WordCamp Lancaster UK 2013 content ideas

Content ideas guidance

WordCamp Lancaster UK 2013 session ideas for the running order should be posted using the WPUK contact form.

When posting submissions please follow the format shown below – don’t forget to say if you’re willing to lead the session for your idea, or if you’re looking for a speaker(s) to present your idea, and provide tags.

Note the following:

• sessions are normally 50 minutes long; in rooms 2 and 3, as an option, shorter 25 minutes sessions can take scheduled
• to lead a session you must have a ticket for the event and, obviously, be present for the relevant session

Site doctors: Let the experts help you!

• Does your site feel off-colour? We can help! An active group discussion on how to improve your site including some great tips and tricks for any WordPress user, designer or developer.

• A call for sites to be submitted will be made nearer the conference – don’t be scared, we are here to give you constructive feedback to improve your site!

Idea: Tony Scott

Panel:

Tags: Beginner, Intermediate, CSS, Themes, Plugins, SEO

Happiness Bar

This will be an area were a number of experienced WordPress users will attempt to resolve, on a one-to-one basis, any WordPress questions and problems.

• Effectively genius bar, as previous years.
• Staffed throughout the two days (barring WC-wide session times)
• Designed to be as accessible as possible to the more inexperienced users
• See SxSW, WCSF, WCMTL, and many others for past examples

Idea: Tony Scott

Speaker:

Tags: beginner, intermediate

Git revision control for beginners

Introduction to using WordPress with Git.

Idea: Tony Scott

Speaker: Rob Miller

Tags: beginner, development

Building intelligent custom themes

Building upon my presentation at WordCamp Edinburgh 2012, we will go deeper into a number of practical examples that can be used to build smarter, more flexible custom themes for WordPress for you and your clients!

Idea: Jonny Allbut

Speaker: Jonny Allbut

Tags: Intermediate, Advanced

EU Cookie Law update

Just hold a thought here for the time being. By July 2013 there may be nothing at all to talk about regarding the EU cookie law and WordPress. On the other hand, there may be lots to talk about.

03/06/13 – Tony et al, it’s safe to say we won’t need to do a cookie law talk this year. Next year, though… 😉

Idea: Heather Burns

Speaker: Heather Burns

Tags: Intermediate, plugins, legal, law

Build a Mobile First theme

How to build a theme using the Mobile First approach. Including:

• What is Mobile First?
• Benefits of Mobile First
• Preparing to build a Mobile First theme
• Mobile First media queries
• Step by step demonstration of building a Mobile First theme, with live coding (eek!)

(N.B. This replaces my original idea for a session on WordPress web apps. I delivered the web apps presentation to WP London recently so many of the people at WC Windsor will have seen it).

Idea: Rachel McCollin

Speaker: Rachel McCollin

Tags: Intermediate, Developers

Social sales

I’ve given a number of presentations around social selling – the easy way not the nasty in your face hard nosed sales guy route.

Idea: Richard Young

Speaker: Richard Young

Tags:

Closed loop blogging

We’ve got an integration with WordPress (to Nimble) that allows you to capture the contact details of registrations and therefore use them later as a marketing list.

Idea: Richard Young

Speaker: Richard Young

Tags:

Extending WordPress using the Magic Fields 2 plugin

Extending WordPress as a CMS using the Magic Fields 2 plugin.

I will cover a little about how it works, examples of what it could be used for ie linking larger datasets, theme development using it and the hooks that are available.

Also how you can control all of your custom post / custom fields / custom taxonomies within one dashboard, the advantages of using it over other similar plugins like PODS (it doesn’t need its own query) or others that will create custom post types for you.

And how it can drastically reduce build time even though as a developer it seems like cheating to use a plugin to create custom posts etc.

Idea: Kirsty Burgoine

Speaker: Kirsty Burgoine

Tags: developers

Improving the media flow

Talking about dealing with a lot of images and how to find them.

Also how to make the edit flow better.

Showing plugins you can use for it.

Idea: Marko Heijnen

Speaker: Marko Heijnen

Tags:

A Beginners Guide to Web Accessibility

A session for those who’ve never heard of web accessibility, or are unsure what it means.

