We are very excited to add a Beginner’s Track for this year’s WordCamp Portland! We have a great line up of speakers just for the beginner attendee. Here’s a list of the speakers and topics for the day (in order of the schedule), we hope you enjoy the line up and learn more about WordPress to move you along your journey.<\/p>\n
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A Complete Beginners Guide to using WordPress! In this Bob of the online WordPress instructional site BobWP<\/a> introduces attendees to the WordPress dashboard, explaining posts and pages, how to use the editor, media library and other basics to get you familiar with using WordPress.<\/p>\n Themes control the look, feel and layout of your site. Picking a ready-made one can be a daunting task, so let\u2019s take a look at themes and understand the decisions that need to be made. We\u2019ll dive into:<\/p>\n Extending WordPress above and beyond the core functionality is part of what makes WordPress so powerful. However, the sheer number of plugins available can be overwhelming. A strategy for evaluating plugins makes both developing managing WordPress easier. In this presentation, attendees will learn:<\/p>\n Attendees will also receive a plugin evaluation checklist they can take home to help choose plugins that fit their project\u2019s objectives.<\/p>\n The following are the 3 lightning talk topics for the beginner tracks:<\/p>\n For every WordPress user, there\u2019s always a button that\u2019s a bit off to the side, or a logo that doesn\u2019t display correctly. This session will help you DIY types, who want a little more control but don\u2019t want to spend years being a programmer. We\u2019ll will show you a few tricks to fix common web design issues with certain plugins, with a bit of coding. We\u2019ll do a tiny bit of HTML, CSS, and PHP, but don\u2019t let that scare you, I\u2019ve taught this to 50+ year old WordPress users who picked it up immediately.<\/p>\n WordPress agencies and freelance designers and developers can improve their client\u2019s website projects by incorporating content-strategy best practices into their workflows. Anyone who has built more than one website has developed a good array of content strategy skills. I\u2019ll show how to plug those skills into a proven framework for crafting an actionable, state-of-the-art website content strategy. If you\u2019ve ever used \u201clorem ipsum\u201d copy as you struggled to extract content from your client the day before launch, this talk is for you.<\/p>\n We all take shortcuts sometimes. Whether you were swamped with client work and a corner had to be cut, or you\u2019re stretched so thinly trying to wear every hat that something fell through the cracks, we\u2019ve all encountered mistakes we made ourselves. While they\u2019re mostly all forgivable, it becomes a bit of a different issue when a mistake leads to a security concern. In this talk we\u2019ll look at three common security mistakes made by WordPress site owners every day, why they get made in the first place, and how to resolve them.<\/p>\n Using what we\u2019ve learned today, Fellene will guide attendees through the process of building a working portfolio! We will cover a basic photo portfolio, and adding additional features to create an academic or professional portfolio as well. Access to the slides and additional artifacts from the session will be downloadable afterward.<\/p>\n Creating and working with WordPress themes is a great way to learn more about WordPress as well as make your site look and function exactly how you want it. We\u2019ll go over what goes into making a WordPress theme, as well as concepts like \u201cthe loop,\u201d \u201cactions and filters,\u201d and the \u201ctemplate hierarchy.\u201d By the end of the talk, you should have a good overview of WordPress themes, as well as places to go for further learning.<\/p>\n This introductory session will cover the ways that people can contribute to the WordPress global community team, no matter what their background or experience.<\/p>\nBecky Davis<\/a> – Evaluating and Selecting Themes<\/h2>\n
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Kathy Zant<\/a> – Intro to Plugins<\/h2>\n
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\nLightning Talks<\/h2>\n
Rocky Kev<\/a> – 5 Easy Coding Tricks You Can Do in WordPress (Especially for Non-Developers)<\/h3>\n
Larry Swanson<\/a> – DIY Content Strategy<\/h3>\n
Mikey Veenstra<\/a> – 3 Security Mistakes You Didn\u2019t Realize You Made<\/h3>\n
\nFellene Gaylord<\/a> – Building a Portfolio in WordPress<\/h2>\n
Benjamin Turner<\/a> – Intro to Theme Development<\/h2>\n
Andrea Middleton<\/a> – Contributing to the WordPress Community<\/h2>\n