Blogging can be one of the best methods for driving inbound leads into your business. Yet, the biggest challenge many small business owners face is not whether they need a blog, but how to build a blog that brings in business.

One in every four people that use WordPress use it as a means to support themselves or family. This powerhouse of a software is more than just code. WordPress is a vehicle for success and employment. Learn how WordPress can make all your financial dreams come true and build you a career path you can enjoy and be proud to have.

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Between 2015 through 2016 Google saw an increase of 160 percent from the year before. With WordPress powering over a quarter of the entire web, we can be confident a good percentage of those sites were running WordPress. In this session, we will examine blackbox scanning tools to discover what types of information your WordPress site might be leaking to attackers, information they can use to potentially compromise your site. Then we’ll explore steps we can take to stop this information leakage — one key segment of a larger strategy to fortify WordPress sites.

While many WordPress developers understand the security value of adding an SSL Certificate to a Website; few think through the strategy necessary to minimize the loss of essential back-links that are key to SEO. In this session we’ll cover an effective SSL Implementation Strategy that will not only reduce impact on your SEO but use this opportunity as a way to build engagement with visitors.

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Overview
Increase agency efficiencies, reduce development headaches and get clients on board early by creating low-fidelity wireframes to describe content architecture. Learn the tactics and tools to streamline your content architecture process.

Knowledge/experience level
Beginner to intermediate WordPress experience. Basic familiarity with development and implementation of pages, custom post types, fields and taxonomies.

Takeaways Attendees will learn
– How to use low-fidelity wireframes to inform development of site content types, components, taxonomy and technology.
– How to leverage content architecture wireframes for client training and content entry.
– How to gain client approval on content architecture to streamline development

Learn the basics and some advanced tricks of WordPress plugin development. This track will demonstrate how to create a complete plugin from scratch and make it work with any WordPress site. Topics covered include hooks, content manipulation, some of WordPress’ most powerful APIs that are utilized by plugins. By the time the session has completed, attendees will have the skills to develop plugins from scratch using simple PHP and the WordPress API. We will also change the Hello Dolly plugin to display our favorite song lyrics.

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Maybe you get nervous when you think about speaking to a group of people. The thought of standing at the front of the room, being silently judged by your peers and people that know more than you might just be enough to convince you not to take the plunge. But you have a lot of great experience to share and a subject you are passionate about!

It might not sound easy, especially at first, but public speaking can be incredibly fulfilling. Learn how to prepare for a presentation of any type and walk away looking like a champ.

In this session I will:
– Introduce 5 proven techniques to calm your nerves when speaking to groups.
– Discuss ways to boost your confidence and communicate your points clearly.
– Highlight the Do’s and Don’ts of using slides in your presentations.
– Convince you that speaking at your next meetup or camp is the best thing you can do.

Have a burning question that you didn’t get answered during a session? No problem! Bring it to AMA: WordCamp St. Louis. During this session, the audience will have the opportunity to get answers from our speakers.

You’ve always wanted to launch a podcast, but you just aren’t ready. What are you missing: Gear? A Launch Strategy? Courage to get on the mic every week?

Steve Stewart has been helping podcasters with their shows and their tech for more than 5 years. In this session he will explain what an RSS feed is, what you need to launch a podcast, and answer your questions about monetization or growing an audience.

We all bow to the mighty rule of Google when it comes to the web. WordPress websites are notorious for not getting along with Google’s Page Speed Insights tool. This talk will give you actionable items for flipping the script to get page speed insights to bend the knee to you.

We’ll cover what a render blocking script is, how to fix it, how to optimize images, reduce server response time, and everything else Google docks your site speed for. All with GPL based tools!

As WordPress professionals, we are lucky to be surrounded with a plethora of opportunity. But where is our place in the WordPress economy? Should you stay on your own or find partners? Freelance or find a full-time position? Start a service or product-based business? I’ll share stories and experiences from myself and other members of our community that will help you navigate your career in WordPress.

According to Google, 55,000 sites got compromised per week. As we know, WordPress runs majority of the content-driven websites in the world. It then became the number one target for hackers and phishing scammers. In this presentation you will learn the What, How, Why, Where, by following an up to date security checklist with steps to prevent and avoid your WordPress getting hacked.

This talk covers the basic code requirements that are checked by the WordPress theme review team before allowing a theme to be included in the repository.

