Each year WordCamp Montreal strives to offer a wide variety of talks and discussions about and around WordPress. Our speakers are passionate, expert volunteers who want to teach you about WordPress and publishing on the web.
Below are the full descriptions of talks confirmed for WordCamp Montreal 2014. Talks are 45 minutes long including time for questions with 15 minutes between talks for switching rooms if necessary.
Panel: How to Make Money with WordPress
Yes, it is possible to earn a living using WordPress, whether it’s developing plugins, building premium themes, running an agency or working as a freelancer. Bring your questions to an informal panel discussion on how to use everyone’s favourite open source CMS to pay the bills. Audience participation is encouraged. This is a bilingual session.
WordPress Happiness Bar
The Happiness Bar is not a presentation, it’s a part of the event where volunteer experts hang around and help attendees with any questions they have. Get your WordPress questions answered, one-on-one, by some of the best experts around. Tricky configuration question? Plugins issues? Wanting to bring WordPress in your enterprise but wondering if it’ll fit in? Whatever the question, our friendly volunteers will make sure you leave the chat with solutions.
WordPress Experts: The Happiness Bar needs you! If you’re better at answering questions than asking please come to the bar and help out! You can sign up to be an official happiness barista on the volunteering page.
Prerequisites: This session is for everyone.
So, you want to be a plugin developer?
Do you ever browse the WordPress Plugin Directory and wish you could see your creations up there? Have you ever written code for a personal site or customer and thought that others could benefit from having access to your work? ‘So, you want to be a plugin developer?’ covers numerous aspects of plugin development, including finding an idea for your plugin and securing a space for it in the directory, programming resources and code quality guidelines to make sure your add-on is top-notch, and more business-oriented topics like monetization and promotion. With all of these tips and tools in hand, your next idea could be the next great WordPress plugin.
Prerequisites: This session is targeted at WordPress integrators or PHP programmers interested in writing and distributing WordPress plugins to the user community and wanting to know more about the plugin creation, distribution and support processes. Only small code snippets will be discussed.
Déboguer des bug avec un débogueur
Saviez vous que vous pouviez regarder a votre code en temps réel? Avec un débogeur on peur regarder a n’importe quel variable a n’importe quel temps. On peut aussi pauser le code sur n’importe quel ligne et faire des modifications en temps réel.
Dans cette présentation on va découvrir avec l’aide de PHPstorm et Xdebug pourquoi add_action a été appeller. Pourquoi notre fonction retourne la mauvaise valeur et plus!
Préalables: Cette conférence est concu pour des dévelopeur qui ont de l’expérience à écrire du code sans aide et qui sont confortable avec un éditeur de texte ou un IDE.
Getting Started with .htaccess for WordPress
An introduction on how to configure your .htaccess file to do more than what WordPress provides by default. The talk will cover basics like setting up a preferred URL, and redirecting old page URLs for better SEO. How to optimize your site’s files using gzip will also be covered, as well as preventing image hot linking, and more. A sample .htaccess file will be provided to all attendees. A useful introduction to a very important file for any shared hosting environment.
Prerequisites: For designers/developers familiar with a shared hosting environment.
I broke up with Photoshop—and you can too!
As designers, we spend too much time in Photoshop. Now that it’s expected that your sites will be responsive, mocking up static designs in Photoshop isn’t an effective way of communicating what the final result will look like. Not only is it a waste of time, but it’s annoying to boot.
We’re going to talk about getting out of the Photoshop mindset, embracing the tools that the modern web has provided us in order to streamline our development practises and get real-live sites up and running fast. We’ll start with talking about how to use style tiles to reduce the amount of time spent on mockups, and then we’ll move on to discuss how to leverage available tools in order to quickly get a site running: skeleton themes, CSS precompilers, version control for quick deployment, icon fonts, browser development tools, grids, and CSS frameworks. Whew!
After all that, you’ll walk away with new ideas about how to design your own toolset to get up and running with a functioning site as quickly as possibly, and how to iterate on that in way that’s efficient and sane.
Prerequisites: You should have a basic knowledge of WordPress theme development, and perhaps a sneaking suspicion that you’re relying too heavily on Photoshop.
Backing up your WordPress website – it’s not optional
Could you recover your WordPress website if it was lost due to a hardware failure, hacked, or corrupted during an update or plugin install? Having reliable automated backups can make the difference between taking 10 minutes to restore your site, and needing to do a complete site rebuild that may take a week or more. This presentation will look at the many options and plugins for backing up your WordPress site including backing up to Amazon S3.
