Presented by Tony Cosentino in Track 1.

We all know how to build a WordPress website right?
Wrong.

I recently reviewed 30 websites in 30 days and it was a journey of discovery. I saw the good, the bad, the ugly and a site with over 100 plugins. In my presentation, I’m going to tell you the 10 main problems that I saw in all these websites. 10 issues to avoid. 10 fixes to fix.

Perfect for DIY WordPressers, Newbies and even old timers. This presentation will give you a checklist to ensure your site and your client’s sites are everything they can be and more.

Presented by Rua Haszard Morris in Track 2.

A brief dive into the component library built into WordPress / Gutenberg. I’ll use a little demo plugin to demonstrate how useful these components are, and how you can use them to build the perfect authoring interface for your custom content, and more. 

I’ll present a demo focusing on audio/music examples, to illustrate the variety of things you can do in WordPress. For example, a “page soundtrack” block for adding dynamic background audio to your posts.

Presented by Katie Tilden in Track 1.

The idea of starting and managing a website can be truly terrifying for many business owners and writers, me included. 

I don’t consider myself to be technically savvy at all. But, I’ve been working with content management systems since 2002, from the pretty ordinary to the amazing. I like to think I know a little about content management systems and how to add and edit content. The technical stuff, I leave for the experts. 

All I want to do in a CMS is design a website that looks and works well and where I can add and edit content. WordPress is one tool that has let me do all this in a safe and secure environment. 

WordPress, in both .com and .org, has enabled me to play happily in my own little sandpit, giving me enough space to explore safely, but without kicking up too much sand and making a complete mess of my sandpit. 

I want to share my experience of WordPress, the support and resources and how it too can be used by business owners, bloggers and writers, who aren’t IT experts or website developers, to build their business. And how it can be lots of fun along the way. 

Presented by Wil Brown in Track 1.

You can’t run a business using WordPress if you don’t have a handle on generating qualified leads.
In this talk, I’ll show you how to..

• Select and research your ideal client or niche
• Educate prospects at different steps in the sales funnel
• When to use Google, Facebook and LinkedIn ads in your funnel
• Set up landing pages with WordPress for your funnel prospects
• Use a High-Value Content Offer to build trust and book a free discovery session
• Ask the proper questions upfront to qualify prospects
• Running a discovery session
• Pitch a value-based proposal (not hourly or fixed)
• Be confident in setting your $20k+ price-point
• What to include in a proposal
• Payment terms & getting paid

Presented by Stephen Rees-Carter in Track 2.

“What could I have done to avoid being hacked?” is a question you’ll often hear after a site is hacked. In some cases the answer is complicated, but a lot of the time it’s relatively simple and there are many checklists and guides online outlining the ways sites can be hacked, plus how to secure them. However, a lot of people learn better from seeing and doing than reading (often boring) checklists. So rather than look at checklists on slides for 30 minutes, we’re going to hack into WordPress instead!

We will target a vulnerable installation of WordPress and attack the usual weaknesses to compromise the site. After every attack we perform, we will make the required changes to block the attack, and then attempt to compromise the site again, hopefully unsuccessfully this time! The goal is to think like a hacker, learning what types of vulnerabilities exist and how they are exploited, so we can better protect our sites and block hackers before they get in. By the end of the talk, we should have a secure site and an incredibly frustrated hacker.

Presented by Paul Luxford in Track 1.

Have you ever wondered what your website could do for you, other than just being a pretty brochure online? In this talk, discover 10 things that your website could do that you may not have thought was possible.

Presented by Ryan Kienstra in Track 2.

If you already know JavaScript, but don’t have much React experience, you’ll learn what you need get started. You’ll then be able to develop your own blocks and extend Gutenberg.

You’ll see the most important parts of ES6 and JSX to know. Also, you’ll learn the basics of how React works, see a basic build setup, and learn about ES6 modules.

Without getting caught in the details, you’ll see what’s required to start developing in the new paradigm for WordPress. With this, you can build blocks, and you’ll know where to get the rest of the experience you’ll need.

Presented in Hallway Track.

