Sessions

Keynote Speaker

Presented by Syed Balkhi in Everyone.

Content Marketing Workshop: How to Plan, Optimize, and Analyze Your Efforts

Presented by Jenny Munn in Everyone.

You may love your blog posts and WordPress website content, but does anyone else? How do you know what’s working and what’s not? If your content marketing plan (or lack thereof) could benefit from a strategy planning overview, then this session will help you understand what kind of content your market is searching for, how to make it findable and how to track what’s working and what’s not.

View slides from this session:
http://www.slideshare.net/jennymunn/content-workshop-word-camp-2014

Track—Everyone
Friday—2:00 Subject to change

Accepting payments on your WordPress site

Presented by Naomi C. Bush in Everyone.

“Oh that’s easy — just use PayPal.” Well, PayPal isn’t the only kid on the block any more (or even the easiest) and you just may be losing money. Using my experience from the past two years working with and building solutions for modern payment processors, I’ll help you navigate the modern payment systems to choose what makes sense for your business.

Track—Everyone
Friday—11:00 Subject to change

All the stuff we wish we’d known about when we started developing for WordPress

Presented by Adam Williams in WP Professionals.

As a successful software development company that loves the WordPress platform, we know there can be a learning curve involved when developing for WordPress. If you are a beginner or intermediate developer, in this session, we’d like to put our arm around your shoulder and walk you through a few of the biggest WordPress tips, features, and tricks we wish we’d known more about when we started developing on the platform. We’ll cover topics like custom post types, user logins, WordPress multisite, WordPress as a CMS, and eCommerce. We’ll also be sure to have time for some Q&A at the end so you can ask your questions, too. If you’d like the WordPress development campus tour from upperclassmen, be sure to attend this session!

Track—Everyone
Friday—4:00 Subject to change

Hardcore URL Routing in WordPress

Presented by Mike Schinkel in Geek Developer.

One of the more frustrating aspects of WordPress if being able to design your URLs to work exactly as you want them to. WordPress has a “rewrite” system that is powerful but is hard to learn and even when learned there are many URL formats WordPress will simply refuse to allow you to implement.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. The talk will show you a technique to allow you to design your site’s URLs to work exactly like you want them to work. And it does it using just one hook in WordPress and with a few edge case exceptions you can easily manage, WordPress behaves exactly as if WordPress rewrote the URL for you.

FOR: WordPress Plugin Developers who build sites or
plugins for clients or your company and who are
COMFORTABLE with PHP!

PRE-REQUISITES:
– Experience with building sites in WordPress and developing with PHP

Track—Geek Developer
Saturday—2:00 Subject to change

Anatomy of a WordPress CSS File

Presented by Charly McCracken in Designer.

WordPress is an extremely powerful content management system, but there will always be instances where customizing your stylesheet to meet the needs and/or requirements of the designer, developer or client will make your blog or website more appealing. This is where CSS comes into play. In order to make edits you first must understand the anatomy of the stylesheet. This workshop will provide you an overview of each component and how it outputs in the browser so that you can easily tackle the task of modifying your WordPress stylesheet using CSS.

View slides from this session:
http://www.slideshare.net/Charlythepearl/the-anatomy-of-a-wordpress-file

Track—Designer
Saturday—10:00 Subject to change

Cain & Obenland In The Morning

Presented by Konstantin Obenland, Michael Cain in Everyone.

Join Konstantin Obenland and Michael Cain for a whimsical trip down Advanced Theming Lane, where they’ll shed light on some of the dastardly mishaps in Themeland and how they fight them with their Swords of Best Practices. Structured like a TV morning show!

Track—Everyone
Friday—10:00 Subject to change

Comfortable Under the Hood – WordPress Files and Databases

Presented by Judi Knight in Beginner Developer.

After this presentation you will have first hand knowledge of the WordPress file structure. You will know what each file does, which to keep your hands off and all about the files that you will be using on a day to day basis. We will also go over the Database, show how you can create a new one and how it is connected to your WordPress site.