I will discuss what the requirements are for repository themes, how to check them, tools that can help, and reasons why you might want to perform your own theme review even if your theme is not being submitted to the repository.

Installing WordPress, plugins, and a theme is just a start, but in maintaining and growing your website, you’ve got to make plans. Sure, your initial idea of creating a WordPress site for whatever reason is great, but if you’re trying to get people to either subscribe to your newsletter, share your posts, fill out your lead forms, leave a comment on your posts, click an ad, or buy your stuff, you’ve got more to do.

If you’re not getting some type of return on investment, which is to get people to do something on your website, then your website is broken. Come sit in and let me help you fix your problem by giving you ideas that you can use.

This is for all content creators, as this is like a checklist of things you should be doing for your WordPress website. Also, it includes links to further information to help your blog or website.

Think about the last time you found yourself frustrated when something didn’t work out the way you wanted it to. Perhaps it was a project at work, a challenge in your personal life, or even the result of a national election. In this session, I will share some lessons learned from contributing to WordPress and how those lessons can apply to more than just our professional lives.

It’s not Multisite, it’s Multitenant…an alternative way to run multiple WordPress sites with only one site of core WP files.

With years of management experience behind me, I’ve come to learn a few things about myself and about leading people. In this discussion, we’re going to talk about the human side of running a business. What it means to invest in your team(and vice versa), the pitfalls of working with others who are smarter than yourself, and how all of this can make your business better. By the end of the session we hope to laugh together and inspire one another!

With nearly fifty thousand WordPress plugins available, there’s one for just about everything. However, sometimes a plugin doesn’t do exactly what you need. Working with existing plugins can be a frustrating experience when the developer has not considered how other developers might use it on a client’s web site. In this session I’ll share some common roadblocks working with plugins, how you can make your plugin extensible, and the benefits of building a developer-friendly plugin.

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We spend a lot of time in front of a computer without any social interaction. Sometimes that is great. Sometimes that causes demons to get in your closet. We will talk about the stuff no one likes to talk about. How to handle depression, social anxiety, and keep yourself healthy mentally and physically.

1 in 5 people in the US, report having some kind of disability. For some, these disabilities make it difficult to access the internet. That’s where web accessibility comes in. According to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), web accessibility means that “people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate, and interact with the Web, and that they can contribute to the Web.” Not only does web accessibility help people with disabilities, it helps others experience the Web, including individuals whose abilities have changed as they’ve gotten older.

Web accessibility is so much more than standards and checking off items on a list. It’s about having empathy for someone else. To be frank, web accessibility makes it possible for everyone to google the burning question that we all have at 2a.m.: Where can I get pizza at this hour?

This talk will cover:

• The basics of web accessibility
• “People First” language
• The importance of empathy
• Inclusive design and content creation best practices
• Helpful tools and resources

My topic will be centered on ways to customize WordPress posts, pages and custom templates with Advanced Custom Fields (ACF) for a better user experience. I will start out by giving a brief introduction to the plugin and how to use it, but the main focus will be on tips and tricks to making your fields clean and organized so that your users don’t freak out when looking at the backend of all their posts, pages or custom templates that use numerous custom fields.

The topic will be WordPress backend heavy, with a little bit of development talk to describe how to create fields in templates during the brief introduction to the plugin.

There are 50 ways to leave your lover, 8 million stories in the naked city and now FIVE ways to lay out boxes in CSS:

– Floats and clears, the old standby;
– Display: block and inline, still highly useful;
– CSS grids (not ready for prime time)
– Display: table (why?)
– And my new favorite, Flexible boxes (flexbox).

Let’s play!

WordCamp’s over, now what do you do? CELEBRATE!! Come to the Regional Arts Commission building (6128 Delmar Blvd.) for snacks, drinks, and more! Do you want to show off your mad brewing skills? Bring some of your craft brew along to share!

Here’s how to get to the afterparty from WordCamp:

• Exit the parking garage onto Throop Drive, and turn right onto Forest Park Parkway.
• Drive about half a mile down Forest Park, then turn left onto Skinker Blvd. (You’ll know when to turn because Forest Park will be closed for construction.)
• Drive about half a mile down Skinker, then turn right onto Delmar Blvd.
• When you see The Pageant on your left, the RAC building will be just after that on your right.
• If there’s no parking right in front of the building, your best bet is to drive up a few hundred feet, turn left onto Rosedale, and park in one of the public lots behind The Pageant.