If I could relearn WordPress, here’s what I’d do
Russell Aaron
Learning WordPress is hard. Do you start with Core, themes or plugins? What are updates? Can you hire someone to teach you? Why is this so difficult to understand? In this session, we’re going to relearn WordPress from the ground up. After 10 years of developing WordPress, I have a few tricks and tips to easily understand the most popular content management system.
A Business Owner’s Guide To Manage A WordPress Website
Matt Campbell
Describe basic aspects of WordPress an entrepreneur should know so that they can hire someone to do the work and be able to manage them to do it.
Setting Up Your Own Podcast and Vlog on WordPress in One Day
Bill Conrad
The 20 to 30 minute presentation will go over how to create and setup your first podcast, best WordPress Vlog practices and how to monetize your podcast and Vlog.
Becoming a Bug Exterminator!
Joshua Copeland
Spotting bugs is a skill developed over time with practice, but this session will put you on the fast track to being a bug exterminator! One day, your production environment will break and you have to reproduce it on your local box. Worst yet, getting XDebug wired up to step through isn’t very straight forward when using Docker, Vagrant, or remote machines. In this session we’ll cover how to properly setup XDebug in various situations. We’ll cover how to use PHPStorm to step through your PHP and JavaScript code, and other neat features. We’ll also cover how to profile your code to find slow bottlenecks in your app. Joshua will also share war stories of battles he’s endured and what caused these issues.
Easy A/B Testing with Google Analytics For WordPress Sites
Manny Costa
Should this button background color on my website be orange or blue? Should I use a large hero image or just a 90 pixels banner? What is the best copy: Get eBook or Buy eBook? If you have a website, you have activities that you want your users to complete (e.g., make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter) and/or metrics that you want to improve (e.g., revenue, session duration, bounce rate). With Google’s Content Experiments, you can test which version of a landing page (or any page) results in the greatest improvement in conversions (i.e. completed activities that you measure as goals) or metric value. In this presentation I will show you that anyone should be using this free A/B testing tool to improve the performance of your WordPress site with a realtime demo.
WordPress Security 101
Michael Cremean
WordPress is the most popular CMS, so it is also the most targeted. This talk will cover how easy it is to secure your WordPress website. Covering some best practices for server, firewall, password and WordPress security plugins, following these simple steps can give you peace of mind and avoid having a really, really bad day. (5 other talks are available)
Finding Focus as a Freelancer
Scott DeLuzio
When a freelancer starts out, it’s easy to feel like they need to be everything to everyone. When you first get started, you want to offer every type of service imaginable – SEO, design, copywriting, graphics and video, plugin development, theme designing, maintenance and support, analytics, PPC ads, e-commerce…dog walking… but it quickly becomes overwhelming.
When trying to do everything as a freelancer, you lose sight of what you’re really good at or passionate about. If you’re great at SEO but terrible at graphic design, it’ll show in your work. You’ll soon start to hate the work you do and resent the clients who ask you to do it. Not to mention your clients will be less than thrilled with the work they’ve just paid you for.
Finding focus is all about evaluating what you’re good at, and focusing your efforts on those activities. You’ll love the work you do, your clients will be thrilled with the results they receive, and you will get more (and better quality) referrals as a result.
Podcasting Auto Posting to WP
Kevin Dunlap
The use of podcasts to improve your SEO and brand awareness and how you can put those podcasts directly into your blog or creating a separate blog.
Correctly Configuring the Yoast SEO Plugin
Kenny Eliason
The Yoast SEO plugin is your best bet when it comes to optimizing your WordPress website to rank higher in the search engines. But who has time to understand all the settings provided from the plugin? We’ll go over all the default settings to help ensure your site is ready to rank!
Legos for Developers – A modular approach to WordPress Development
Joshua Giowaya
Let’s explore the benefits of thinking in re-usable blocks. Modular Development improves productivity, enhances UI and empowers authors. Leveraging the WordPress templating system and Advanced Custom Fields we can achieve modularity in our WP themes.
Creating a Blogging Schedule Using The 20/30 Rule
Jarrett Gucci
Ever thought about creating a Blogging Schedule to really take your blog to the next level? If you have you maybe asked yourself “How many post per week or month should I write?”. This is a tricky question and I want to help answer it with a method I developed called the 20/30 Rule. We will come back to that in a moment. First I would like you to imagine having an engaged audience that loves to read every new article you publish.
It has been proven that the best way to become an expert in your field is to write. So, what is holding you back? I bet the first thing is time and a close second for some is what to write about. For the purpose of this talk, you are going to be helped with the time portion of your blogging fear.