Follow along with the presentation at http://newtricksacademy.com/getting started

Track—Beginner Developer
Saturday—9:00 Subject to change

Creating Systems in Your Business: Why it’s Critical to Your Success

Presented by Desiree Scales in Everyone.

If you’re still tracking your leads, customers and sales via spreadsheet and paper, this session is for you. Learn how to put a system in your business and connect it to your WordPress site and get ready to take off! We’ll show you why it’s critical to have a system in place to ensure your success and give you the tools to do it in less time.

Track—Everyone
Friday—10:00 Subject to change

Custom Post Types or Choose Your Own Adventure

Presented by Evan Mullins in Beginner Developer.

WordPress is for more than just blogging. Create and manage more types of content, like a portfolio, events, testimonials, images, people, cats anything you can think of you’d like to have a website about. Learn how to add content types like they were built in.

Track—Beginner Developer
Friday—15:00 Subject to change

Designing in the browser

Presented by Andrew Searles in Designer.

There have been many industry leaders talking about their ideas for how web design is changing. Most of the talks center around the idea of getting out of Photoshop and designing in the browser. Over the last year, I’ve made a considerable effort to put this into practice. As of right now, I’ve designed 8 websites fully in browser. There’s been lots of problems, but there’s been even more rewards. Hopefully, I can show you some of the pros and cons of designing in the browser as well as giving you some tips that I’ve learned along the way.

Track—Designer
Saturday—1:00 Subject to change

How to Build a Following Around Your Favorite TV Show or Movie

Presented by Rosemary Jean-Louis in Everyone.

Rosemary Jean-Louis, Georgia Public Broadcasting’s Desperate for Downton blogger, shares how she turned her passion for the show into the network’s number one blog and a fan destination to live chat, exchange information and make friends.

Slides

Track—Everyone
Friday—3:00 Subject to change

Finding the perfect themes and plugins

Presented by Bryan Petty in Beginner.

With over 30,000 plugins and over 5,000 themes out there in the wild west of the Internet, it can be an intimidating job finding just the right ones for your WordPress sites. In this presentation, we’ll cover all of the best techniques for finding quality plugins and themes that you can trust, and what you can to do to avoid messy upgrades.

Track—Very Beginner
Saturday—1:00 Subject to change

Food Blogging: Steps and Tips for Success

Presented by Renee Dobbs in Everyone.

There is more to having a successful food blog than sharing a recipe. Learn key factors in what will put your blog above the rest including photography, writing, social media, community, best practices, working with brands, and putting it all together with WordPress.

View slides from this session:
http://www.slideshare.net/reneedobbsfb/food-blogging-32364073

Track—Everyone
Friday—2:00 Subject to change

Genesis Extender

Presented by Melanie. G. Adcock in Beginner Developer.

Genesis has long been know as the best developer framework. But how about everyone else? By using Genesis Extender Plugin you can quickly and easily create Custom Widget/Content Areas with no coding necessary. The built-in CSS builder tool allows you to see your changes live before you make them.

Track—Beginner Developer
Saturday—2:00 Subject to change

Get Started in Professional WordPress Design & Development

Presented by Cliff Seal in WP Professionals.

Ready to start charging for building sites in WordPress? Welcome! WordPress has a great community, and there are endless resources available to you (both free and paid). You’ll be making clients happy in no time.

In my five years of WordPress development, I’ve made my share of mistakes, and fixed my share of other developers’ mistakes as well.

In this session, I’ll share tips on becoming a better WordPress consultant, and on empowering clients with WordPress. Bad or lazy development practices set your clients up for failure, because other developers have to start over when they inherit your work—or, worse: the client’s site breaks and you’re not around to fix it anymore. You can do better.

This session is for you if:

  • You know know HTML/CSS, are somewhat proficient in PHP and JavaScript.
  • Almost all of your projects start with existing themes.
  • Almost all functionality in your projects come from existing plugins.
  • You’re working with budgets under $10,000.

Let’s build a better web together!

