Keynote
The team at WordCamp Asheville is thrilled to announce our 2019 keynote speaker – Chris Lema. Chris not only brings expertise, talent, and skill to his work and the stage, he also brings strategic vision, authenticity, and straight talk. Get ready to learn and be inspired.
Crafting the Perfect Proposal
Do you hate writing proposals? Not sure what you should include? Learn to quickly create website proposals quickly and confidently using various tools available to a freelancer.
Takeaways: Sections to consider for your proposal, popular Tools that contain templates, or creating your own template from the ones provided.
Gutenberg Block Building Workshop
In this session, we will be learning how to build a few simple Gutenberg blocks from scratch. We will be using modern tools and methods to build these blocks. This session is for beginning and intermediate developers. Some basic JavaScript knowledge is going to be a huge plus. Bring a computer that you can install command line tools on, and extra points if you already have node running locally, since we’ll use it to compile our blocks.
This will be a 2-hour workshop.
NOTE: please come prepared for this workshop with your own computer, loaded with a working development environment and local version of WordPress, if possible. You will also need to either already have node installed on your computer, or have administrator access so that you can install node. The more people that have things working, the more we can learn!
So, You’re at a WordCamp – Now what?
Leveraging Your WordCamp Experience for Better Social Media Engagement
WordCamp is an empowering experience for the WordPress novice, expert and everyone in between, but processing all the information at the end of the conference can sometimes be overwhelming.
Using humor and lots of hands-on techniques, this talk will help you elevate your WordCamp experience to a new level! You’ll learn how to gather, sort and apply all the great information you’ve learned from the conference! Plus how to effectively apply all this great knowledge and information for better Social Media engagement.
Takeaways:
- Learn how to takes notes effectively to make it easier to sort through later.
- Interact with other attendees to network and share.
- Will learn what to post on social media from their WordCamp experience and use their devices to do real-time posting.
Typography & Fluid Design
Typography is a pillar of good design. Good typography is legible. We’ll go over some of the design fundamentals for typography. Then, we’ll go over the concepts of fluid typography and using dynamic units to set your type styles.
Takeaways:
- Typography basics for legibility
- Fluid web design
- Differences in web and print typography
Elevate and Preserve Your Project ROI with a Content-First Approach
There is a lot of talk today in the WordPress world about using a content-first approach to design. And, while that is one reason to use a content-first approach, it is not really the most compelling reason. In this session I will share how to implement a content-first website development approach that prevents project delays, increases project productivity, and thereby increases your overall project return on investment.
Takeaways:
- How to structure a project to prevent the client from holding it hostage over content.
- The 5 Steps of Content Collection
- 6 Content-First Best Practices
SEO Eavesdropping: Spying on the Experts
Using SEO industry tools, I will provide a series of demonstrations that look behind the scenes at what SEO content strategies are delivering results for sites that perform well.
Takeaways:
- Inspiration
- Confidence to trial new content strategies
- Pleasure from spying on other people’s tactics
Taming the Whirlwind – Growing Your Business While You’re Busy with Client Work
If you can never seem to find time to redesign your own website or launch a new service because you’re too busy with client work… you’re not alone, and this talk is for you!
Takeaways:
- Better understanding of why it’s so hard to move our businesses forward when we’re busy with client work
- A clear strategy to address this very common issue
- The motivation to make it happen!
Don’t waste your shmoney on project management
Project management at its best removes obstacles to doing great work by helping clients and teams collaborate effectively and providing great data for business decisions. At its worst, it’s a complex administrative system for reporting statuses on failed or failing projects.
It’s tempting to try to fix bad project management situations with software, since that’s what we make for other people–websites, plugins, blocks, or themes that solve various business problems. Before you spend that hard-earned cash on expensive software, though, let’s talk about some less spendy ways to provide value and focus on what we’re really here to do.
Takeaways:
- Understand what you, your boss, and/or your team need from you before investing in software or other tools.
- Tools for task management, process automation, invoicing and budget tracking, and project management.
- How to learn from bad practices and bad data.
How to Keep Your Clients on Track, Engaged and Singing Your Praises
Do you struggle to hold your clients’ interest and keep them on task? Do you suffer from scope creep, money chasing and project fatigue (aka, the project the NEVER ENDS!)?
