Michael Perrin’s mantra is “No manual clicks whatsoever in the web interface for deploying a WordPress project!”

He’d like to help WordCamp DFW attendees understand the benefits of a fully automated deployment process and discover some tools that can be really useful to developers in their development process, such as Docker, WP-CLI, Makefiles, and an additional one that he has developed to manage data.

Automation can be useful when several developers work together on a project, or when several environments are used. Michael Perrin will show the benefits of setting up such a workflow.

Michael Perrin says he’s always enjoyed the ease of use of WordPress and created several blogs with it as it has always been one of the most convenient solution.

I would say that my story with WordPress is almost a love and hate affair…! Spoiler alert, love came later!
However, as a full-stack web developer specialized in PHP development with the Symfony framework, WordPress was quite frustrating from a developer perspective as I got used to the latest best practices and features like code quality, testability, advanced design patterns, and many high quality libraries. I had the impression that WordPress was a little bit left behind and not embracing enough all the latest developments that the PHP community has introduced.

When he decided to WordPress a try again for developing websites, he was amazed by how WordPress evolved both on a technical point of view and from a user point of view as well:

The REST API that got introduced a few years ago is really clean and very handy to use, and makes WordPress very easy to integrate into other systems. The Gutenberg blocks, with the use of React, really convinced me that WordPress is moving in the right direction. They have a huge potential and introduce a new way to develop and extend websites.
On top of that, I am very much amazed by the quality of the plugins that are developed for WordPress. They provide an unrivaled ease of use to users thanks to the extensibility WordPress provides.

In the end I got quite surprised that I ended up loving WordPress again!

Michael Perrin and his wife publish a blog on WordPress.com, of which he says it’s a great way to share their experience in Texas and the US with her friends and family!

The user interface is really nice and easy to use and WordPress is a perfect fit to share our stories.

Besides of that, the introduction of WordPress at the company he works for has been a success. All the available plugins makes it very easy to integrate new features into the company’s websites.

I was quite amazed that I could easily develop some specific extensions for the needs of the company. Developing customized blocks is much easier that I thought, and that allows our editors to easily insert dynamic content into the website.
I developed for instance a reusable Gutenberg block that allows to insert a filtered list of products that the company sells on any page or blog post. I intend to develop more blocks like this one to allow our editors to create many more interactions in the website. I was glad I managed to easily integrate the React library into my WordPress theme to to create dynamic interactions like product or blog posts filtering for our visitors.

Michael Perrin has not had an extensive experience with the WordPress community so far as WordCamp DFW will be the second WordCamp he’s attending and speaking at (after WordCamp Vancouver).

I chose to come at the DFW WordCamp as I saw all the interesting topics from last year, and that is being held in Texas! I also really liked how welcoming the community is, and that first time speakers were encouraged to apply. I really like to see that the community is not only a developer community but with many other profiles as well. The community is full of designers, developers, people working in marketing, and so on. I could see topics that are not only related to development on the wordpress.tv website open the mind. I also really like that there is a strong focus on diversity in the community.

Michael Perrin says he may have a slightly different approach of development with WordPress due to his past experiences with other technologies like the Symfony framework. This is why he introduced some tools that may be a little bit less common and that the tries to automate all things in WordPress.

When I introduced the tools that I have used in my projects to my colleagues, I realized that they found them interesting and that what I found out could be shared and used (or even improved) by the rest of the community!

We are so excited that Michael Perrin is sharing his knowledge, perspective, and expertise with us!

Tweet @michael_perrin during Michael Perrin’s talk using #WCDFW and ask him about his love of traveling by train.

I have traveled by train in the US (including coming back to Houston from San Francisco or Detroit where I attended conferences on PHP).

Have you gotten your WordCamp DFW tickets? Act fast – we’re getting close!

Sandi Batik is coming back to WordCamp DFW to teach us how to deliver a better eCommerce solution to our clients.

We often get clients whose first effort at an eCommerce site failed. It is usually a “Help me Obi-wan Kenobi you’re my only hope!” kind of phone call. As we analyze what went wrong with the first site, we usually find out the previous developer may have been a great coder, but just did not understand the client’s business model.