Stephen Rees-Carter says:

Can I please book a “Lock Picking” session for Saturday, right after my talk on Security?

For more details, follow up with the proposal here.

Presented in Hallway Track.

Toni Livesey has offered to have a small round table discussion for people interested in WooCommerce / eCommerce. 

For more details, follow up with the proposal here.

Presented by Korryn Haines in Track 1.

Most business owners are using WordPress websites but have no idea of its potential power. More than a mere vessel where you display what you do to the online world, a well planned and set out WordPress site can help you put business processes in place that will save you tonnes of wasted time on admin. I’ve seen it time and time again. As a Virtual Assistant, I constantly refer clients to website developers and become heavily involved in the process, helping them set up back of house systems to make their business life that little bit smoother.

In this presentation you’ll learn:

• The 4 zones of power that you must have in your business processes
• How to use WordPress to strengthen your business admin
• The essential WordPress challenges clients are outsourcing to a VA
• How to link your systems to processes to make your business run smoothly

Presented by Cameron Jones in Track 2.

Have you ever wanted to build your own plugin? Or maybe you’re just curious as to how plugins work? We’ll take a look at some popular plugins, learn the WordPress hook system, then walk through building your first custom WordPress plugin from scratch. 

Presented by Alex Bishop in Track 2.

The block revolution is undoubtedly here, but not everyone has been able to embrace it yet. If you’ve never used ReactJS before it may seem intimidating, or at the very least time consuming to go all-in on the new editor and create custom blocks for every situation you come across.

• ⏰ Maybe you have a tight deadline for a project but you just can’t seem to find the right existing block to do the job?
• 👴🏻 Perhaps you have some legacy sites from ‘before’ where you built out custom meta data with ACF?
• 🏗 Maybe you (like myself) have been creating completely custom sites using ACF Flexible Content and are worried at the idea of the classic interface going away?

Gather round comrades and fear not, this talk is for you.

All are welcome in the Block revolution, and thanks to Advanced Custom Fields’ “ACF Blocks” feature we can quickly and easily get our own custom blocks running in the new editor, with a few lines of code and some basic templating.

Beyond the basics, we’ll look at using the idea of a block or component on the server side, and discuss some patterns for writing and organising our code to take maximum advantage of this new paradigm using modern PHP.

Whatever your reasons for not being able to ‘learn javascript deeply’ yet are, it doesn’t mean that this bright new future of block-based editing isn’t for you.

This talk gets progressively more technical – there should be something for all levels of experience including some minimal-code solutions, however later sections assume familiarity with WordPress concepts like Plugins, Themes and core WordPress APIs along with modern PHP practices and tooling.

Presented by Toni Livesey in Track 1.

The story behind my presentation was a call for help via an email by someone who was having trouble with the stock management setup in a WooCommerce shop. My presentation is for beginners of WooCommerce – the importance of setting up stock management in their WooCommerce Shops & the different ways to do this and will include setting up stock quantity control for individual products and variations of their products such as sizes, shapes, colours etc.

I will briefly touch on the different types of items that can benefit from stock/inventory control within their WooCommerce website and integrating POS systems for stock management.

Presented in Hallway Track.

DeveloperWil has offered to run a Gravity Forms support session in the Hallway Track.

Happy to help people set up Gravity Forms, hook into the API or general “How to” questions.

For more details, follow up with the proposal here.

Presented by Kate Toon in Track 1.

We all know creating engaging content is THE number one way to build trust and authority for any brand. Writing awesome blogs establishes you as a credible expert, helps you build a steady flow of WordPress clients and gives you the opportunity to educate and help your customers.
But most blogs written these days need some serious love. With as many 10 million blog posts are published a day, it’s vital your content is rubbed and scrubbed into perfect shape. In my presentation, I’ll show you to build your brand and boost your website’s profile with some seriously shareable content.

In this talk I’ll cover:

• Understanding long tail keywords and searcher intent
• Featured snippets and scoring position zero
• Formatting, length and readability
• Controversy, objectivity and legality
• Writing for humans
• Optimising for the Google Beast
• The importance of E-A-T
• Capitalising on conversational search

Presented by Samuel Levy in Track 2.