Clients need (and crave!) boundaries, deadlines and – dare I say – gentle harassment. Learn how to automate the process of content collection, nurture your clients throughout the entire web build process and protect your business from committing to another project that never ends!
Takeaways:
- How to determine if a client is the right fit
- How to stand out from the competition when pitching a project
- How to keep your clients on track and transform them into your best brand ambassadors
Why doesn’t it do that, and all the other things WordPress actually does
Developers sometimes forget the first time they peeled the cellophane off a fresh WP install. In this session, we’ll discover the best training tips, tools and tactics to keep your users from asking, “Why doesn’t it …?”
Takeaways:
- WordPress is built to be simple
- Tips on not complicating the interface
- A word on Gutenberg and other editors
Strategies Beyond SEO and Google to Build Your Brand and Market Your Social Media Awesomeness
If your involved in Social Media you must understand and be able to apply strategies that build public awareness and respect. Being involved, engaged and approachable in the public eye provides a solid visual element to drive attention and build followers and not just relying on SEO and Google. Being a content creator demands being visible to the public and understanding that perceptions are invaluable. The ability to connect with the diversity of Social Media can mean increased exposure, new clients, expanding your content into diverse markets, broadening the scope of your Brand. Social Media has grown to embrace the diversity, simplicity and even the complexity of the world. There is more to it than your personal perceptions of the content you create.
Content creators and digital innovators must be aware of the perceptions that people are viewing, reading, digesting, and comprehending.
Social Media is designed to be engaging, fun and different with thought provoking and interactive dialogue. Is your content including any of these elements?
Everyone has the potential to be awesome on social media, but what are you applying to make it so?
Takeaways:
- The difference between your and the public’s perception of how valuable and relevant your content is as a content creator.
- How to connect across generational lines for increased engagement.
- Accepting diversity in gender, culture, generational usage of technology and age is a good thing.
Git ‘r Done: Maximizing Your Freelancer Day
Feeling overwhelmed as a freelancer? We all want to be as productive as possible each day. Learn some practical solutions for freelancers to maximize productivity while lower your stress level. We will talk about some tools and techniques to streamline your workflow.
Takeaways: List of Tools, Techniques, and Resources
Overcome Your Fear Of Sales & Networking
I am an introvert, that guy that hides in the corner at public events, but, I was also a freelancer, who became an agency owner. How you ask? Well, I had to overcome my fear of networking and sales to build my freelance business. I had to find ways to overcome my fear and build my business.
I will share with you simple tips and tricks I used to overcome my fear of sales and networking. I will help motivate you to get out there and find clients and sell to them at the rate you want for your self. We will talk about you create a sales pitch that works for you and that you are comfortable with.
If you’re an introvert looking to learn how to talk shop or your an extrovert who wants tips on freelance sales, this is the talk for you.
Takeaways:
- Sales Tips
- Sales Tools
- Sales Motivation
SVG Vs Everybody
SVG may have been overlooked in the past due to poor browser support, however, SVG1.1 is now fully supported in all evergreen browsers. SVG are crisp on any screen, responsive by nature and is seriously cool, with nifty features like grouping, stoke and fill, and filters. Oh and the ability to easily animate, Who doesn’t love a good SVG animation?
Even if you’ve never used SVG before, come learn how to get started with this amazing element. We’ll see what all those features actually do, we’ll look at how all that code in a SVG file draws a shape, and best practices for formatting you SVG code.
Takeaways:
In this talk we will discuss the why, when, and how of using SVG’s (Scalable Vector Graphics) in your project. At code42, we decided to exclusively use SVG’s for iconography and logos across all our production websites. I will share what we learned throughout this process, the use cases, edge cases, best cases, and worst cases. Also, we will take a in-depth look at anatomy of an SVG. Finally we will compare capabilities SVG vs .png, CSS, JavaScript. You will leave this talk excited and prepared to implement SVG’s in your next project.
There’s No Such Thing As Free SEO (Workshop)
It’s close to free, but you have to be willing to let a team of SEO experts critique your business’s website and online presence in public. Sarah Benoit, Leah Quintal and Rich Owings will do live SEO critiques and give you constructive feedback for ways to improve your site and boost your traffic. Not brave enough? Come and learn from others.
