Pricing Your Next WordPress Project
This session is for anyone who charges for their services. During this session, we will discuss how to properly create a budget for a WordPress project and sell it to your client. The discussion will include what factors should be considered when bidding and how to ensure that you make a profit. We will also discuss project based pricing vs. hourly pricing and when it is appropriate to use either method. Other topics will include scope increases, project maintenance and most importantly, what to do when you don’t win a bid.
Integrating Social Media Tools in WordPress Panel Discussion
This question is not “Should I use Social Media on my WordPress site?” the question is “What Social Media tools should I use on my WordPress Web site.”
Your theme can do that too.
Learning a new theme can be tough sometimes. Not to mention that each theme can be put together 500 different ways.
This presentation is going to show you that your theme can do all of the cool tricks that any other theme can do. Not to mention, in a much less hair pulling – stress free environment. By the end of this presentation, you will be feeling confident that your theme can do that too!
How many times have you purchased a theme based on the “live demonstration” or “live preview”, only to be let down once you find out that the theme was built in a totally crazy way? Let’s say you have a magazine theme, and you like this other magazine theme because there is a slide show on each blog post. You find out, after buying and installing the theme that the slide show does not run off the images you attach to the post, but through a 12 step process including buying the theme developer’s “special” plugin for another $45 a year?
How many times have you had to edit every page of your website due to installing a new theme and finding out that the old theme used short codes and this new theme has no short codes at all?
I can tell you that I’ve done it 4 times for 4 different clients, and each time got worse and worse. So I’m here to show you an easier way to get your theme to do the tings you want it to do.
Opening Keynote: Chris Lema
WordCamp Vegas is proud to announce that Chis Lema will kick off the 2013 WordCamp Vegas as our Keynote Speaker.
Can You Make Money Blogging?
If you want to make money blogging, there are many things you should do and many things you shouldn’t waste time doing when it comes to blogging. Certainly this will cut at the hearts of bloggers who love to do many of the things I say are a waste and hate doing other things that will make you money. The core question is if you want to make money blogging or not. If you do, then you’ll love this session which will make you rethink how you’re spending your time blogging.
Real WordPress Security – Kill the noise! Workshop
Real WordPress Security – Kill the noise!
Best-of-Breed Plugins For Business Websites
With a wealth of development and startup business experience Andy brings his knowledge of integrating select business-ready, best-of-breed plugins for “Business Grade WP” right to your proverbial, virtual, electronic doorstep. So whether you are designing a WordPress website for your own small business or spend your days building websites for other companies this talk will be a valuable resource for you.
Making Accessible WordPress Themes
This presentation will show you how to make accessible WordPress themes while increasing user experience, usability, and search engine optimization. Not just for developers and designers, content contributors will also get valuable information about changing your thought process to be as inclusive as possible.
WordPress, Plugins, Security and Passwords
This talk will cover WordPress Security. Topics covered include secure plugin development, password security in the age of botnets (and crackers) and simple countermeasures to protect your WordPress install.
Weaving JavaScript Into WordPress
Weaving JavaScript Info WordPress covers the basic functions and hooks, and good practices for including JavaScript into themes and plugins. This includes when and how to include local scripts into one’s code, being aware of existing libraries that are already available, how to load non-local scripts and remove existing scripts, how to include javascript in the admin, and for the advanced user how to use localize script to make data from PHP available in javascript.
Choosing the Right Tool for the Job: Child Themes, Starter Themes and Frameworks. OH MY!
Do you develop themes for WordPress? Let’s talk about your tools. You know what works for you and what helps you develop things quickly, but are you using the best tool possible to make you a more well-rounded theme developer? I’ll cover the options that are available (child/parent theme, starter themes, frameworks) and why you might want to choose one over the other. While advanced theme developers have their workflows that work for them it’s good to challenge what they know and to see how they can improve and grow. For the beginning theme developer, knowing some of the pitfalls out of the gate can help guide them in the right direction and provide a better overall experience in developing for WordPress.
The Customizer
The Customizer has been around since WordPress 3.4, yet it is one of the most unknown and under appreciated features around. We will start out by learning what the Customizer is, from where users can access it, and why it is so awesome. Then we’ll proceed to theme mods, the Customizer API, how to integrate it in your themes and plugins, and dive into how you can extend existing functionality. Finally We’ll cover some tutorials and example implementations, what default themes do with it, and how [who?] encourages its use.
WordPress and Masonry: Brick by Brick
The Twenty Thirteen theme uses something called “Masonry” to realign footer widgets when you resize the browser window. What is Masonry? Who made it? And… well, actually these questions are irrelevant.
The fact is that Masonry is now part of the WordPress core download, and it can be activated and used in WordPress themes and plugins with just a few lines of code and some clear theme organization. I will walk theme and plugin developers through how to activate Masonry, how to make it work on a front page layout, and how to activate dazzling animation options included in the script.
Unit Testing Plugins
Your plugin is broken; do you know why? In this session, Ben will show you some simple principles to help you integrate unit testing in your plugins that will help you find and eliminate bugs before they happen.
Will It Scale? Testing Your WordPress Website for Heavy Traffic Before It’s Too Late
Nobody wants that nightmare scenario of having your site burst into a ball of flames on the day of your big product launch, or when your article makes it to the front page of Hacker News. Why not find out before crunch time whether or not your hosting and WordPress site configuration are up to the test of a heavy traffic load?