TBD
John Hawkins
TBD
Coming Soon Pages
Jason Janes
Coming Soon Page and Maintenance Mode Plugin for WordPress
The Seven Core Competency Framework to Become a WordPress Web Professionals
Judi Knight
Frustrated with trying to make a living doing WordPress websites? Think you just need to find the right theme for a project or learn a few more design tips? This presentation will let you in on what you don’t know you don’t know. I will present a framework you can follow to become a skilled WordPress pro who can price, close, create, and deliver amazing, effective WordPress websites for happy clients!
How to create landing pages for lead generation using WordPress
John Larson
The importance of landing pages in the lead generation process, how to create landing pages using WordPress, and tips for increasing landing page conversion.
Taking the Stage: Improving the quality of your life through a staging workflow
Thomas Levy
We might all have staging sites but it’s clear we don’t all use them. Why not? Are we negligent or lazy? Or do we simply not understand the true valued of a test and deploy workflow? We’ll cover the whys and hows staging.
How The ***** Do I Get People To Read My Stinkin’ Blog?!
Kitty Lusby
After all that work you put into picking your topic, building your site, and writing your content, you look at your stats and discover that a whopping 12 people visited your blog…and at least 2 of them were your mom. Keep putting in that consistent work and sharing your posts on your social profiles, and you might even get that number up to 26 unique views.
What’s going on? Why aren’t people reading your blog? As it turns out, sending traffic to your website and getting people to read and engage with your content isn’t as simple as writing a post and announcing it in your Twitter feed. The vast majority of bloggers give up without ever topping a couple of hundred readers total, but if you’re willing to learn a few basic skills and focus your effort where it matters most, you can start attracting droves of readers who actually care about what you have to say. In this session, we’ll talk about making the transition from a blog with tens of readers to a site with tens of thousands of monthly views.
There might be special effects, so only sit in the front row if you have a healthy heart and can handle sudden loud noises, flashing lights, and having small objects thrown at you. This is WordCamp Vegas, after all, so you should be ready for anything.
17 Things Marketers Wish Developers Knew (& How to Communicate Inversely with Marketers)
Dustin Nay
We’ve seen this story over and over. Your client’s marketing agency wants you to do something… or you need to talk to them about a problem they are causing, and there is this gap where you don’t know how to get through to them.
I’ve been on both sides of this fence and have gotten pretty good at bridging the gap. I’d like to help you close the gap with your clients or within your organization too.
We’ll discuss, among other things:
Site architecture and related SEO topics pertinent to WordPress
Design & UX considerations
Site speed
Tracking / analytics and what to do with them
How to prioritize
Don’t get stuck in games of politics when solid, clear, concise communication will do! Improve your marketing know-how and impress your clients and higher-ups too.
The connection between WordPress, Social Media and SEO
Robert Nissenbam
A simplified explanation of SEO – Showing the importance of and how a well built website, quality, well written content and social media are interconnected in driving search placement and long term SEO. I do this via slides and an easy to understand comparison with the way people refer others.
Authoring plugins
Aaron Overton
Learn how to create a new plugin from scratch, along with some of the most common tasks handled by plugins: admin settings pages; adding custom post types; handling Ajax calls; and whatever attendees might ask about specifically. (This is a summary of the class described here: http://www.learnpress.vegas/authoring-plugins/)
Our Hybrid Future: WordPress As Part Of The Stack
Josh Pollock
WordPress has grown from blogging tool, to flexible CMS to an application platform. As the web development world embraces micro-services, how does WordPress, which is normally implemented as a monolithic solution fit in and evolve? In this talk, I will look at what makes WordPress a good choice for application development, as well as where it is lacking. To put these questions in context, this talk will be framed around a case-study of a hybrid web app, built using WordPress and other tools including VueJS, Laravel and Amazon Web Services.
Supercharging WordPress for Nonprofits
Nathan Porter
WordPress and other opensource platforms have been constantly evolving to provide more and more sophisticated tools for today’s nonprofits. Things that were, in the past, only available through commercial applications or expensive custom applications are now being made available through free and opensource platforms, supercharging the impact potential that nonprofits have. Sophisticated email and SMS automation campaigns, membership management, donation management, event management, and much more. In this session we’ll take a look at some real world examples of these tools in action.
How to Make Your Blog the Best of Its Kind in the World
Scott Roeben
Scott Roeben’s blog, VitalVegas.com, was recently named one of the best travel sites in the world by The Independent, a British online newspaper, and has consistently been named the best blog in Las Vegas since its inception in 2013. During his time at Caesars Entertainment, the world’s largest casino company, his Pulse of Vegas blog generated millions of dollars in revenue and was named the best blog in the country by PR Daily. How is that possible? Find out at this session where Scott shares the secret sauce (hint: it includes rum) of creating personal and corporate blogs that reap massive reach and influence, garner accolades, crush the competition and make the world a snarkier place.
Video in your WP website
Chris Rogers
Creating video is hard enough! Chris will show you how to easily get your freakin’ video file into your WordPress website. He will also show you how to create video content with equipment you (probably) already own, ie: mobile devices, software, yada.
