Tell us a bit about yourself.
I’m a web developer from Colorado. I fell in love with WordPress because it empowers people to have their own voice on the Web. My goal as a web professional is to make myself obsolete.
What will you speaking about?
My session is called “Building WordPress Sites to Last.” There’s so much you can build and publish with WordPress, but with so many themes, plugins, and hosting services, how do you keep it from all falling apart when you change a piece?
Over my experience with WordPress users of all stripes and skill levels, I’ve identified a simple big-picture approach to building, extending, and maintaining WordPress sites that can adapt to all kinds of changes with minimal complication.
Who is the target audience for your presentation?
My presentation is meant for anyone who has a WordPress site, or develops for WordPress.
What do you hope WordCampers will get out of your session?
- An approach for combining WordPress core, themes, and plugins in a way that works as well today as it will five years from now
- When to use a plugin and when to use a theme (for both users and writers of themes and plugins)
- How to align your biggest content efforts with the best-supported parts of WordPress
- How to leave Web 1.0 hosting behind and make your site faster, more secure, and up-to-date (all while doing less work than you did before!)
How do you use WordPress?
I run my personal website on WordPress — just a simple static site and blog. It’s been running the same WordPress installation since 2005, when version 1.5 introduced such stunning new features as static pages and the “Kubrick” default theme.
I think every WordPress designer and developer should blog regularly about their passions – it’s the only way to personally identify with users’ needs.
What’s your favorite plugin?
This month I’m loving APC Object Cache, a simple little thing which dramatically improves performance of WordPress on single-server installations – especially when combined with Batcache.
What is that one thing WordPress doesn’t do that you wish it did?
I wish for an admin experience that is 100% as functional and usable on mobile touch devices as it is through a web desktop.
Link to speaker website: http://zekeweeks.com
Twitter username: @ZekeWeeks