View slides from this session:
http://www.slideshare.net/cliffseal/gswdd

Track—Everyone
Friday—2:00 Subject to change

Getting Sassy with SASS

Presented by Suzette Franck in Geek Developer.

If you are a theme developer, using SASS or Syntactically Awesome Stylesheets is a time saving way to write your code and it is easy to learn once you are familiar with CSS. In this session, you will learn how to harness the power of variables, nesting, and mixins and take advantage of everything that SASS has to offer to write awesome code. In order to get the most from this session, you must have a good understanding of HTML and CSS.

Track—Geek Developer
Saturday—9:00 Subject to change

Go Far Together – Tips from six years

Presented by Cory Miller in WP Professionals.

Learn tips and techniques for how (and when) to hire your hire your first employee, along with thoughts on how to grow in a healthy way.

View slides from this session:
http://www.slideshare.net/mobile/corymiller303/wordcamp-atlanta-go-far-together

Track—Everyone
Friday—10:00 Subject to change

Information architecture has everything to do with your theme

Presented by Steven Slack in Designer.

If you are tasked with putting together a WordPress theme for a client organization or business the theme you select is very important. Perhaps your first inclination is to choose a theme that looks great or let your client choose a theme that they are happy with. This practice however can have negative repercussions for your client. In this talk we will discuss how to appropriately choose a theme or build a theme that supports your clients goals. Using information architecture we can better select themes or build new ones.

View slides from this session:
http://www.slideshare.net/StevenSlack/information-architecture-has-everything-to-do-with-your-theme

Track—Designer
Saturday—9:00 Subject to change

How to create a child theme and why you must do it

Presented by Brian Colin in Designer.

If you’ve ever used an existing theme to build your site only to find your styling disappear after an update, this is the session for you. I will explain what a child theme is and how to easily implement them on every site you create. If you’re not using child themes now is the time to start.

Track—Designer
Saturday—11:00 Subject to change

How to Monetize WordPress with AdSense

Presented by Sean Malseed in Everyone.

In this session, I will demystify how to monetize your traffic by using Google Adsense. I’ll start by going over the requirements, and some common reasons for rejection with solutions – we have all heard horror stories of publishers being declined for Adsense without knowing why. Then, we’ll get into how to optimize your content for Adsense, how to get quality ads, and how to research your competitors’ Adsense strategy to gain actionable, profitable intelligence.

Take-aways:

  • How to get accepted by Google for Adsense
  • Optimize your Adsense through Google Analytics
  • WordPress plugins to deliver Adsense to your readers
  • What MFA (Made for Adsense) is, and why it doesn’t work
  • How to see what Adsense ads competing blogs are showing

Track—Everyone
Friday—1:00 Subject to change

How to run promotional campaigns and build your list using WordPress

Presented by Wade Kwon in Everyone.

How do you grow site traffic by a factor of eight for an upcoming event? How do you grow a new mailing list so fast that you’ll save years in the process?

Blogging expert Wade Kwon shares his secrets on using WordPress to run promotional campaigns and build email lists quickly and profitably. His digital conference Y’all Connect brought in new fans and attendees through his targeted online drive.

View slides from this session:
http://www.slideshare.net/YippeeWK/preso-promo-campaign-wp

Track—Everyone
Friday—4:00 Subject to change

Introduction to self-hosting WordPress

Presented by Carel Bekker in Beginner Developer.

Just starting with WordPress and want to learn how to install WordPress on your own hosting account? We will cover all the basics of self-hosted WordPress, including one-click installations and the difference between wordpress.com and a self-hosted WordPress installation.

View slides from this session:
http://www.slideshare.net/CarelBekker/self-hosted-word-press-carel-bekker-clickhost-at-wordcamp-atlanta-2014

Track—Beginner Developer
Saturday—10:00 Subject to change

Keyword Clinic – How to get your WordPress website found on Google

Presented by Jenny Munn in Everyone.

The foundation of SEO (search engine optimization) is all about keywords (and a rockin’ WordPress website of course). Come to this keyword research clinic and learn how to get more traffic, leads, and sales for your business by using the language of your customers.