In the past 15 years the technology of the web has evolved, enabling exciting new techniques and tools for web developers. WordPress has evolved with it, but some of the newer and more exciting tools are still out of reach… or are they?

This is a developer focused talk about bringing newer technologies into WordPress development through the use (and abuse) of plugins and themes.

Presented by Ingrid Moyle in Track 1.

This presentation is the stuff of nightmares for any WordPress website owner. On the 19th March 2019, 80% of all Ingrid’s website clients from the previous 5 years were hacked and all the backups deleted, even though all the standard security precautions had been taken and paid security plugins were operational.

This session will explore why WordPress sites get hacked, how you know you have been hacked, what are the implications of a hack, and what are some of your options to fix your hacked site. It will also look at both simple and more complex solutions to reduce your risk to your WordPress website so you never face a similar night of horror. 

Presented by Phillip Johnson in Track 2.

In 2018 Splendour in the grass approached Bolster to rebuild their website for 2019. Our approach was to create a headless WordPress instance that used GatsbyJS to compile down to a hybrid static website.

This talk will look at the benefits and challenges of using headless WordPress with ReactJS + GatsbyJS. We will dive into 3 areas of the site development, frontend development, backend development and the end user.

Presented by Tremayne Pendragon in Track 1.

I’ll take you through 5 core things that I wish I knew when I start to develop on WordPress with examples and demos.

Starting my development life in high school, I have had to teach myself a lot of things, from how do I convince myself and the client that I can do their project, to how to build a site on budget within the scope the client has requested.

One of my main points that I would touch on and will spend a bit of time on is imposter syndrome as it was something that I didn’t realise I had until I went to a WordCamp, and had to work a lot at trying to break out of it.

Presented by Jo Minney in Track 2.

No longer just a humble blogging platform, WordPress is now the favourite CMS of choice for a majority of web developers. One reason for this is the fundamental architecture of the platform that uses “post types” to store and deliver stuff – from media attachments to pages, blog posts to testimonials. With Custom Post Types (CPTs) you too can harness the power of WordPress to become a pseudo-developer! Pair that with Custom Fields and all of a sudden you can supercharge your WordPress experience, and best of all you can do it for free without needing to be a developer.

Presented in Hallway Track.

Presented in Hallway Track.

Joanne Marie Minney has offered to discuss the Pods framework following her talk on Custom Post Types

For more details, follow up with the proposal here.

Presented by Luke Carbis in Track 2.

So by now you’ve had a chance to check out the new WordPress editor. You’ve created some posts using Paragraph Blocks, experimented with the Image Block, and maybe installed a plugin that adds some brand new Blocks.

Now it’s time to create your very own Custom Blocks. It’s easier than you might think. Using just a little basic HTML, CSS, and a simple helper plugin – Block Lab, we’ll create our very own Hero Block.

This talk will be hugely helpful for freelancers and agencies who are keen to dive in to Block development (the easy way). There’s a little code involved, but it’s very beginner friendly.

Presented by Nik Cree in Track 1.

Learn why you should create a WordPress.com account to connect to your WordPress.org website to give it superpowers.

This one login gives your website security, analytics, spam prevention, secure login, Plugin and Theme management, Profile Pic when you comment all over the web, eCommerce, speed and performance optimisation, SEO connect, quick posting, widget visibility options, custom Post types (Testimonials and Portfolio), social sharing and so much more … all for Free!

These are some of the under the hood, little known and underutilised features that are available to every WordPress site, but are not included in the code bundle when with an initial install.

You have to know where to look but will be truely amazed with what is available with a single username and password to supercharge your website … and all for FREE!

P.S. If you have been running on WordPress for years, chances are you have overlooked or dismissed some of these tools this presentation will give you a whole new perspective on the power that is now at your fingertips.

Presented by Robert Li in Track 2.

WordPress now accounts for over 33% of the web, and so any serious martech SaaS needs to integrate with it. This means there are now 50,000+ plugins to choose from to do practically anything, with WordPress acting as the ultimate integration hub.

