WordCamp Ottawa 2016 features sessions suited to those new to WordPress, those who have WordPress skills, and professional designers and developers.
To help you decide which sessions to attend, we’ve classified talks into three categories: Site Creators, Code Creators, and Content Creators.
However even if you don’t have the “prerequisites”, if a session interests you, feel free to attend! If it’s not right for you, simply exit the room quietly and enter another.
Thursday, June 16
WordCamp Ottawa 2016 will open with 2 optional pre-camps: Introduction to WordPress for Beginners and Introduction to WordPress for Developers. These sessions will take place on Thursday June 16, beginning at 6:30 p.m.
Saturday, June 18
Saturday’s presentations are divided into these three tracks:
- Content Creators, who want to learn how to publish content on a WordPress site
- Site Creators, who want to learn more complex tasks but aren’t designers or developers
- Code Creators, designers or developers who want to learn about topics such as site set-up, theme design, plugin development, development best practices and more
Sunday, June 19
Sunday is a hands-on day – bring your laptop and your curiosity and attend a mix of these events:
- Contributor Day, which helps participants get on board with WordPress.org contributing of all kinds
- The Unconference, a group discussion exploring the most popular topics of interest with the guidance of knowledgeable experts
- Site Review Clinic, where experts will review and suggest ways to improve a site’s design, content, structure or functionality
- Workshops, which aims to help participants reinforce the knowledge they’ve gained during WordCamp through hands-on exercises
Session List
Introduction to WordPress for Beginners
The goal of Introduction to WordPress for Beginners, is to introduce new and nearly new WordPress users to the terms and concepts of WordPress before the weekend sessions. There are no prerequisites for this session.
In Introduction to WordPress for Beginners, you will learn:
- What WordPress is
- Who uses WordPress
- What the WordPress dashboard is
- About WordPress content types
- How to add content to a WordPress site, including images and video
- How to add and manage menus, sidebar widgets, themes and plugins
The details
- Introduction to WordPress for Beginners takes place Thursday, June 16, 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. in the River Building at Carleton University in Room RB3201.
- You need to register for this session separately. To register, please select the Pre-camp “Introduction to WordPress for Beginners” ONLY option.
- You can attend this session without attending the main WordCamp on the June 18 weekend.
- WiFi will not be enabled during this session.
Introduction to WordPress for Developers
Introduction to WordPress for Developers is for you if you’re a beginning developer or a developer with no or little WordPress experience who wants to learn some of the main WordPress developer concepts and terms before the weekend sessions. It will be expected that attendees have prior experience using WordPress, but not necessarily developing. At these sessions, you will learn about:
- Template Hierarchy ( Theme Structure )
- The Loop ( Rendering the post/page content )
- Hooks – Actions/Filters ( A WordPress essential for plugins and themes )
The details
- Introduction to WordPress for Developers takes place Thursday, June 16, 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. in the River Building at Carleton University in Room RB3202.
- You need to register for this session separately. To register, please select the Pre-camp “Introduction to WordPress for Developers” ONLY option.
- You can attend this session without attending the main WordCamp on the June 18 weekend.
- WiFi will not be enabled during this session.
10 quick tests to enhance your site’s accessibility
I will present 10 tests that can be performed quickly to measure the accessibility of a web page. If you are a developer, you can fix before posting live. If you are a project manager or a client, you can ensure the level of accessibility without advanced coding knowledge. Bring a laptop (FireFox with Wave and Web Developer toolbars) and follow the steps to test your web page during the presentation.
User Level: Beginner user, Intermediate user, Beginner designer, Intermediate designer, Beginner developer, Intermediate developer
Prerequisites: None
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/TouficSbeiti1/10-quick-tests-to-enhance-your-sites-accessibility
A Battle of Two Plugins: qTranslate X vs. Polylang
A case study of the pros and cons of two popular multi-language plugins.
User level: Beginner user
Prerequisites: WordPress knowledge, some basic PHP knowledge
Analyze, Plan, and Execute – SEO Action Plan
How to fully audit your WordPress site from a useabiliy, searchability, and profitability standpoint. I will explain how I conduct and present an audit on any site from blog to major international company sites. Then using that, I will bridge the gap on how you can help educate and ultimately sell current and potential clients. They can walk away with an executable plan, but more often than not, you have built such a trust through education, that you can often be tasked with executing that plan.