View slides from this session:
http://www.slideshare.net/jennymunn/keyword-research-word-camp-2014-updated

Track—Everyone
Friday—11:00 Subject to change

Large Multisite Networks: Our experiences in Enterprise

Presented by Sam Hotchkiss in WP Professionals.

Over the past few years, my company has built two large (500+ site) multisite networks for companies in the financial services industry, and consulted on a number of high-traffic multisite installs. In this talk, I’ll go over the issues that we faced and the lessons that we learned.

Track—Everyone
Friday—3:00 Subject to change

Launch your WordPress site in one hour

Presented by Bret Phillips in Beginner.

This presentation is designed to walk users through taking a fresh WordPress installation into a fully functioning website.

It also assumes that the user(me in this case) has all of the content they need ready before hand.

I would like to cover things such as initial settings to tweak, basic customization to Twenty Twelve theme, setting up essential pages(about, contact), a contact form, the blog, menus, widgets, and JetPack.

Track—Very Beginner
Saturday—3:00 Subject to change

Migrating a website with BackupBuddy

Presented by Aaron K. Altman in Beginner.

When I first started doing web design, it didn’t even cross my mind that I might have to move a website from one domain to another. I quickly found out that migrating a website is the standard and not the exception.

Ideally, the best way to begin is by starting the site on the domain where it will end up. When that doesn’t happen, you have to migrate the site from one domain to another. Even if you start the site on a subdirectory, you will still have to move it.

I will show people how to:

  1. Create a backup
  2. Access FTP
  3. Create new database and user
  4.  Move website from one domain to another
  5.  Problems that exist when this happens, and possible ways to fix them.
    • Links
    •  Images

Track—Very Beginner
Saturday—10:00 Subject to change

Modernizing your wordpress workflow with Grunt & Bower

Presented by Alan Crissey in Geek Developer.

There are a ton of new tools that can help us be more productive and can make our projects more fun. Using Bower to keep our plugins up to date and Grunt for task management, we can spend more time on what’s important – building great websites and apps.

We’ll cover:

  • not being afraid of the Terminal
  •  setting up project plugins in Bower
  • setting up tasks in Grunt that will process our CSS, minify and concatenate our JavaScript, optimize images, and refresh our browser instantly

Track—Geek Developer
Saturday—10:00 Subject to change

Nginx, Varnish and Memcache – How to make WordPress fast

Presented by Evan Volgas in Geek Developer.

This presentation will explain three important technologies that you can use to make WordPress fast. We’ll cover how to configure these technologies to work together by actually setting them up on a virtual private server. Likewise, we’ll discuss some of the implications of using these technologies (memcache especially) and when you might want to choose a different technology for making your WordPress websites run fast.

Track—Geek Developer
Saturday—11:00 Subject to change

Ninja Forms: A case study of the freemium plugin model

Presented by James Laws in Everyone.

There are many different options, or models, for selling premium plugins: one-time purchases, subscriptions, extensions, etc. If you are thinking about selling a plugin for profit, and you should, you’ll have to decide which of these pricing models is right for you. This session will walk through many of the lessons learned from the life of the Ninja Forms plugin, which follows the so-called “freemium” model. Hopefully, this session will leave you with the right sorts of questions to ask, and plenty of the pitfalls to avoid, when choosing to sell a WordPress plugin for profit.

Track—Everyone
Friday—1:00 Subject to change

Using Your Website to Engage, Persuade & Sell

Presented by Tom Tortorici in Everyone.

SEO helps your WordPress website get noticed, but search engines don’t make purchase decisions; humans do. By understanding how to appeal to the eye, the mind and the heart, we can use what we know about our audience to draw them in, make a solid connection, and overcome resistance. And with plenty of website-makeover examples, we’ll learn how to tap into both the logical and emotional aspects of purchase behavior. By taking off our “seller’s hat” and putting on our “buyer’s hat,” anyone involved with creating websites will discover what really works for online visitors. You’ll walk out with smart marketing and website ideas that you can put to work right away.

