This talk will provide an overview of the planning and execution of taking over an existing website. Sometimes we don’t get to start a project at the beginning. This talk will show users what to expect, and how to be prepared for it. Topics will include: Executing a safe handoff, initial housekeeping, planning for improvements, staging and deployment of changes, and ongoing maintenance.
Spinning up local sites with Local by Flywheel Development
Making changes on a live server is always risky. And when things go wrong it’s not easy to diagnose the problems. You can setup a staging server for changes, but you still have to deploy files, and that takes time.
Spinning up a local environment is essential for WordPress development. And it’s also very easy to do, thanks to Local by Flywheel.
I will show you how to quickly spin up a local site. We will cover SSL, debugging, database management, and other features to help you safely build better quality WordPress sites in less time.
Building Your First Plugin – A Complete Newbie’s Guide to Creating a Plugin Development
Many times WordPress users will face a problem that can only be fixed with a few lines of code. Online tutorials will suggest that you copy and paste the code into your theme’s functions.php file, but what happens to the code if you change your theme? (Hint: it disappears)
Creating a plugin is not something to be afraid of, and can help your site immensely.
This talk will cover everything you need to know in order to create a plugin to start using on your own site. You won’t need to have any prior PHP or other coding knowledge to walk away with something you can use right away.
Which Way Does Your Duck face? Design
Do you know that if you have a picture of a duck having it face left or right can increase your conversions by 40%?
Think this sounds silly? It is but backed by research. Spend some time to learn about what a/b testing is, what things to test, testing methodology and the best tools to use for your site.
Everyone will get a handout of the very same checklist I use when A/B testing our client’s sites. One of our clients, an insurance company, increased leads by making just a small 2px change.
When you launch a website, you are guessing. Sure the guesses are educated based on experience and data, but you can maximize your ROI with good A/B testing.
Why the Open Web Matters General WordPress/Beginning User
The internet is the single most effective information sharing tool in all of history. We can build on the work and progress of others in a completely unprecedented way. The implications for the progress of humanity are both serious and exciting!
But it’s also in danger. Find out why I think open systems and the open web will steer our future or how the lack of them will ruin it.
Coopetition: Banding together with your competition to help grow your business Business Development
It’s common to view your competitors in business as barriers. However, if you shift your thinking to view your competitors as opportunities for collaboration, something unique can happen. In this talk, Tim and I share our experience from partnering with competitors in a crowded niche WordPress market, through “Coopetition”, to help us grow our business to over 7 figures annually and achieve success. In this talk we will be sharing our journey of how working together has helped explode our WordPress business. Through the world’s eyes, the people we partner with are competitors. We’ll be sharing some of the benefits of coopetition, as well as some practical ways that listeners can turn their competition into coopetition.
Financial Forecasting: pssst the secret is working backwards Business Development
This talk discusses actionable items to better run your business using our company’s financial forecasting model as an example — open sourcing what works.
The underlying foundation of this talk includes our ability to have been operating for the past three years without outside capital, small cash reserves, and almost no debt. This is something most plugin developers can relate to. In other words, you don’t need venture capital or 18 hour days to launch a successful plugin.
In this talk I will discuss:
Working backwards—and what that means
How our firm used the “free downloads metric” to monitor paid growth in year 1 of Startup
How to plan internal “hours as dollars” against code-based (Plugin dev) assets and COG expenses
How to use Cash Flow projections, rolling three months, to plan for product development cycle budgets
How to conservatively project hires of employee, # 4-6 as well as future hires #7-12.
How to budgeting marketing on a quarterly basis using sales and renewal benchmarks
How to adjust projections (free v premium) as your business matures
Why Expression is So Important Content/Strategy/Marketing
Understanding modes of Art thinking (namely Expression and Vulnerability) as a tool to achieve more fulfillment in the work we do. Measured by Connection and Action, this talk draws the line to explain why Expression (and encouragement of that expression) is so important.