Presentation will be structured around some fundamental questions:

• What is accessibility?
• Why is it important?
• Who is affected by poor accessibility?
• How can accessibility be improved?
• When to think about accessibility?

Idea: Graham Armfield

Speaker: Graham Armfield

Tags: developers, users, accessibility, beginners, experts

Demonstrating Assistive Technology

During this session I’d give an in-depth demonstration of two forms of assistive technology:

• NVDA screen reader – as used by those with visual and cognitive impairments
• Dragon Naturally Speaking speech recognition software – as used by those with motor impairments

These tools are vital to allow some people to interact with their entire desktop/laptop – not just browse the web. But they are complex beasts that take some learning. So let me show you some key functionality and the way that simple changes within websites can make real differences to some people.

Idea: Graham Armfield

Speaker: Graham Armfield

Tags: developers, users, accessibility, beginners, experts

So how do I know if my WordPress website is accessible?

Most people have heard of web accessibility and understand why it might be important. But not everyone is clear about the key issues involved, and how to measure accessibility.

I’ve distilled some key web accessibility guidelines down into a series of simple yes/no questions – questions that anyone can answer about their own websites. These questions do not cover every single accessibility consideration, but if you can give the right answer to these questions your website is going to be more accessible that a great many sites out there.

As well as the list of questions I’ll introduce a simple (and free) toolkit that you can put together to help answer the questions.

Idea: Graham Armfield

Speaker: Graham Armfield

Tags: developers, users, testers, accessibility, beginners, experts

WordPress and Web Accessibility 2013: How far we’ve come, and where to next?

My presentation at WPUK last year focussed amongst other things on the accessibility deficiencies within the WordPress admin screens. Excellent response and suggestions from the floor resulted in in some meaningful engagement with WordPress developers and some really positive accessibility improvements within 3.5.

But some big pieces didn’t make it into 3.5, and worse still, 3.5 saw more new functionality introduced that had poor accessibility – please step forward the new Add Media panel.

WordPress is such a big global force now, and much is made of its part in the ‘democratisation of content’. But should ensuring the future accessibility of WordPress just be left to the efforts of a small bunch of volunteers who try to spot problems after they’ve occurred? Or should there be more of a culture change that would see accessibility being considered during design and development?

Idea: Graham Armfield

Speaker: Graham Armfield

Tags: accessibility, design, development

removed by NickG

Outside The Bubble

A lot has happened since WordPress began, yet a lot of the benefits outside of our community bubble are foreign and unknown. What is PEAR? Isn’t a composer something you have in an Orchestra? What are all these standards that have cropped up? PHP as a framework? Silex? Symfony?

The rest of the PHP community has moved on, and a lot of people are totally unaware of what’s happening and of new paradigms and shiny things that have cropped up.

This session will cover what happened to the rest of the PHP community, some of the things that have been created, what can be brought back into WordPress, and examples of WordPress plugins/themes making use of this tech

Idea: Tom J Nowell

Speaker: Tom J Nowell

Tags: developers, development, advanced, experts

Code Deodorant

Good & bad code isn’t a matter of opinion. It can be defined & rigorously measured!! Why throw around wishy washy opinions and ratings when you can deal with cold hard uncompromising numbers.

Computer science devised many ways of measuring and evaluating a code base in the 70s and 80s, and things have continued since then.

Learn how to measure the quality of a PHP codebase, grab vital information helpfully summarised with simple commands. Find and catch silly mistakes automatically ( 2am upload and a stomach full of coffee/beer? ), and much more

Idea: Tom J Nowell

Speaker: Tom J Nowell

Tags: code, developers, development, tools

Passwords and beyond

WordPress has recently experienced large-scale password brute-force attacks.

I have been designing and developing authentication solutions for startups as well as large banks as a consultant. Using my experience, I have designed a system for easy and secure password management.

There is a number of options that could make WordPress much more secure and I would like to present possible solutions and how they are suitable for future versions of WordPress.

I can show how strength of passwords can be measured, compare passwords with one-time passwords, as well as show how to create a layered password system with minimum impact on users.