Track—Everyone
Friday—10:00 Subject to change

Powering Professional Services Growth

Presented by Joellyn ‘Joey’ Sargent in WP Professionals.

A polished online presence is critical for professional services businesses. Learn why WordPress is an ideal tool to build your brand, establish credibility and win more clients.

We’ll cover the must-have’s for your site as well as tips and tricks to make an impression on prospective clients, setting your business apart.

Whether you’re a solopreneur or part of a growing firm, you’ll discover valuable ideas to help build your business. This session is perfect for anyone providing professional services, including Consultants, CPAs, Attorneys, Financial Planners, and Freelance service providers.

View slides from this session:
http://www.slideshare.net/brandsprout/word-camp2014-powering-professional-services-growth

Track—Everyone
Friday—1:00 Subject to change

Rapid Development with WordPress

Presented by Josh Mallard in Geek Developer.

In an agency setting, completing projects with the highest quality possible at the fastest pace possible will always be the primary demand placed on the developer.

How do we create a rapid workflow while focusing on:

  • WordPress coding standards
  • Easy maintenance by agency partners and end users
  • Future proof development

Track—Geek-Developer
Saturday—3:00 Subject to change

Rockin’ local development with Vagrant

Presented by Russell Fair in Geek Developer.

Learn about Vagrant, a local development tool that’s way better than MAMP or WAMP, standardizes environmental variables and will make you a better developer (I promise).

Track—Geek Developer
Saturday—1:00 Subject to change

7 habits of highly effective WordPress developers

Presented by Micah Wood in Everyone.

If you are just learning how to code, or are a seasoned developer, there are some important habits that will serve you well during your WordPress development career. Beyond the high-level approach of Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, this presentation will walk you through 7 practical things you can do to become a better and more effective WordPress developer. The concepts presented will be accompanied with action steps and follow up resources so you can start becoming a better developer right away.

Track—Everyone
Friday—4:00 Subject to change

Social Media Uses for WordPress Sites

Presented by Jake Aull in Everyone.

Social media continues to grow in usage, as well as confusion. Today it influences search engine optimization more than ever, and there are more ways to integrate it with WordPress than ever before. What social channels do (or don’t) apply to your site and business? And which plugins should you use? Come out of this session with confidence in your approaches to social media and ties to WordPress. We’ll unravel the big ball of twine.

View slides from this session:
http://www.slideshare.net/JakeAull/social-media-uses-for-wordpress-sites

Track—Everyone
Saturday—16:00 Subject to change

The Customizer

Presented by Konstantin Obenland in Designer.

The Customizer has been around since WordPress 3.4, yet it is one of the most unknown and under appreciated features around. We will start out by learning what the Customizer is, from where users can access it, and why it is so awesome. Then we’ll proceed to theme mods, the Customizer API, how to integrate it in your themes and plugins, and dive into how you can extend existing functionality. Finally I’ll cover some tutorials and example implementations, what default themes do with it, and how _s encourages its use.

Track—Designer
Saturday—2:00 Subject to change

The smarter you get the less money you make. Why?

Presented by Jason Swenk in Everyone.

One of the most common debate in the website world is should I charge by the hour or by the project. What if I told you that you could work less and make more money rather than getting more efficient and making less. I will show you what I did on every project I would scope as well the four reasons on why not to bill by the hour.

Track—Everyone
Friday—2:00 Subject to change

The WP Way

Presented by Aaron Reimann in Beginner Developer.

We all run into themes that aren’t written well, sometimes ones that have hard-coded URLs, or just don’t even work at all. There will be teaching some WP standards on theme creation.

Track—Beginner Developer
Saturday—11:00 Subject to change

Tweaks & Bling: Making your DIY website shine

Presented by Lisa Richardson in Beginner.