In her experience, some clients don’t understand their business model, especially those who are moving from a bricks and mortar business environment to an online store.

That’s why Sandi Batik structured the “Delivering a Better eCommerce Solution to Your Clients” presentation to give eCommerce developers a set of questions and checklists that would help them conduct an effective project discovery before they start writing code.

During Sandi’s talk, you will learn how a detailed client discovery gets to the real motivations, agendas, drivers, expectations, and goals of the eCommerce project.

By using a technical eCommerce project discovery processes, your team will avoid being surprised by time-released, headaches throughout the project. When expectations are clear on both sides, implementation is less stressful for everyone.

Sandi Batik’s presentation will include process checklists and other tools to help your team develop a robust project infrastructure to support your client’s business strategies and help them efficiently launch and manage their eCommerce operation.

Sandi Batik, and her partner, Nick Batik, have been building static websites with HTML and CSS since 1995. They were developing sites in Adobe GoLive in 2007 when a colleague started raving about WordPress and encouraged them to give it a try.

I think we were at Version 2.1 and the documentation was still sketchy. You pretty much kept the WordPress Codex open at all times, documented what worked, and passed it on.

That year, Pat Ramsey founded the Austin WordPress Meetup. It was about seven folks who meet at the Halcyon Coffee House, mostly sharing tips and tricks. As more members joined, the Meetup moved to Austin’s Conjunctured and later to CoSpace.

In 2010 Pat asked me to organize the WordPress Beginners group, while he and Nick organized the Advanced WP Dev group. We later added an Intermediate WP Developers group and an eCommerce Meetup. I taught the beginners through 2018 and, along with Nick, and Toyin Akinmusuru, continue to organize the WooCommerce Meetup.

Sandi Batik is a Deming Certified Quality Analyst who served in Colorado Small Business Development Office as a Minority and Women’s Small Business Development specialist. She was awarded the SBA Region VIII, M/WBE Procurement Advocate Award; and the SBA Region VIII,  Advocate of the Year Award for Women in Business. She uses that business development experience to provide data-driven solutions for her eCommerce clients.

In 2019, after working together for several years on various eCommerce projects, I joined Nick Batik and Toyin Akinmusuru to form a new company, LoneStarWP. I serve as the COO. Our agency develops eBusiness Solutions, including WooCommerce Stores, WordPress Membership Sites, Custom eCommerce Plugins, and offers Strategic Consultancy for eCommerce Projects.

It is always a pleasure to have Sandi Batik at WordCamp DFW. She’s attended several times and, last year, she presented a talk on ‘Avoiding Scope Creep,’ that included the observation that good project management starts with better client management. That presentation led to some intense discussion during the after-party.

Apparently client management is “a thing!”
I ended up writing out some crib-notes on the back of a napkin to help one of the attendees with an upcoming client meeting. He called me a few days later – the meeting went better than expected.

Sandi Batik told us that several of her online mentors are from the DFW WordPress community.

Every WordCampDFW is like a family reunion. It is an opportunity to spend IRL-time with friends and associates whose work I admire.

Being a contributing member of the Austin WordPress Meetup has blessed me with life-long friends and amazing professional associates.

WPATX is a diverse community of small business owners, bloggers, developers, designers educators, and publishers. Our members often expand our WordPress skills by working together on ad hoc projects. For advanced developers and beginners alike, it is reassuring to know that help and advice is only a Slack message away.

Tweet @sandi_batik during Sandi Batik’s talk using #WCDFW and ask her about her vintage cookbook collection!

I love to cook. It relaxes me. When I’m stressed or stuck on a problem I pull out the knives, cutting boards, veggies and I’m in my happy place. Somewhere during the process, I’ve solved what was bugging me. My dev teams are well fed, and there is always green chili stew, Texas Red, gumbo or scotch broth in the freezer.

Get your WordCamp DFW tickets here so you can understand how Project Discovery helps evaluate your client’s existing business operations to help you build a Scope of Work for developer/designer/content strategist and get a reliable time and cost estimate for a proposed eCommerce project. So valuable!

Come hear how a small community of small businesses joined forces to combat the big box stores with their own eCommerce Marketplace shop.

