Presented by Luke Woodward in Makers.

Speaker: Luke Woodward

Setting up a local development environment can be a challenge.

There are many different server set-ups out there. When developing locally, it can be important to work with an environment that is as close to the final server as possible. If you don’t, little unforeseen bugs can creep into your code and cause problems on the live site.

Enter Vagrant, an incredibly flexible local development environment that you can customize to your needs and more closely match your environment to your code’s final resting place. Why Vagrant over other options? Let’s talk about it!

Presented in Community/Contributor Day.

Presented by Drew Jaynes in Community/Contributor Day.

Presented by Matthew Boynes in Do-ers.

Speaker: Matthew Boynes

In this session, we’re going to talk about just how bad WordPress search is.

After having a good cry, we’ll collect ourselves and do something about it. In two minutes and with zero code, we’re going to give WordPress an incredible search experience using Elasticsearch, an open-source cloud-loving search engine.

Get ready to explore all the search goodness we’ve wanted for years: sorting by relevance, keyword synonyms, “did you mean?”, faceted search, and more. Amazement guaranteed.

Presented by Jeremy Green in Makers.

Speaker: Jeremy Green

Until recently, I’ve always used FTP to upload files to the server. And my attempt at version control included lots of dated folders. Then I got introduced to version control with Git.

Git has completely changed the way I work with WordPress. Now I have version control on every project I start. Using Git also makes deployment much simpler and cleaner, using applications to push changes to the live site instead of through FTP.

I will explain why version control is important, how to get started with Git, my workflow with Git and WordPress, and deployment techniques.

Presented by Drew Jaynes, Sarah Pressler in Community/Contributor Day.

Presented by Sarah Pressler in Do-ers.

Speaker: Sarah Pressler

WordPress is not just for Programmers, Developers, Designers or Bloggers.

The WordPress economy affords a wide range of professional career tracks. From bloggers to CEO’s, WordPress offers a very diverse array of options for the budding or seasoned professional. Whether you are new to the WordPress community or a seasoned core contributor, join us for a presentation regarding the very diverse professional opportunities that exist within the WordPress community.

In this session, we will explore different professional skill sets that are utilized by freelancers, small agencies and large WordPress-centric companies. We will also discuss how to identify and leverage WordPress community assets for personal and professional growth. At the end of the session, I would like to open the floor to hear stories from the audience of people who have built non-technical careers within the WordPress community.

Presented by Julie Kuehl in Do-ers.

Speaker: Julie Kuehl

Have you been using WordPress long enough that you want to look under the hood? Make some tweaks? Own your site like a boss? Good luck!

While there are a ton of resources out there that provide tutorials, examples, and other great information, wading through it all can be like a space battle. They come at you from all directions, each with it’s own path, and each gunning for you (and perhaps your money). This session is intended for those WordPress users without formal developer education but are curious about development and not afraid of code.

Presented by Jaffe Worley in Makers.

Speaker: Jaffe Worley

This session will serve as a primer on the WordPress Walker Class. What it is, how it works and why you should be using it.

After covering the basics, Jaffe will put practice in motion with a demonstration of how to leverage the Walker Class to add items to WordPress menus, change the way they work, and more.

Presented by Alex King, Rich Staats, Natalie MacLees, Grant Landram, Walter Breakell in Makers.

Moderator: Alex King
Panelists: Rich Staats, Grant Landram, Walter Breakell, Natalie MacLees

This session brings together a fantastic group of panelists to discuss how an increasing focus on UX — or user experience — is driving WordPress forward as a platform.

Each of the panelists brings to the table a unique perspective on the best approaches for user experience, whether that be from the point of view of users, content managers, theme or plugin creators, even WordPress core.

Presented by David Hayes in Do-ers.

Speaker: David Hayes

We’ll go over the basics of WordPress theme functionality and programming including:

• The Template Hierarchy
• The Loop
• Hooks, filters, and functions

By the end, you’ll have a much better grasp of what your theme is doing and a strong basis to help a developer-type help you if you ever get in over your head.

Presented by Jonathan Johnson in Makers.

Speaker: Jonathan Johnson

Moving code into a live environment comes with its share of stresses, and tends to begin to look like a big red button that you should press as little as possible and avoid if at all possible.

Jonathan will present Crowd Favorite’s method for moving code into production in a way that minimizes these stresses using automation and open source tools.

He’ll outline the downfalls of common deployment strategies like FTP, and contrast it with a how-to example using Capistrano and Crowd Favorite’s WordPress-specific Capistrano plugin, ‘capistrano-wp’.

Presented by Mark Carrara in Do-ers.

Speaker: Mark Carrara

Once you have decided to create a WordPress site you have to decide how to build it.

What to do next can become quite confusing for a new user. Do you use the default theme? How about a free theme from the WP Repository? What is so special about premium themes? Exactly what is a theme anyway? Where do parent-child themes fit into this discussion. Now don’t forget frameworks.

In this sessions we’ll cover all of the above, and hopefully, shed some light on the best approach to take to themes for your WordPress site.

Presented by Ben Lobaugh in Makers.

Speaker: Ben Lobaugh

Your plugin is broken; do you know why? In this session, Ben will show you some simple principles to help you integrate unit testing in your plugins that will help you find and eliminate bugs before they happen.

Presented by Christoph Trappe in Do-ers.

Speaker: Christoph Trappe

At United Way in Cedar Rapids, we try to build community awareness around specific topics. While our main areas (income, health, education and volunteering) remain the same, there are many sub-topics that we want to highlight throughout the year.

To accomplish this we create topical homepages for different time periods.

For example, when we have an community event on Adverse Childhood Experiences we highlight this topic on the homepage. At the beginning of the legislative session we created a video that highlighted how we can help our families that do not earn enough to meet basic needs.

This talk will walk you through how to leverage topical homepages to bring focus to your periodic initiatives.

Presented by Christian Toto in Do-ers.

Speaker: Christian Toto

Bloggers are the new journalists, so why is it that too many don’t mimic the best tactics from the Fourth Estate?

Christian has more than a decade of experience in traditional print journalism, but he’s made the jump to the web in both his professional life and as a blogger.

In this session, he’ll offer practical tips on topics like validating sources, correcting errors, being transparent and providing trustworthy information to your blog’s readers.

Presented by Jennifer M. Dodd in Makers.

Speaker: Jennifer M. Dodd

WordPress includes Backbone.js, a lightweight framework useful for separating data and logic from the DOM.

In this session, we’ll explore creating object-based models for better handling of WordPress post and user data in Backbone. We’ll also look at customizing views to represent the displayed data via templates and view options, including a step-by-step tutorial using Backbone to power WordPress Widgets.