What separates an amateur website from a professional one when they’re on the same platform? Details. Selecting your new WordPress theme is only the beginning. It takes planning and the right combination of images and plugins to present the best 24/7 face for your business. Learn the anatomy of your site, how to choose the right images, when Fiverr is (and is NOT) your friend, and what plugins will make your new site both secure AND sexy.

Track—Very Beginner
Saturday—11:00 Subject to change

Unleash your design potential with CSS for beginners

Presented by Michael Earley in Beginner.

Learning how to write and edit Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) can open a whole new realm of possibilities for custom design of a WordPress website. CSS can be simple, but if you haven’t had a proper introduction to the basics, it can seem anything but that. My presentation will go over the basics of CSS and how to implement CSS changes on a WordPress site using Firebug and a basic text editing program. Being able to make simple CSS changes will empower you to make the necessary style changes (such as changing font colors/sizes, background styling, padding etc.) without having to rely user options to do so.

Track—Very Beginner
Saturday—9:00 Subject to change

Understanding My Site’s SEO: SEO Essentials & Helpful Tools

Presented by Travis Smith in Everyone.

This seminar, led by Travis Smith will investigate essential SEO concepts for your site. Building on the basics of the essential meta tags and content, we will investigate how a site’s content organization & crafting determines good SEO. Then using real life WordPress examples, we will demonstrate helpful webmaster tools to analyze your site to determine improvement opportunities.

Track—Everyone
Friday—3:00 Subject to change

Video SEO 101

Presented by Scott Williford in Everyone.

Creating video is just the beginning. Now you need to drive views and make sure the search engines know where the videos are.

85% of the videos on web pages are not found by search engines.

Embedding videos from YouTube does not mean Google sees the video on your web page.

This session will cover the best practices with examples and case studies of successful Video SEO campaigns.

Track—Everyone
Friday—1:00 Subject to change

Web Development Trends for 2014

Presented by David Laietta in WP Professionals.

While these aren’t new ideas, they are still new enough that implementation hasn’t hit saturation yet. We’ll be covering some of the more popular topics such as flat design and single page sites, as well as newer development ideas, including mobile-first, content-first and device-agnostic development. Other topics such as designing in the browser and methods to do so will also be discussed.

Track—Everyone
Friday—11:00 Subject to change

WordPress Business Toolkit

Presented by Marna Friedman in Everyone.

As you continue to grow your WordPress business, you need to make sure all the t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted. All those details require specific tools. Learn how to use WordPress for invoicing, proposals, CRM, and more to manage your business.

View slides from this session:
https://2014.atlanta.wordcamp.org/files/2014/01/WordCamp-Atlanta.pdf

Track—Everyone
Friday—11:00 Subject to change

WordPress Navigation in Responsive Design

Presented by Erick Arbé in Beginner Developer.

This presentation covers the many options of how to format navigation when building a responsive site. It touches on user experience as it relates to your navigation and site architecture. We’ll be going over several ways to modify your theme’s menu to optimize it for different navigation patterns as well as the CSS and JS used to make each one work. Additionally, we’ll cover the use of hover and touch properties and a walk-through of live examples.

View slides from this session:
http://slides.erickar.be/

Track—Beginner Developer
Saturday—1:00 Subject to change

WordPress Security – It’s all about the basics

Presented by Tony Perez in Beginner.

The key to website security is awareness, that’s what I hope to achieve at this talk. Getting down to the basics and sharing insight that very few can share through the experiences we have ascertained at Sucuri. Would like to share the latest threats, trends, and of course some good hardening takeaways and recommendations.

Track—Very Beginner
Saturday—2:00 Subject to change

Smart Design: icon fonts, svg, & the moblie influence

Presented by Sara Cannon in Designer.

Fast, simple, SMART. Mobile devices have forever changed the way we interact with content. Now we have to consider many things such as HiDPI graphics, responsive design, speed, UI/UX patterns, touch target sizes, gestures, and more. All while not losing track of what’s important: Content.

We’re going to discuss the influence of mobile on design trends and learn implementation techniques of smart design such as icon fonts, svg, and other helpful tips.

Track—Designer
Saturday—3:00 Subject to change