User level: Intermediate user, Advanced user
Prerequisites: Individuals will want to have a basic on page familiarity with meta information like titles, headings, keywords, and alt tags, but for the most part, this can be geared for anyone from near beginner to advanced.
Build a membership site in 30 minutes, for $30
A half hour of nonstop fun, showing how to build a complete membership powered website for $30 in just 30 minutes.
At the end, you’ll have:
- a WordPress powered website;
- restricted, membership only content;
- pay to download digital content;
- a payment gateway;
This one’s a lot of fun, I like to have a stopwatch running to see if I can get it all done in less than 30 minutes with plenty of time left for the inevitable questions.
User level: Beginner user, Intermediate user, Beginner designer, Intermediate designer, Beginner developer, Intermediate developer
Prerequisites: None
Catching regressions faster with automated acceptance tests
By mimicking user flow and interactions, acceptance testing plays a key role in catching any kind regressions in someone’s plugin or theme. In this presentation, I will show how to write acceptance tests using a very simple little framework called Codeception and how someone can automate those tests using a continuous integration server such as Travis CI.
User level: Intermediate developer, Advanced developer
Prerequisites: People should be familiar with PHP and the command line.
Content Architecture 101
There is so much confusion about what types of things should be put on a page and what should be in a post. Static vs. Dynamic content is the best way to tackle this. An “About Us” page would be just that… A PAGE. If you are talking about something that is more time sensitive, then you want to do a post. Connected to this would be Categories and Tags. What are they? When creating a website, you can edit a menu to include not only pages, but also category archives that can create a more complete experience for small businesses. This is not just how to do it but WHY you should do it. This gives an in depth look at the justification for placement of content on your website and way finding.
User level: Beginner user
Prerequisites: WordPress 101 talk: http://wordpress.tv/2015/06/21/shanta-nathwani-wordpress-101/
Slides: http://shanta.ca/content-architecture-wordcamp-ottawa-2016/
Digital Signage and WordPress
The TV screens that you see displaying information in stores, malls, restaurants, offices and many other spaces, it’s called Digital Signage. This talk focuses on showcasing how to create and maintain digital signage displays with WordPress.
User level: Advanced user, Beginner designer, Intermediate designer, Advanced designer, Beginner developer
Prerequisites: Basic understanding of HTML and WordPress plugins
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/ting-y/wcott-2016-digital-signage-and-wordpress
Don’t get left behind: Keeping your site up-to-date
In my years of developing and managing WordPress sites I’ve discovered that many end users don’t keep their sites as updated as they should. This usually stems from not being sure how things work and/or the fear of breaking things. My talk will focus on the real-world management task of plugin and WP core updates: what WP does automatically and what you have to do yourself; how the update system notifies you; deciphering update version numbers and descriptions; how to do the actual updates for plugins, theme and WordPress itself.
User level: Beginner user, Intermediate user
Prerequisites: Passing experience with what the WordPress admin screen look like.
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/the___miked/wordcamp-ottawa-2016-updates
eCommerce 101 for WordPress
WordPress is not only a great platform for building websites and blogs, you can also use WordPress to sell your products and services. In this talk, we will see the importance of eCommerce for businesses and service providers, set up an online store using WooCommerce, go over some best practices and key metrics that are critical for new stores. By the end of the talk, the audience will be able to set up their own online stores, and have a few ideas for products they can sell (if they don’t already).
User level: Beginner user
Prerequisites: No previous technical skills required.
Engage your audience now: purposeful content design for beginners
Let’s talk about design in a different way: is the purpose of your site clear to those who visit it? How does their experience differ when they visit on a small phone verses a laptop? Is it clear how you want people to engage with your content, or do you assume they know what to do?
In this presentation, designer Alison Knott will help you evaluate your site’s purpose from a design and usability perspective. If you have trouble getting readers to engage with your content, or want to be more objective with the look of your site, this talk is for you!
User level: Beginner user
Prerequisites: None
Frameworks For Freelancers – Double Time IT!