Takeaways:
-
- How to use your website to improve your rankings and conversions
- Offsite factors that can boost your business
- Some of the latest SEO trends and ranking factors
WordPress Quality Standards
Clients want to work with quality WordPress developers. They want to know that they can get their project done on time, in budget, and that the solution is going to be effective.
Project management aside, writing quality code is the key to delivering on all three of these expectations. If you write poor code, it is going to be harder to read and understand. As a result, it will take longer (and cost the client more money) to add new features. A lack of consistent quality also results in more bugs and a decreased effectiveness of the solution you are creating.
WordPress has a set of coding standards that are designed to provide a consistent level of quality for those who are contributing code to WordPress. However, it just got a lot easier to apply those standards to your own projects. Whether you are creating a theme or writing a plugin, you can leverage an “automated code mentor” to help you provide consistent quality to your clients.
Come learn how you can leverage the WordPress Coding Standards and automation to help you become a quality developer that clients can trust.
Takeaways:
- What coding standards are
- Why you should care
- A simple way to get started today
Taking WordPress on the Road
Lightning talk. Lessons learned from working remotely (mostly with WordPress) while on a two year road trip.
Learning Markdown: 20 minutes that will change your life
Don’t you wish there was a way to write content faster without having to log into your WordPress site? Turns out there is and it is called Markdown, which can be written in any text editor you choose. Based on the basics of HTML and with a goal of making marked up content as readable as possible, Markdown takes only minutes to learn and is the most transportable way you can write your content. Sites like GitHub, Bitbucket and Reddit already expect it and now WordPress does too.
Takeaways:
- A working knowledge of how to notate plain text to be rendered as beautiful HTML
- A Cheatsheet for everything else
- Strategies for content curation a storage using Git
ACF & Twig for Gutenberg Custom Blocks
An introduction to registering custom blocks (via PHP) using ACF and implementing clean templating via Timber
Takeaways:
- We can still create custom WordPress sites without having to dig deeply into JavaScript
- We can keep our templates clean with Twig
- ACF is still awesome and can help keep custom site building overhead low
Are your photos helping or hurting your business?
Do you use photos on your website and social media? Are those photos helping or hurting your business? Join us as professional photographer, Maryann Davidson reveals the subconscious messages we send potential clients with the photos we use. Your photos can turn people away or inspire them to connect with you. The right photographs can actually give you a competitive edge.
Takeaways:
- Learn how the photos you use on your website and social media can CONNECT WITH and ENGAGE your target audience
- Make your marketing strategy more EFFECTIVE
- Communicate your value; and give you a COMPETITIVE EDGE.
Creating a Content Calendar
Being a blogger sounds like fun, but not when you are staring at an empty calendar you have committed to filling with content. April will walk you through planning your content for the next 12 months, so you always know what you are writing about. Walk away with a solid plan and the confidence to start creating great value for your readers.
Takeaways:
- A Content Plan
- Ideas for repurposing content
- Ideas for delegating content tasks
“Protect your Ass(ets)” or “Safety Doesn’t Happen by Accident”
There’s a lot of ways to secure your WordPress website to alleviate hackers or spammers from impacting your site. But do you know what they are? Does your hosting company know them? And who is going to implement these security measures? If you don’t know the answers to these questions, your website is at risk.
If you take your website security for granted, you are at risk of losing new customers, existing customers, crucial data, or even your good reputation.
While WordPress does offer some basic security measures, Benjamin will teach you about how to protect your site with firewalls, security monitoring, malware scanning, denial of service attacks, and other things that go bump in the night.
- Determining how safe your website is RIGHT NOW
- Learning the tools to protect your website
- Creating an emergency restoration plan for your website
Halt: Your images are making your website sad
In my 15 years of overall web dev experience, 10 years of direct WP work, I still see the same mistakes being made. Image sizes. In my opinion, this is one of the quickest ways to bring a great website to it’s demise. So I’d like to highlight the importance of web sized and dimension photos, the impact it has on your hosting server, and how to better handle uploading pics moving forward.