Idea: Dan Cvrcek

Speaker: Dan Cvrcek

Tags: security, passwords, authentication, otp, cryptography, developers, experts

WOW plugins! 2013

It’s back for 2013! A showcase of really useful and excellent plugins people may have missed or are just unaware of. Come along, you’ll be surprised what’s out there.

Idea: Michael Kimb Jones

Tags: beginner, pro, plugins

Designing for WordPress and web design: bridging the gap between design and development

There often seems to be a gap in understanding between web design and development. In this talk, Ngaire will cover how to design for users in mind, what design principles are important to consider, and how these can be developed within a WordPress environment.

Included in this presentation:

• Designing for users
• Key design principles
• Tips of how you can use WordPress to implement key design principles

Idea: Ngaire Ackerley

Speaker: Ngaire Ackerley

Tags: Designers, developers, beginner, intermediate

Grid

Any blank sessions at the beginning of the WordCamp will be filled using a BarCamp style grid.

Idea: Tony Scott

Tags: Meta

Getting involved in WordPress

The aim of this panel is to show the range of ways anyone can get involved in the WordPress projects and give back.

Each of the panelists is active in the community from BuddyPress/WordPress through to translations, WordCamp/meetup organisers and theme reviews.

The format will be a Q & A with each panelist being given a short amount of time to introduce themselves and what they get involved with. I’ll be asking some questions to each panelest and then open it up to the room.

Idea: Tony Scott

Panel lead : Siobhan McKeown

Speakers: TBA

Tags: community

Unlocking Corporates with WP

I’m proposing a three part session of 50 minutes:

1. Breaking into the corporate market
   All business is enterprise, so I’m tempted to drop that word when talking about WP’s suitability for big business and start saying ‘corporate’. In this presentation I’ll cover what it takes to sell into the corporate market, what buyers look for, and how you can tune your offerings to that market.
2. What can WP do to better serve the corporate market? Although WP has done well to get big players, mostly they’re working in the publishing industry – which is often more about small teams corralling a lot of content. What can WP do to help larger teams function online.
3. Panel discussion. May not pull this off yet, but I’m inviting some of our clients up and hoping they would like to get involved and discuss on a panel the strengths and weakness of WP from their perspective.

Idea: David Coveney, interconnect/it

Panel lead: David Coveney

Speakers: David Coveney + Clients

Tags: WordPress, Enterprise, Corporate

Tailoring WordPress to meet your clients’ needs

A well designed site that functions correctly for visitors can be a nightmare for your clients if the administration is not user friendly. WordPress is designed to make website administration simple.

This talk covers how to deliver projects that allow flexibility on the front end while not compromising usability on the back end.

We’ve built dozens of WordPress sites, each with its own unique design, layout and content structure. We deliver a bespoke admin interface that empowers clients to take full control of site content within various layouts without needing to know the first thing about HTML/CSS.

Idea: Nathan Roberts

Speaker: Nathan Roberts

Tags: corporate, admin

Starting out with WordPress workshop

WordPress from the very beginning. An extended session/workshop for a couple of hours. Attendees must bring their laptop to get hands-on practice.

Idea: Mike Little

Speaker: Mike Little

Tags: beginner, workshop

Creating flexible layouts and other cool stuff using Advanced Custom Fields

A look at using ACF to extend WordPress to be able to handle large datasets, linked data, create flexible multi column layouts that are responsive, create interactive location maps by combining with Google Maps API and other cool stuff.

Idea: Kirsty Burgoine

Speaker: Kirsty Burgoine

Tags: developers

Fun with Custom Queries

A look at the different methods for writing custom queries, what method to use when and what not to use!

Will cover:

• modifying the main query with pre_get_posts
• using WP_Query to query whatever you want
• multiple queries and nested queries on one page
• combining queries with other functions to create multi-layered listings
• avoiding the temptation to use query_posts

With code snippets, live examples and practical applications.

Idea: Rachel McCollin

Speaker: Rachel McCollin

Tags: developers, intermediate, advanced

Speeding up your WordPress website

The aim of the talk is to show how important speed is when it comes to your website. Highlighting the importance down from usability, visitor flow and SEO.