If you have ever had a client pick out a random theme, and asked you to build it out- then you spent 2 (or more) days learning how it worked- then this is for you. Don’t spend all your time learning new wheels- get a framework and learn it inside and out.
Frameworks are going to be your best friend- there are several out there, I will talk about my top faves- and the pros and cons of each. And, there are so many snippet resources out there- implementation will be your best teacher.
The Bonus? Build sites in 2 days, not 2 weeks.
User level: Beginner user, Beginner designer
Prerequisites: Basic understanding of WordPress installs
FREE SSL for WordPress with Let’s Encrypt
Showcasing the new Free SSL Certificates from Let’s Encrypt, and how WordPress Developers should go about implementing them into their sites.
User level: Beginner developer, Intermediate developer
Prerequisites: Command Line basics, WordPress
Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1GvoKVR1_rrOip3dqCLDFRrtsz00ynb-OMxDk89ZKn_g/edit?usp=sharing
Getting Comfortable With Child Themes: A Practical Workshop
Child themes are a simple but powerful way to customize a pre-made theme. Learning how to use them properly means you’ll never risk losing all your modifications when the developer releases a new version and you update the theme. Using easy-to-follow language, I’ll walk you through the steps to set up a child theme on your laptop’s WordPress installation and we’ll make some tweaks together – from CSS adjustments to more substantial changes in functionality.
Prerequisites:
- You should be comfortable with HTML and CSS basics, and have at least a general sense of WordPress theme file structure.
- Some beginner PHP knowledge is helpful but not required.
- Bring a laptop to follow along with the practical portion of the workshop.
- You’ll need a fresh localhost install of WordPress set up on your laptop, so be sure to attend the “Setting Up a Local Web Server Environment” workshop right before this one if you don’t already have one.
Important
To help the workshop go smoothly – since we can’t always rely on stable Wifi at WordCamps – please download ahead of time:
- A copy of the Penscratch theme.
- A copy of the workshop slides (11 MB) so you’ll be able to copy-paste pieces of code.
- Sample images folder (2.4 MB). You’re welcome to use your own images from your hard drive instead.
- If you don’t already have one, a text/code editor like Atom, TextWrangler (Mac only), Sublime Text. Install it so it’s ready to go.
Google Analytics: Uncovering Your Website’s Secrets
Your website has a great story about users interact with your content. Google Analytics has the data to tell you that story, but it produces so many different numbers it can be more confusing than enlightening.
This session is a beginner’s guide to Google Analytics setup, navigating the interface, to know how people are reacting to your content. We’ll talk about how WordPress Plugins simplify your setup and analysis.
Key things you will learn by attending this session include how to:
• Identify your most valuable posts and pages
• How to get more from your WordPress Google Analytics plug-ins.
• Discover your most valuable traffic sources
• How can you use Google Analytics to stir your creative juices?
Your website has lots to tell you about visitor behavior, learn how Google Analytics tells you the story.
User level: Beginner user, Intermediate user
Prerequisites: None
Slides: http://ht.ly/ssIO301l9Pd
Happy Site Happy Life: 5 Tips to Working with Web Developers
Working with your web developer doesn’t have to feel like a challenge! As an experienced web designer and webmaster, I’ve worked closely with a range of developers on new websites and old alike. I’ll share my top 5 tips and approaches to save you time and energy while increasing communication and happiness with your developer! If you’re looking to hire outside help for your website, this talk is for you.
User level: Beginner User, Intermediate User, Beginner Designer, Intermediate Designer
Prerequisites: None
Hidden Features of WordPress
There are WordPress Features You May Not Know.
If you are like many, there always seem to be things you wish you could do with WordPress, but maybe can’t figure out. This session will provide you with some great tips and tricks for you to make working with WordPress even easier.
From changing the number of posts on the dashboard page, to adding a target to link to on the menu dashboard, there are many things that are easy to accomplish — if only you know where to look. Not only are there screen options on almost every dashboard page, but there are help pulldowns, too, helping to answer questions before you might even need to turn to help in a forum.
We will also cover shortcuts for use in the editor window, and a quick and easy way to save your favorite plugins to find at a click to upload to your site.