AJ Morris will teach you how they handle aspects like shipping, orders, inventory, all while running their own retail store fronts – and you get to apply this to your own business!

AJ Morris has been helping small businesses work on getting their eCommerce side of the business up and running for the last 2 years.

Whether it was building the first managed WooCommerce hosting, or working with local small businesses, I have found that this is the client base I love working with. I continue to find success and build success with these clients as we get them up and running.

AJ Morris got started building with WordPress back in 2004 for his local school district.

We were in need of a website tool that would allow us to have weblogs (yes, I’m that old!) setup for our teachers. I fell in love with the ease of use WordPress brought to an older generation and found that for myself, it was incredibly powerful and easy to use.

AJ Morris has continued to use WordPress to build plugins, themes and websites for small businesses. Fast-forward to today, he’s working with WordPress and in the business for the last 8 years.

I’m putting every ounce of my work life into the WordPress ecosystem.

AJ Morris worked with one of the first drag-and-drop themes, Headway Themes, as his first true step into the WordPress community. That him me down the road of meeting some of the most influential people in WordPress. Today, he leads product and marketing efforts for one of the longest running WordPress plugin businesses, iThemes.

DFW was one of the first WordCamps AJ Morris attended as a sponsor.

 I loved seeing the community of DFW come together. It’s been one of my favorite teams camps for the last 5 years and one that I try extremely hard to attend every year. I have been able to speak at the last couple and have enjoyed the community of speakers selected.

AJ Morris says he has always found the WordPress community to be welcoming.

When I started attending WordCamps as a sponsor (I first started working at Liquid Web and was going to every WordCamp possible), I was glad to have friends already in the space. But even when they weren’t at the same WordCamps, I have always managed to meet new people and form new friendships.

During his talk at WordCamp DFW this year, Growing the Small Business Local Economy with Marketplace eCommerce, AJ Morris hopes attendees will see that retail shopping is declining and more and more purchases are happening online.

If you run a small business, now is the time to invest in building your eCommerce presence. If you are a freelancer or agency, he will help you understand how you can build affordable solutions for small businesses by pooling business resources together and working towards a common end goal.

Recently a group of downtown businesses of a small Michigan town came to me asking what they could do if they put their resources together to build an eCommerce store. They wanted a way to highlight each of the store’s uniquenesses while allowing them to manage all parts of the eCommerce shop individually among the store owners.

Together we came up with a set of requirements that each store needed to have and set out to develop this solution for them. We ended up with a WooCommerce and Dokan, a marketplace plugin that gave us a number of the features we needed to create the best shopping experience for customers as well as all the management tools for each individual business.

Don’t miss AJ Morris’ session so your can learn how to replicate this success story.

Tweet @ajmorris during AJ’s talk using #WCDFW and ask him about that time rode in a limo with Michael Bublé

Make sure you get your WordCamp DFW tickets – we’re only a few days away from the big event!

Are you one more bad month away from walking away from your WordPress business? The anxiety of unpredictable income can make you miserable.

In this talk at WordCamp DFW, titled “The Power of Recurring Income,” Nathan Ingram will explain how to stabilize your business with a growing stream of recurring income.

Over the years, Nathan Ingram has helped hundreds of WordPress business owners establish and grow recurring revenue in their businesses.

Growing recurring revenue is a personal passion, because it is the foundation of a successful business. It’s virtually impossible to be successful long-term without it. I’ve seen first-hand the difference it has made in my business and for others.

We are excited to welcome Nathan Ingram as a speaker. WordCamp DFW will be the 54th WordCamp at which he have participated, but it’s the first WordCamp he’s attended in Texas!

My first WordCamp was WordCamp Birmingham 2012. I remember being nervous in the days leading up to the camp. I wondered if I would fit in and if everyone would realize that I didn’t know much about WordPress at all. What I discovered was a community of people where I was immediately welcomed.

Nathan Ingram first began building websites for clients in 1995. And since then, he has used “just about all the common tools.”

I found WordPress in 2008, dabbled with it for a couple of years, and decided to use it exclusively for client websites in 2010.