The goal is that at the end the presentation the audience will walk away understanding how leads can be generated and with an actionable “recipe” to help turn their websites into “lean mean lead generating machines”.

Presented by Gal Baras in Track 1.

Page loading speed is critical these days for user experience, particularly on mobile phones, and therefore for SEO. Research shows that a 1-second difference in loading time can have a huge impact on site conversions.

Luckily, there are some awesome plugins that make speeding up your site light work. Using them, you can get 95% of the possible performance boost using only FREE plugins.

In this presentation, you will learn just how to do it yourself in as little as 10 minutes without any special skills or coding.

Presented in Hallway Track.

Michael Viller Will be running an Elementor Support session Sunday Lunchtime.

The idea is if you have a question, need help with an issue or just want to chat with other Elementor users to come along and meet us!

For more details, follow up with the proposal here.

Presented by Jen Jeavons in Track 1.

How much is a website worth? Isn’t WordPress just templates??  In this presentation, Jen will showcase just how much you can do with a custom WordPress site. She’ll show you how the team at Pixel Palace build premium custom WordPress websites that are worth every cent to clients. She’ll uncover how to make your website work valuable as well as profitable and how to escape the race to the bottom in terms of price. For business owners looking to invest in a new website, you’ll gain insight into successfully navigating the crazy world of website quotes for your business. 

Presented by Marthie Talu in Track 2.

Marthie will discuss with the audience the top reasons why it is so important to perform maintenance on your website. Whether you do it yourself and you pay someone to do it for you. This is one of the most neglected areas of a website, and just like a car, it requires regular maintenance otherwise it will break down and get viruses etc and cause your business to halt. Prevention has always been better than cure. As a web developer, I can’t tell you how many websites I opened only to discover that no updates have been done since the website has been built. This has led to website owners suffering loss in business, reputation and money when the website has finally broken down or worse been hacked.

A couple of minutes a week can make all the difference and get your site to run smoothly and without hassle. You have invested time and money to get your site up and running so why not invest a little time each week to make sure it is updated and that everything is working. Discover how to take care of your website so it will take care of you and your business!

Presented by Rajendra Zore in Track 2.

Now that WordPress is maturing and the ecosystem is thriving, it may seem overwhelming to start a new business. But you can do it.

Many of you may be soloprenuers running a one-person agency. In this talk, I will share how I started an $18 a year service that turned into thousands per month. Hint: I didn’t get venture capital, do crazy marketing, or anything shady.

Let’s talk about digital tools to help your side hustle become a business — including what to do and what not to do. Tools, tricks, laughter, and tears.

Presented by Rob Stinson in Track 1.

Remote work is not such a new thing anymore. It’s becoming more and more mainstream, with companies everywhere embracing the upside of a remotely empowered workforce. Well… at least some of the pieces.

Doing remote is one thing. Doing it well is another!

This talk will skip over the obvious stuff and get stuck straight into techniques and tools that make remote work truly awesome! Learn how you can empower your team to become far more than just a bunch of people connected via a backlog of tasks and a dodgy NBN connection.

Presented in Hallway Track.

Lisa Hewitt (organiser of the Aussie Divi community) has offered to do a Divi session, for all current and future users to hear feedback and learn about it.

Presented by Georgia Mountford in Track 1.

At the end of 2018, we launched a custom eLearning platform that is built on the WordPress backend and experienced through our ReactJS frontend. In this talk, I would like to discuss why we chose the hybrid approach and how it’s a viable option for designers/developers looking to modernise their WordPress sites incrementally. I will share the technical challenges we faced throughout the project, including how we overcame them, and what we intend to do next with our web app.

Presented by Mel Telecican in Track 1.

Before Elementor was installed on my sites I was wary of doing very much in the backend of my website. As someone who loves to action things quickly (think MVP), not being able to iterate without handing it over to my web guy was super frustrating. When Elementor entered my life I felt significantly more confident to develop new pages, update content and get creative.

No more waiting days to implement my plans – now it gets done pronto and I can adjust for mobile and tablet as well as desktop. This session will include a live demonstration for how to use the Elementor elements so you can see for yourself how it works.