Takeaways:
- What images to use where
- Image dimensions and sizes for websites
- Server load and overall website processes attributed to loading images
Let’s learn Git. No more excuses.
Whether it is for re-using the same code, experimenting with your code quickly and efficiently, or just for better document management, one of the most important leaps any site builder will ever take in their path towards becoming a developer is learning a version control system, or VCS. Since Git is the standard VCS over 80% of developers, lets roll up our sleeves and dive in. The benefits far outweigh the efforts needed to learn this tooling. Once you start, you will wonder why it took you so long to unleash the power of this awesome tech.
This talk will briefly explore the need for git, the history and use cases. Then we will jump into how to get started and the basic organizational concepts. We will also examine Github, the web based Git hosting service. Bring your laptops to play along at home and get started before you leave the room.
Takeaways:
- Basic know how of what git can even do
- A history of online collaboration and what that means for Free and Open Source Software projects like WordPress
- A path to better collaboration with any developer, or frankly anyone, in the world
Using WordPress to Reach and Grow Your External and Internal Customers
Best practices to use WordPress in branding, marketing, advertising, public relations, social media, recruiting and retaining employees.
To start and expand a successful sustainable business, it is critical tohave both internal and external customers on the same page for your organization to be top of mind and top of search. WordPress is the hub of the wheel to make this happen. The spokes coming off the hub are the best practice strategies to accomplish this.
The session will start with a checklist to evaluate your current WordPress site to evaluate it’s strengths, weaknesses and gaps to reach and grow your external and internal customers
With the checklist results, you will be guided through a process to develop an action plan to improve your site to attract, motivate and retain employees that best represent your brand. This is especially important in a tight labor market. Also you will have an action plan to attract new customers and retain existing customers to create sustainable profitable growth.
Takeaways:
- Evaluating the strengths of a website to reach and grow external and internal customers.
- Identifying weaknesses of a website to reach and grow external and internal customers.
- Simple solutions to correcting identified weaknesses
Beyond the Block: Harnessing Gutenberg Packages & Components
Gutenberg is more than just the new block editing experience in WordPress. With it came an array of tools that will enrich your interfaces and make your life as a front-end developer simpler. Learn how to make use of what’s newly “in the box” to think outside the block.
Takeaways:
- UI components & internationalization
- state management & networking
- front-end actions & filters
The Future of PR: Leading-Edge Communication Strategies
Nothing is what it used to be. The worlds of marketing, communications, and public relations are in a constant state of evolution. Those who work within these spaces need to be highly aware of how the convergence of story & technology is dramatically changing the ways in which humanity fosters connection. Communication strategies are no longer linear or sequential, they are three-dimensional, and that has a massive effective on PR tactics.
Takeaways:
- A PR Strategy Framework
- A sample Press Kit
- An Editorial Calendar
Use WordPress to Share Your Voice To Address Social Issues
Everyone’s voice is important and valuable. Sharing your voice and be liberating, exciting, sensual, evangelistic and transformative. What better way to share your voice as a content developer and creator on WordPress. Creating a local, national and global presence is easier and faster.
Takeaways:
- Develop your storytelling skills.
- Building your personal self confidence.
- PLC and PLN abilities Personal Learning Communities and Personal Learning Networks
Workshop: Security Auditing & Hardening
You’ve worked hard to create your WordPress site; protect it.
Takeaways:
- Brief overview of threats
- Security Checklist
- Discover / hide files exposing sensitive information
- Detect / remove vulnerable file backups that hackers can download
- Auditing users accounts
- Protect site from brute force login attacks
- How to reduce your security risks
GDPR for Developers
Optimizing the WordPress Front End for use with Gutenberg and Advanced Custom Fields.
How adding custom css and js to the WordPress admin can help mold the WordPress front end to better suit the individual client needs with the addition of controls and styles to both the Gutenberg editor and Advanced Custom Fields.
Takeaways:
- How to create a more intuitive front end for clients
- How to limit the possibility of site breakage by clients
- Reduce the numbers of required plugins.
Speeding Up Your WordPress Site!
This session covers how to analyze and identify slowdowns and bottlenecks in your website performance, use the right tools and plugins to optimize your website page speed, and leverage Javascript and the WordPress REST API to add fast, dynamic content on your newly speedy site!