Nathan Ingram has a small digital agency in Birmingham, Alabama where he creates and manages WordPress websites for clients. He also provides growth coaching to WordPress business owners.

He will be teaching our WordCamp DFW attendees:

1. Why recurring income is crucial
2. How to package, price and sell a WordPress management plan
3. Easy to use worksheets to help you create new services for recurring income
4. The difference recurring income can make

Nathan Ingram is the Host at iThemes Training where they offer free, live WordPress training multiple times each week.

It’s like being at WordCamp all year around! WordPress as a software is excellent, but its community makes it even better. I’m an avid supporter of WordCamps. I’ve had the privilege of speaking to the WP community at WordCamps across the U.S., Canada, and Central America. And I’ve been an organizer for WordCamp Birmingham (WP Y’all) for the last few years. Everywhere I’ve been, the WordPress community is always amazingly open and friendly.

Tweet during Nathan Ingram’s talk using #WCDFW and ask him about Growing up in Alabama, and being a huge fan of the Crimson Tide and all things college football.

To learn from our expert speakers and be part of our community, make sure sure you get your WordCamp DFW tickets here!

Do your palms get sweaty when someone mentions analytics? What do all those Google Analytics numbers mean anyway?

Heather Baker is coming to WordCamp DFW and will answer these questions in her talk “Google Analytics Essentials: 10 Metrics to Get You Started,” and she’ll identify 10 essential metrics – why they are important, what they can tell you, and how you can find and track them.

Heather Baker’s hope is that people walk away from her session excited about digging in to their Google Analytics dashboards. She’s confident that everyone who attends her session will be taking data-driven steps to improve their websites and create better experiences for their users. That could be you!

I’m such a numbers geek and I love digging into analytics. You can find so much great information to help make better decisions about your business and your marketing when you know what to look for.
So many people find Google Analytics to be very intimidating or confusing. They know they need it, but they don’t really know what to do with it after they install the code. I really enjoy being able to “demystify” Google Analytics for people and help them find key metrics to revolutionize the way they do business.

Heather Baker has spoken at WordCamp Atlanta and various Meetups, usually on Marketing related topics such as content marketing, Google Analytics and sales/marketing funnel, so we are fortunate to have her in our speaker line up at this year’s WordCamp DFW!

The Dallas Fort Worth area has been my home most of my life, but I didn’t get really involved in the WordPress community until after I moved away. For me, WordCamp DFW is like coming home. And being a native Texan, I’m always excited for the opportunity to support Texas events!

Heather Baker started really getting involved in the WordPress community after she moved to the Atlanta area with her husband and three dogs in 2015.

The local community was very open and welcoming. At the time I was just a marketer using WordPress in a corporate environment, with a few friends and family sites on the side. But I never felt like I was any less than the developers, entrepreneurs or agencies who live in WordPress day in and day out.

She’s been building websites for fun since the mid-90’s and went through the whole progression from Geocities to Blogger. In 2005, her husband was in a motorcycle accident that put him in the hospital for several months. Heather Baker started a WordPress blog to share updates with friends and family.

Since then, I’ve built sites for friends, family, and clients, in addition to helping optimize WordPress-based marketing funnels.

Heather Baker has used WordPress in a lot of ways through various industries. At one company, she used it for an internal employee newsletter-type solution, at another, she created a customer event support site.

She’s helped many individuals and small businesses turn a static site or blog into the lead generating, sales inducing, business building tool it was intended to be. The specific wins created for those people and businesses are great achievements for her.

For anyone who hasn’t been out to a Meetup or WordCamp, I highly recommend that you take a step out of your comfort zone and give it a try. There’s a great community of people out there who want to walk with you and help you to greater heights on your WordPress journey.

Tweet during Heather Baker’s talk using @heatherthedogs and @mesquitefields with the hashtag #WCDFW and ask her about her traumatic snapping turtle incident as a child. It caused her to have an unhealthy fear of non-chlorinated bodies of water that she’s slowly been able to overcome. Today, she love kayaking with her husband around the various creeks, bayous, lakes and gulf in the Houston/Galveston area.

Go Astros!

Don’t wait to get your WordCamp DFW tickets so you can learn from Heather Baker. See you there!