User level: Beginner user
Prerequisites: Basic WordPress
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/michelleames/hidden-wp-features
Intro to User Journey Maps for Building Better Websites
You’ve asked the right questions and maybe you have some personas. There’s a heap of feature requests from your client and a whole lot of content to organize into a sitemap (IA) document and wireframes. However, something’s not sitting right and you wonder how your WordPress site fits into the bigger customer journey with the client’s brand, business, and products. In this talk, I’ll show you how to get started with taking all of that subject matter expertise you’ve been collecting in your mind, and to convert it into one of several useful types of journey maps. I’ll share process, examples, context on how they fit into a larger project, and share how they help bring agreement among your client decision-makers.
User level: Beginner user, Intermediate user, Advanced user, Beginner designer, Intermediate designer, Advanced designer
Prerequisites: No technical knowledge needed
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/anthonydpaul/intro-to-user-journey-mapping-for-building-better-websites-wordcamp-ottawa-2016-anthonydpaul
Introduction to WordPress for Beginners
The goal of Introduction to WordPress for Beginners, is to introduce new and nearly new WordPress users to the terms and concepts of WordPress before the weekend sessions. There are no prerequisites for this session.
In Introduction to WordPress for Beginners, you will learn:
- What WordPress is
- Who uses WordPress
- What the WordPress dashboard is
- About WordPress content types
- How to add content to a WordPress site, including images and video
- How to add and manage menus, sidebar widgets, themes and plugins
The details
- Introduction to WordPress for Beginners takes place Thursday, June 16, 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. in the River Building at Carleton University in Room RB3201.
- You need to register for this session separately. To register, please select the Pre-camp “Introduction to WordPress for Beginners” ONLY option.
- You can attend this session without attending the main WordCamp on the June 18 weekend.
- WiFi will not be enabled during this session.
Introduction to WordPress for Developers
Introduction to WordPress for Developers is for you if you’re a beginning developer or a developer with no or little WordPress experience who wants to learn some of the main WordPress developer concepts and terms before the weekend sessions. It will be expected that attendees have prior experience using WordPress, but not necessarily developing. At these sessions, you will learn about:
- Template Hierarchy ( Theme Structure )
- The Loop ( Rendering the post/page content )
- Hooks – Actions/Filters ( A WordPress essential for plugins and themes )
The details
- Introduction to WordPress for Developers takes place Thursday, June 16, 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. in the River Building at Carleton University in Room RB3202.
- You need to register for this session separately. To register, please select the Pre-camp “Introduction to WordPress for Developers” ONLY option.
- You can attend this session without attending the main WordCamp on the June 18 weekend.
- WiFi will not be enabled during this session.
Monetizing Your Blog: Emerging Trends
There are more ways to generate revenue with your blog than you might think. So called “traditional” models of making money with your blog are either fading away or getting diluted while new trends are clearly emerging. This session is an introduction to current trends in blog monetization.
User level: Beginner user, Intermediate user, Beginner designer, Intermediate designer
Prerequisites: Ideally, those in attendance already have a blog.
Setting Up a Local Web Server Environment
Set up a local web server on your laptop, so you can run WordPress on your laptop. With a local install of WordPress you can test new plugins and themes, or just play with WordPress without the need for a public server.
We plan to have many mentors available to help you through the process.
Prerequisites: A laptop, Mac or Windows, either is fine.
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/r3df/setting-up-a-local-web-server-for-wordpress
Support, eh? Why you should care
Learn ways to support your customers and clients in a way that makes you a rockstar! This will cover providing support via various communication channels (email, social media, forums) and making people fall in love with your work.
User level: Beginner user, Intermediate user, Advanced user, Beginner designer, Intermediate designer, Advanced designer, Beginner developer, Intermediate developer, Advanced developer
Prerequisites: None but they should have an open-mind to helping others
The Chop-up Diaries
Let’s aim to bridge to designer/developer gap together! A presentation aimed at making it easier to communicate between designers and developers. Tips for preparing mockups that will be easy to use by the developer and tricks for the developers less familiar with Photoshop. No more swearing when you get a layer with blending modes!
User level: Beginner designer, Intermediate designer, Beginner developer, Intermediate developer
Prerequisites: A basic knowledge of Photoshop or front-end languages will prove useful. Most topics covered will be pretty light on jargon.