This presentation will cover specific tools to load test your WordPress site, as well as additional tools, hosting providers, third-party services, and common server and WordPress configurations to help improve your site performance at a larger scale.
Get Your Site Built Without Getting Burned
Building a website can be overwhelming and for many businesses, downright frightening. It can involve a lot of money, time, energy and frustration and there’s clearly reasons why so many people feel “burned” by web developers.
Learn how to be a confident general contractor of your WordPress build. WordPress levels the playing field for everyone to obtain a cohesive, professional and maintainable website, but before you can maintain a site, it must be built. And before you jump into a build, you’ll want a plan just as if you were building a house: how to find the right architect. What materials to use, which carpenter, plumber and landscaper to hire. How much the job will cost, and when and how to pay them. How do warranties work, and what kind of maintenance will the place require? You don’t hire a plumber to design you a house, or ask a housepainter to pick up a saw, but so many people make a similar mistake when contracting for a website.
This presentation will walk through the steps everyone should take when building out a WordPress website, how to find the right contractors for the job, tools everyone will need, how to handle the buildout, and what to expect after launch. While some of this is applicable to all web buildouts, a lot of content will be specific to WordPress, including dashboard customization, how to find and vet a WP developer, and the plugins/tools/hosting available specifically within WordPress, as well as the maintenance and support required afterwards.
Leveraging CSS3 in WordPress Workshop
In my travels, I have discovered that there is not much documentation on using CSS3 specifically in WordPress. While not many of the new CSS3 modules have reached official recommendation by the W3C, support is very good across all of the latest browsers. This session will aim to inform, enlighten, and delight attendees with the right way to include CSS in your WordPress theme using child themes or a plugin such as Jetpack, and we will also cover some of the best new features of CSS3 that you can put to work right away.
You should be familiar with HTML and have some basic WordPress and CSS knowledge to get the most benefit from this talk.
Managing Your Site’s Community: Don’t Make Commenting A Crime Scene
View Mika’s slide presentation at http://helf.us/wclv2013.
Awesome! You’ve done everything you need to do to rank yourself in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Your target audience can find you! So how come your bounce rate is so high and no one engages with your post? You can’t get good ad-payouts because no one clicks on them. What could you be doing wrong!? You may be *puts on sunglasses* killing your comments.
WordPress isn’t just about slapping some cool plugins on your site; you have to know your audience, understand how THEY interact, and be willing to listen to them. Of course, there are some awesome plugins to help you handle the masses, and I’ll talk about those too, but let’s get down and dirty and look at the evidence, trace the paths, and find out who’s killing your site. It may be you.
Photos from Managing Your Site’s Community: Don’t Make Commenting A Crime Scene
Mika Epstein at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Mika Epstein at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Mika Epstein at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Mika Epstein at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Mika Epstein at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Mika Epstein at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Terry, Benjamin Beck, Andrew DiMino, and Mika Epstein at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
WordPress SEO That Is Google Friendly
View Benjamin’s slide presentation at http://benjaminbeck.com/wclv2013/.
With so many Google updates happening where we hear about websites being “banned” or “de-indexed” people often ask what can we do? In this presentation we will be going over the basics of optimizing a WordPress site for search engines along with several Google-friendly tips to help you gain more customers without spending a lot of time or money.
Photos from WordPress SEO That Is Google Friendly
Benjamin Beck at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Benjamin Beck at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Benjamin Beck at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Benjamin Beck at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Benjamin Beck at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Terry, Benjamin Beck, Andrew DiMino, and Mika Epstein at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Benjamin Beck and Andrew DiMino at 2013 Vegas WordCamp
Photos by Glendon James Robbins.
Taking the Dread Out of Blogging
Who doesn’t struggle with blogging? How to start? What to write about? How to keep it going? Why do you need a blog? Just thinking about a blog can be overwhelming. Hence the land of the Internet is littered with abandoned blogs. They started off good, but were updated a long, long time ago. A successful blog should be more than just news about you or your company. It should be engaging and interesting. Oh, and it should drive web traffic and generate leads for you.
This session is for the new blogger who doesn’t know where to start; for the embarrassed blogger who needs to resurrect a long-forgotten blog; and for those who feel stuck with their current approach to blogging. Attendees will learn:
- Why blog?
- Why blogging is like flossing
- The A-B-Cs of blogging
Stop dreading blogging as if you were writing War and Peace. Instead, learn some simple tricks that will make blogging easier. And maybe even fun.
Getting Started with WordPress for Beginners
This 35-minute session is geared toward beginners who are in the early stages of setting up their WordPress-powered site. The session talks about how I have used WordPress to start my own news startup EasternIowaNews.com and used WordPress at United Way of East Central Iowa, a site that has won a national Content Management Association Spotlight Award in the WordPress category in 2012/13. The session will walk attendees through:
- Defining goals and objectives for your sites
- Finding and setting up your URL
- Installing WordPress
- Finding and using an initial design
- Getting started
Attendees will walk away with the knowledge of how to get started with using WordPress.
Defining Your User Experience
We all know that web sites and applications with a great user experience produce better results, keep customers happy, and are a joy to interact with. But are you applying what you know about user experience to your own business? Every time you answer the phone, send an email, invoice a client, attend a meeting, or propose a contract, you’re defining the user experience of your business. Make those decisions with intent and purpose, not by default.