{"id":3,"date":"2014-08-25T14:54:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-25T19:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2014.dfw.wordcamp.org\/?page_id=3"},"modified":"2014-08-25T15:42:53","modified_gmt":"2014-08-25T20:42:53","slug":"sessions","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dfw.wordcamp.org\/2014\/sessions\/","title":{"rendered":"Sessions"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\tFind Your Dream Job: Freelancer, Founder, or Agency?\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Paul Clark<\/a> in Track 1.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Get a head start on the next step in your WordPress career by considering advantages, challenges, and tips from three job types in the WordPress economy.<\/p>\n

Paul will share stories of the good, bad, and ugly from 7 years as a freelancer, 3 years as an agency co-founder, and 1 year as the Director of Recruiting at 10up.com, the largest WordPress agency in the world.<\/p>\n

Want to step into freelancing? Take your business to the next level? Grow your team, or score the perfect agency job? This is the talk for you.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tQ&A Panel\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented in Beginner.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tWorking with Themes & Plugins\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Susan Ramsey<\/a> in Beginner.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tFor the Love of Blogging\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Marjorie Asturias<\/a>, Kristin Sheppard<\/a>, Corrin Foster<\/a> in Beginner.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Best practices, tips and tricks, and a little something sweet from three seasoned bloggers. This interactive discussion will touch on everything you ever wanted to know about blogging. Whether blogging is your business, your passion, or a dream waiting to happen, this panel’s for you.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Mad Men Guide to Creating Website Content\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Clara Matthews<\/a> in Track 3.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

The Mad Men Guide to Creating Website Content It will focus on the basic principles of storytelling for creating website content, using the TV show Mad Men as an example. <\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tBeginning WordPress Plugin Development with the Simplest Possible Plugin\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Bill Sullivan<\/a> in Track 2.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Making the leap to writing your own WordPress plugin can seem impossible, but you can make it easy! In this talk, I\u2019ll show you how to write the simplest possible WordPress plugin. The plugin won\u2019t be able do much, but after writing it you will. You\u2019ll learn how to add your own javascript, css, and php while making sure that all the code you write works correctly with WordPress and any other plugins you run.<\/p>\n

The truth is that working with WordPress plugins opens up a new universe of creativity and it\u2019s easy to feel a little overwhelmed by it. Some of the best plugins can have thousands of lines of code and might even interact with several web services. If that\u2019s what a plugin needs to be, how could anyone ever get started? The solution is to figure out a Minimum Viable Plugin and start learning by creating the smallest plugin we can get away with.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll be surprised how far you can go just by writing simple plugins, too. Sometimes, you just want to slightly tweak the functionality of WordPress, or even another plugin, and a simple plugin will get the job done. We\u2019ll look at a few other small plugins I\u2019ve written that make the WordPress sites they run on a little friendlier or just work better.<\/p>\n

And, after you\u2019ve built the simplest possible plugin, you can try developing the second simplest possible plugin on your own. We\u2019ll talk about a few ideas you might like to try next. And once you\u2019ve made a few simple plugins, you\u2019ll find yourself making plugins that might have seemed to hard to even begin before. There\u2019s a while lot of plugin development to do after you make the simplest possible plugin, but it\u2019s an excellent way to get started.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tPeople First: Accessibility Considerations for WordPress Theme Developers\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Trisha Salas<\/a> in Track 1.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Accessibility is a growing concern in the WordPress community at large. Accessibility in web design means creating a site that everyone can use. The U.S. Census Bureau says that over 47 million Americans have a disability of some kind. The UN and the World Bank say this adds up to 650 million people worldwide. That\u2019s around 10% of everyone in the world. At some point in our lives, disability will affect most of us, no matter who you are. Every decision you make as a developer affects hundreds of thousands of people (or more!).<\/p>\n

The mission statement of WordPress is to democratize publishing through Open Source, GPL software. WordPress ‘out of the box’ is already a great way to make a website accessible. As theme developers we can do more. People who can’t see or hear, others that can’t use a mouse, people who use special assistive devices to access the web — these people need to access websites. As theme developers, we need to know about accessibility.<\/p>\n

Accessibility Statement: “Accessibility is the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is available to as many people as possible.” Cynthia Waddell<\/p>\n

There are 2,655 themes in the WordPress.org theme repository. Only 12 of those themes have the tag ‘accessibility-ready’. We can meet those accessibility guidelines with just a few extras steps. We will start with basic things like creating readable headlines and adding alt text to images. From there we will cover some of the information in the Section 508 and WCAG 2.0 Guidelines.<\/p>\n

I’ll also provide real world examples from the perspective of my visually impaired son. <\/p>\n

We are all responsible for making our part of a project accessible. You will need to shake things and change your processes a bit in order to achieve accessibility.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tScoping Projects\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Sheryle Gillihan<\/a> in Track 3.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Knowing how to “right-size” a project is one of the most challenging tasks and some will argue that if you say you’re good at estimating, then you’re really good at lying. However, this is a reality of writing contracts and it’s important to know what you’re doing so that you don’t lose time, money, your reputation or perhaps your sanity.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tChoosing the Right E-Commerce Platform for YOUR Needs\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Patrick Rauland<\/a> in Track 3.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

You might have the next best thing and you want to sell it online. It could be a book, some music, a trendy t-shirt, an entire collection of baseball cards, furniture, of even software. Or maybe someone you know has this product and you want to help them sell it online. well before you get cold hard cash in your bank account you need to make a decision about which e-commerce platform you want to use. There are hundreds of platforms each with their own pros and cons. I’m going to give you a set of tools you can use to determine which of these platforms is right for you. We’ll look at hosted, self hosted, customizable, easy to use, platforms for one product, platforms for thousands of products, scalability, payment options, configurable products, simple products, native WordPress solutions, non-WordPress solutions, and of course your budget to help you determine which e-commerce platform is the right one for your project.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tYour First WordPress Site\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Marc Gratch<\/a> in Beginner.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

When many of us take the dive to set up our first WordPress site, whether it\u2019s for yourself or a client it\u2019s easy to lose enormous amounts of time. For many veteran WordPress developers it is very easy to forget that first experience of stumbling through the dashboard, or sifting through countless plugins. I will walk through the process of getting a domain to launching a basic site. <\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tBuilding High Performance WordPress Websites\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Jon Bellah<\/a> in Track 2.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Performance optimization is an oft-overlooked aspect of creating great user experiences. Optimizing the critical rendering path, eliminating unnecessary roundtrips, and other optimization techniques can have a huge impact on your bottom line.<\/p>\n

In this session, we’ll take a look at some of the ways you can improve the performance of your websites, with a specific focus on building high performance WordPress websites.<\/p>\n\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tFoundation Framework\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Jaymes Downer<\/a> in Track 2.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tBuilding a Church Website on WordPress\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Chris Wallace<\/a> in Track 3.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\n\t\t\n\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\tA Secret Clubhouse for Clients: Using the P2 Theme for Internal and Project Communications\t\t\t\t<\/h2>\n\n\t\t\t\t
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Presented by Dorian Speed<\/a> in Track 3.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

This presentation can apply both to organizations looking for a WordPress-based system for internal communications, and to web professionals who want an efficient, simple setup for communicating with clients.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll cover from start to finish the process of setting up a \u201csecret clubhouse\u201d on WordPress, including:<\/p>\n