Video & Slides:
chrmedia.com/work/video-in-your-wordpress-website/
WordPress Lightning Fast
Ian Rogers
Learn how to optimize a WordPress site for maximum speed and efficiency. Learn how I’ve achieved scores of 100/100 in Google’s page speed insights.
Creating and Marketing Your Own Website For Your Retail Store
Richard Sheffield
Creating and Marketing Your Own Website For Your Retail Store
– Describe the process we went through to create our retail store. ie: Market Research, Demographics, Location, Financial Resources, etc.
– Explain our rationale for not just creating our website, but the process we went through to arrive at using a WordPress/Woocommerce site. This includes why we excluded other non-Wordpress platforms. Also explain the process we used to flesh out the layout, which with the help of Quadshot, helped us arrive at the current site layout.
– Further describe how we have continued to tweak the layout to make it a better experience, at least for our needs and market.
– Describe the plug-ins we added by trial & error and by recommendations to set up our SEO and analytics.
– Explain how all this work has paid off with a growing customer base with has benefited both the internet sales but has also fed our Brick & Mortar sales.
– Discuss what our future plans are for the site as we continue to grow.
This will be a very non-technical talk. No code, no CSS, just a “Here’s what we did and why it worked” talk.
Since my background is Marketing & Advertising, Finance and Business Consulting to Family Businesses, I’ll be passing on some ideas which might help the start-ups some which might help them mesh the retail and internet worlds.
Websites and Workshops – Using Classes and Communication Strategies to Increase Sales and Improve Customer Service
Kim Shivler
Are you a freelancer or small development shop working hard to build your business? Have you ever wanted to make sales come easier? Does customer support sometimes feel like a battle instead of a successful conversation?
In this session, we’ll discover how creating and launching workshops (both online and local) can help build your WordPress business. We’ll also cover how leveraging communication styles can help you sell easier and make customer calls smooth.
You’ll learn to create a workshop that maximizes customer engagement? We’ll look at concrete examples of using workshops or other training to add customers and increase satisfaction within your current customer base.
And you’ll receive a downloadable worksheet with strategies to help maximize communication in order to increase sales and improve customer service.
From the Ground Up – Building a WordPress Business
Seth Shoultes
I’ve been using WordPress for over ten years and running a business around it for eight years. Before that, I worked various construction jobs, then ran a small website development business and dabbled in all kinds of CMS’s, then moved on to work as a front-end developer in a marketing position at an international medical coding and billing education company. While I worked there, I developed their WordPress websites and built various in-house plugins, at the same time I stayed up every night after work developing the early versions of Event Espresso for my wife’s scrapbooking business. Due to the material costs and flaky customers, she wasn’t willing to shell out fees to Eventbrite. Since there weren’t any good plugins (IMO) at the time, I found an abandoned plugin that handled registrations, then added PayPal. Since I never heard back from the original developer, I ended up releasing and marketing my plugin under a different name. After a while, it got to where I was supporting it so much that I had to quit my full-time job to work on developing the plugin, supporting customers, and growing the business around the plugin. Somewhere along the way, I picked up my co-founder, Garth Koyle, we entered the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge in 2011 and won the grand prize of $40,000 for our business idea. At the time, we had just released the first version of our mobile apps, which allowed onsite ticket scanning and attendance tracking. Then in 2015, we launched our software as a service company, called Event Smart, which is powered by WordPress and Event Espresso.
Turning Silver to Green – Marketing to Seniors
Cemal Tashan
The senior age group is now, the largest in terms of size and percent of the population in the U.S. Those aged 50 and older represent 45% of the U.S. population. They are your most valuable potential customer. In this session you will face the demands and thought train of seniors during a sales process.
Landing Pages: An Art and a Science
Anne Watson
Don’t be intimidated when it’s time to create a landing page! We’ll go over easy tips on how to make a landing page with WordPress. We cover the latest trends in landing pages, as well as how design needs will change according to your resources and goals. Common landing page plugins will be reviewed, as well as how to hook it up to CRM or other lead generation tools.
Something advanced developery – TBD
Chris Webb
TBD
Importance of Reputation Management
Barbra Wolfe
You can have the most beautifully designed, professional website on page one of Google (whether by SEO or Google Adwords) but if your competitors have 4 and 5 star reviews and you don’t, no one is going to click on you.
So as a natural extension of my business, to help my customers achieve positive results, I’ve added a Reputation Management service that helps to minimize bad reviews and amplify good reviews. (It’s also a great management tool for companies wanting to compare location performance.)
Way back when, business was done with a handshake because a man was as good as his word. A man’s honor was tied to his word. That was before computers (and women in business :)) Honor and reputation are as important today as it was then (if not more so) only today a company’s reputation is controlled online.
I can speak to the statistics, review strategies, mechanics overview, include quotes from a recent Yoast article (because everyone knows Yoast) etc.