Slides: https://chopupdiaries.com
The Techie Continuum
Do you think you don’t know enough about WordPress to help out someone else? Come with me on my journey through the techie continuum – swinging through Self-Doubt Boulevard and taking a leisurely jaunt through Imposter Syndrome Alley. We’ll find out how I finally realized I know enough to contribute – and so do you.
User Level: Beginner user, Intermediate user, Beginner designer, Intermediate designer, Beginner developer, Intermediate developer
Prerequisites: None
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/zoonini/the-techie-continuum-wordcamp-us-2015
Things I’ve Learned About Creating a Premium Plugin
So you want to start selling premium plugins? So did I, so I jumped in with both feet. Hear how I got started, what I’ve learned (and am still learning) about selling my first premium plugin for WordPress and how you can get started too.
User level: Beginner developer, Intermediate developer, Advanced developer
Prerequisites: Really just knowing what a plugin is and the fact that paid plugins exist 🙂
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/bhogg/things-ive-learned-about-creating-a-premium-plugin
Widget Visibility and Other Secret Loves
If you’ve heard of Jetpack, you probably have heard that it does stuff like: Publicizes your posts to social media, tracks your Stats, and Protects your site from brute-force attacks. You might not know about some of Jetpack’s other features, like Widget Visibility, Monitor, or the slew of widgets and shortcodes that come along with it, not to mention the fun stuff that’s available for developers of all stripes. In this talk, we’ll take a look at these “secret” features and how you can use them to give your site a boost!
User level: Beginner user, Intermediate user
Prerequisites: None
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/richardmtl/widget-visibility-and-other-secret-loves-wordcamp-ottawa-2016
Widgets Within Widgets. A Widgetception Story.
A quick run through on the how and why I created the plugin “Widgetception” to inject widgets on a page by page basis.
User level: Intermediate developer
Prerequisites: Attendees should be comfortable with PHP, searching through the WordPress codex, and have a basic understanding of how custom widgets are created.
WordPress Code Performance
Tired of listicles about how to optimize your WordPress site that suggest a caching plugin and a CDN?
This talk will dive into the internal WordPress structure to discuss what is slow, why it is slow, and how you can write good WordPress code that performs well enough to handle billions of pageviews.
User Level: Intermediate developer, Advanced developer
Prerequisites: They should be familiar with WordPress code.
Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1NdvTTZoGhzEgPLb-aR6wXFGQ9435m7V8GrtxAixE4AQ/edit?usp=sharing
WordPress page builders: A quick intro
Page builder plugins add drag and drop interfaces to WordPress that let you build custom page layouts without needing code (or a developer). Easily add fully responsive rows, columns, tabs, accordions, countdown timers, call-outs, buttons, pricing tables, images, galleries, sliders, background videos and more to your WordPress pages and posts.
This session will introduce you to a few page builders, and we’ll look at some examples of what you can create with them. See how easy it is to create complex page layouts on your WordPress site with page builders!
User level: Beginner user, Intermediate user, Advanced user, Beginner designer, Intermediate designer, Advanced designer, Beginner developer, Intermediate developer, Advanced developer
Prerequisites: None
Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/r3df/wordpress-page-builders-a-quick-introduction
WP-CLI – Super Admin Level Tips and Tricks
WP-CLI is a powerful tool for developers and system administrators alike. I use the tool on a weekly basis for managing users, settings and WordPress installs. In this lightening talk, I will explain how I use the tool to create sites in bulk for learning environments, install and deploy updates to WordPress and perform changes to multi-site environments in a higher education setting.
User level: Advanced designer, Beginner developer, Intermediate developer, Advanced developer
Prerequisites: WP-CLI, Bash
Slides: jpurpleman.ca/wcottawa2016
You can write 30 features in 30 lines of code today and other WordPress Enhancements
Actions, Hooks, Filters? Oh my! Come find out all about the core functions of WordPress that make fast features possible with powerful plugins and themes. You’ll leave this rapid fire romp armed with tools and techniques to make all the technomagical enhancement to your favourite CMS you can imagine.
User Level: Advanced user, Advanced designer, Beginner developer, Intermediate developer, Advanced developer
Prerequisites: How to use a functions.php file or write a site plugin
Slides: http://idealienstudios.com/wordcamp-ottawa-30-in-30/