Archives

Securing WooCommerce without scaring customers

Securing WooCommerce can sometimes feel like a moving target. In this talk, We will review some easy and actionable steps for securing your store without annoying or scaring off customers. You’ll also learn to integrate free services that will improve the security of your website or store.

This session will help you find answers to these common questions:

  1. Do I need to worry about security? I don’t get that many visitors.
  2. My site keeps getting hacked, what should I do?
  3. Do I need to do anything if I am using managed hosting?

Business Track

Question and answer with awesome panel:

Steve Zengut (moderator)
Chris Ford
Nathan Ingram
Jen Bourn
Chris Lema

Taming the Whirlwind – Growing Your Business While You’re Busy with Client Work

If you can never seem to find time to redesign your own website or launch a new service because you’re too busy with client work… you’re not alone, and this talk is for you!

Attendees will leave with a (1) better understanding of why it’s so hard to move our businesses forward when we’re busy with client work, (2) a clear strategy to address this very common issue, and (3) the motivation to make it happen!

How to Leverage your Project Management Methodology to Set Yourself Apart from Your Competition

Let’s face it, the technical solution from one WordPress provider is probably going to look a lot like the next one. There will be a theme, plugins, maybe some custom css or a little coding – but generally, the proposed solutions will be similar. So how do you set yourself above your competition when your technical skills and solution are fairly equal?

What if you were able to tell your client that:

  • you have a way of estimating the project so that there are NO surprises along the way
  • you have a way to plan for and manage change that does not include an arbitrary “pad” amount added to the estimate
  • you have a way of defining the website and gathering the content that reduces the chance for scope creep
  • you have a way to ensure that the project gets completed on time and within budget

In this presentation, I will show attendees how to craft these sections of their project management methodology and use it as a unique value proposition when presenting to a client.

You Don’t Say: The importance of earnest feedback

Feedback, given or received, can be a gift or a curse. Explore the subtle art of communicating feedback in a way that’s beneficial to both sides while also helping the overall health of the project you share. I’ll draw from examples in open source communities, collaborations, and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest to help attendees understand how everyone benefits when feedback is given about products and projects instead of individuals. While we’re in a feedback mindset I’ll talk about how to share critical feedback about the folks we work with while remembering that the person on the other end of the internet is a human too.

Practical Project Management

Practical Project Management isn’t about strict processes or guidelines. It is about taking a flexible, iterative and personal approach to managing projects. By taking a flexible, iterative approach to project management you can build a framework that will work with your unique project workflow, team makeup and client personality to eliminate friction and let everyone on the team focus on doing their best work.

We’ll start with a brief talk about the concept of Practical Project Management, and spend the remaining time discussing your unique project management challenges and talking through practical tips, tricks and hacks.

WordPress Provides the Best Canvas for a Creative Business

I plan to discuss how my creative business has grown over the past three years, and how WordPress was a vital tool in helping me to grow my business. Whatever I have needed to do, whatever changes needed to be made, I have been able to do those things with WP. Had I started with a different platform, it would not have been so easy.

Optimize all the things!

The performance of your site is important — there’s no questioning that. Regardless of your relationship to your website (developer, content manager, editor, administrator) you can have an impact on how well your content is served to your visitors. We will discuss a range of topics, from image management, to content delivery networks, to caching and more.