Whether you’ve never heard of WP-CLI or have been using it as part of your daily WordPress rituals, you’re sure to learn at least a few useful tricks.

Presented by Sara Dunn in General.

We’re all pretty familiar with standard contact forms. But pour some rocket fuel on forms, and you’ll be surprised at all they can do! We’ll dive into the Gravity Forms plugin and talk about awesome features that will make your forms more useful or easier for website visitors to use.

Presented by Kyle Maurer in Developer.

Everyone loves some handy tips and tricks, right? How about a huge list of all the ways I have personally improved my workflows, processes, production quality, and even lifestyle? I’ve been building WordPress sites, writing code, working remotely, and generally doing all things WordPress for years now and I’ve discovered a whole lot of cool stuff in that time. Come see the curtain get pulled back and learn which tools I value the most and the good habits I’ve developed which have made the biggest impact on my life.

Presented by Chris Lema in General.

If you want to build an eCommerce site that converts well, speed is the name of the game. Come listen to tips and tricks to help you build a lightning fast WooCommerce store.

Presented by Mike Hale in Developer.

As a developer, access to debugging information is vital to troubleshooting your code or finding where performance bottlenecks are happening. By using the WordPress Debug Bar, and related add-ons, you’ll be able to track errors, SQL queries, access the query, and give get insight into what’s happening under the hood of your WordPress website.

Presented by John James Jacoby (JJJ) in General.

Everyone wants to talk about The Future of stuff, but we don’t exactly have fusion reactors in the back of our flying cars yet, do we? Instead, I’m going to make realistic predictions about the truest and most obvious futures of WordPress, plugins, tools, and services – the things we will absolutely need to do together to make the next 15 years better than the first.