Takeaways:
Performance analysis and debugging is the first key step in site optimization. This will guide the next optimization steps, such as caching, or image optimization. Often, there is much room for improvement, and complex sites can benefit from caching at several different levels.
Dissecting a WordPress Plugin using the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY Method
In this session, we’ll use the LEGO SERIOUS PLAY Method to dive into how WordPress works, especially in the context of a custom plugin. We’ll explore how to build scalable, high quality plugins by playing with LEGO Bricks.
Takaways:
- Architecture of a Plugin
- Actions & Filters
- OOP & DRY
- Work doesn’t have to be boring!
Hitting It Off With The New Google Search Console
Google Search Console (GSC) is the most powerful free SEO tool available to you and your website. But, it can be intimidating and stressful if you don’t know how to use it. The good news is that it doesn’t have to be. This talk will walk you through the nuts and bolts of Google Search Console so you can go home with the confidence you need to use it and start acting upon the insights you gather. The actions you take with your newfound knowledge will lead to better search results and more of the right kind of visitors to your website.
Takeaways:
- Know where to find the most valuable SEO insights in GSC.
- Learn how to translate GSC insights into SEO action on your WordPress website.
- Learn to love your stress-free relationship with GSC.
The WordPress Developer’s Guide to Caching
Caching can be tricky business. Fundamentally, the concept is simple: storing a temporary copy of data so future requests can be served faster. In reality, there are a number of different types of caching. Certain types of caching can effect our code in different ways. Data changes and the cache has to be invalidated. What happens if a caching layer runs out of memory or goes down?
This session will enlighten those new to caching as well as introduce some common misconceptions, pitfalls and strategies to caching in WordPress themes and plugins.
Takeaways:
- What caching is
- What types of caching exist
- What developers should know about caching when developing on WordPress
User Experience: Designing for Your Customers
How to design websites for both search engines and for your customers.
Takeaways:
We will cover the importance of wireframing, site speed, mobile first design, branding, clarity of marketing messages and CTAs, ADA compliancey, competitor research (and using analytics), user personas, journey mapping and earning trust thru specific guidelines to improve your UX.
Graphics Expertise: the design, exportation and use of scalable vector graphics (also .png .jpgs) files, for both retina display and faster load times. Learn about .svg codes – displaying logos with nothing but code!
Generate Content for Impossibly Difficult Companies and SEO Success
You know the cliche about the reign of content- especially for search engine success- so I won’t repeat it. The problem: you have a boring business and can’t write content. Or, maybe, you are unable to get any of your content approved by difficult brand managers or lawyers.
Let me show you my process for coming up with topics for impossible companies and boring topics. I’ll show you strategies to get this content approved- by even the most persnickety members of your team. I’ll even give you some tips to make sure this content helps grow your SEO campaign in a way you never thought you’d see. As a bonus, I’ll help you produce content that will stand the test of time- even as Google moves toward voice searches.
Takeaways:
- What makes content “good”?
- Strategies to overcome boring industries or topics
- Strategies to overcome difficult (legal/regulative) topics
Googlefy Your Business
This session will cover several tools available in the GSuite that can be used to manage your business including strategies on how to manage client information, prepare and gather website content, even how to manage your phone calls! I’ll go over the Gsuite in general and also add in some tips and tricks with Google that will BLOW YOUR MIND!
Takeaways:
- Overview of Gsuite and how it can be used for business
- Tips to let Google work for you and save you time
- Ah Ha Moments to make you realize GSuite is awesome
Web Accessibility made easy for WordPress
We explain what the WCAG 2.1 guidelines are and why they are so important to us as WordPress developers and agencies.
Then we offer our 11 easy and actionable steps that you can do to your website as soon as you get home to help you become compliant.
We of course go through and explain each step we offer so you will understand clearly.
Finally, we offer some resources and links to completely free plugins that you can use to test your websites Section 508 compliance and help your compliance instantly.
Takeaways:
- You will learn exactly what web accessibility and WCAG 2.1 are.
- We give you easy and actionable steps you can take immediately to help your compliance.
- We give you links to free software to audit your site and free software to help you be compliant before you get home.