Then I want to go through what can be done to improve speed, giving an overview of each method, i.e. caching, tweaking images for optimisation. I’ll be focusing on how you can use WordPress functions and plugins specifically.

I’ll also be giving some information on my [fiveaday.co http://fiveaday.co/] site as a case study as I reduced page speed from over 6 seconds to under a second.

Idea: Michael Weaver

Speaker: Michael Weaver

Tags: intermediate

Developing for the New Media Manager

A half session (25 min), or full if necessary for scheduling, talk on the WordPress media manager for developers. Covering the prerequisites of the media manager (how it works, what sections there are, etc) and then how plugin developers can hook into it to implement their own menus, screens, tabs and toolbars.

Idea: John Blackbourn

Speaker: John Blackbourn

Tags: developer, javascript, media manager

The Base Ingredients of Debugging

As any web developer will know, love it or hate it, we all need to debug at some point. Whether it be an error in HTML syntax or invalid database queries.

There are basic debugging rules and structures which can or do make all of our lives a little easier. This talk is aimed toward beginners, and intends to convey basic debugging skills utilising HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP. Not only will the skill-sets be covered, but also the mindset required in understanding why developing debug-fu is a great asset in any development role.

As a fresh entrant into a development role, all too often you will hear the phrase “”just debug it””, without necessarily owning the knowledge to carry this out in most circumstances, or know why it’s even necessary.

When your role involves work with multiple languages and development environments, it can be very hard to know where to begin. The talk will be based on my own experience, from discovering and evaluating solutions within real life scenarios.

Idea: Jenny Wong

Speaker: Jenny Wong

Tags: beginner , debugging, development

Taking taxonomies totally to the top

How we marry post types and taxonomies for various of our sites at Code For The
People.

Idea: Simon Wheatley

Speaker: Simon Wheatley

Tags: development, taxonomies, post types

Using LESS to back your custom theme

Using LESS to back your custom theme and, specifically combining that with the theme customizer (including extensions to that), ie live server-side compile of variable LESS.

Idea: John Cotton

Speaker: John Cotton

Tags: development, themes

Taking taxonomies totally to the top

How we marry post types and taxonomies for various of our sites at Code For The
People.

Idea: Simon Wheatley

Speaker: Simon Wheatley

Tags: development, taxonomies, post types

Why the WordPress dashboard doesn’t work and some of the steps you can take to fix it

I love WordPress, but the dashboard? *sigh*, it’s grown into something quite frustrating.

This talk will review the current dashboard and outline the usability and design issues that have come about in recent years.

Then I’ll look at ways you can solve some of the problems by limiting access for your users and clients and what plugins and hacks you can implement to make the dashboard a little bit friendlier.

Idea: Michael Kimb Jones

Speaker: Michael Kimb Jones

Tags: admin, plugins, theme

Going Global with WordPress

I will lead the session, but I would like to invite the audience to participate with their ideas and experience, perhaps using small group exercises

The session would cover creating a global web presence using WordPress, using speaker lead discussion covering topics including:

• Method: Plugins (e.g. WPML) and DIY
• Content: translation, trans-creation, re-write
• Audience engagement: e.g. supporting non-Latin character sets, international social media
• Website structure: Single site with sub-domains, or directories, individual sites
• SEO: on and off page multilingual SEO, working with Google, Yandex, Baidu and Bing
• Website deployment: WordPress multisite, in country hosting, search engine geo-targeting
• Ecommerce: multi-currency, multi lingual, terms and conditions
• Feedback to WordPress: Adaptations to default themes, e.g. international navigation

Idea: Doug Lawrence

Speaker: Doug Lawrence

Tags: translation, plugins, seo, development

Git and WordPress

Introduction to using WordPress with Git.

Idea: Tony Scott

Speaker: Rob Miller

Tags: beginner, development

The use of colour

Colour is important to our lives. In this talk Anthony Casey of interconnect/it discusses how colour is used and perceived across cultures, how your eyes deal with it, and why your colour decisions are important. The talk is aimed at all levels and was first given at Speak the Web.

Idea: David Coveney

Speaker: Anthony Casey

Tags: people, design, colour