Prerequisites: Some familiarity with WordPress and installing plugins.
How to be a Super Super Admin
There are a multitude of plugins that aim to help you manage every aspect of your multisite network: your plugins, themes and users. In this talk I will show you several of these plugins and why your multisite network can’t go without them any longer. If you have some favorites of your own, let me know beforehand and I’ll mention them, or come and share during the talk! Also, I will explore some of the advantages of and best practices for using the Jetpack plugin in a multisite network.
Prerequisites: You should have a familiarity with managing a multisite network, whether it has 2 or 2000 sites.
Building Themes from Scratch with Underscores
Free and premium themes are great, but if you want to build a truly custom website with WordPress you need to build a custom theme from scratch. In this presentation designer, developer, and educator Morten Rand-Hendriksen takes you through the process of building a theme from scratch with what is arguably the best starter theme available: _s (Underscores). The presentation looks at design and development decisions and principles including mobile-first, accessibility, responsive design, and information architecture, and takes a deep dive into the structure of the Underscores theme to show the audience how to build a theme from the ground up to become what you envisioned and more.
Prerequisites: This talk is for designers and developers looking to build custom themes. Advanced beginner, intermediate, and advanced designers and developers.
The Database Schema
Understanding how the database schema of WordPress is setup, including a walk-through of the tables and how WordPress stores the data and helps you interact with it via its APIs. We’ll also dive into the benefits and dangers of the schema and how to adapt it to go beyond just blog posts.
Prerequisites: Basic understanding of PHP, (My)SQL, and technical WordPress concepts.
Et puis, le API – manipuler ton site WordPress en utilisant des requêtes HTTP
L’API JSON fournit une interface externe simple et cohérente vous permettant de récupérer et de manipuler le contenu de ton site WordPress en utilisant des requêtes HTTP. Que peut-on faire avec l’API et comment utiliser le système d’authentification de WordPress.com OAuth2 + Jetpack pour utiliser l’API en toute sécurité.
Préalables: Plutôt pour les adeptes experts ou les curieux.
Comment présenter du contenu sur mesure sans vous emmêler dans la boucle
Vous savez probablement que nous utilisons des « Articles » et des « Pages ». Saviez-vous qu’on peut aussi afficher des « Livres », des « Films », des « Éléments de portfolio » ou même des « Recettes » avec WordPress? Depuis des années, de nombreux utilisateurs utilisent WordPress dans un but de gestion de contenu.
En essayant d’éviter de montrer même une seule ligne de code, nous allons voir comment utiliser WordPress pour afficher n’importe quoi.
Nous commencerons par un survol des requêtes que WordPress fait lors de la préparation du contenu d’une page ainsi que de la boucle qu’il traverse pour préparer le HTML puis nous finirons avec une boucle d’affichage d’un objet très spécifique. Nous verrons aussi comment « expliquer » à un engin de recherche comme Google ce que nous lui présentons avec des attributs qu’il saura comprendre.
Cette présentation ne s’adresse pas seulement à des développeurs de thèmes. Si vous êtes un utilisateur qui se concentre uniquement sur le contenu du site, je vais vous armer de concepts et d’outils permettant une meilleure communication avec vos développeurs.
Préalables : Zéro code! Que vous soyez un débutant dans le développement de thèmes ou un créateur de contenu qui n’a jamais écrit une seule ligne de code, vous devriez sortir de cette présentation avec une compréhension plus solide de la gestion et la présentation du contenu sur mesure.
Make your life easier with WP-CLI
WP-CLI is a set of command-line tools for managing WordPress installations. Learn how to ditch your traditional methods for updating, migrating and installing for something much faster and more efficient. See examples of existing commands and learn how to create your own custom commands!
Prerequisites: You should be somewhat comfortable with using a unix style command line.
To the Word and Beyond! Extending WordPress Past a Simple Blog
This presentation will look at novel and unique ways to use WordPress beyond a simple blog or website by using BuddyPress, bbPress, and P2. Ever think of using WordPress to manage a project, be a private communication board, or even have a forum? We’ll cover these and more uses that truly push WordPress to its limits. Participants will leave with a great understanding of the true potential of WordPress!
Prerequisites: A familiarly of the WordPress system is an advantage! For intermediate users.
Introduction à WordPress sous Nginx
Nginx est un serveur web puissant utilisé notamment par WordPress.com. Mieux adapté aux sites à haut trafic qu’Apache, Nginx peut non seulement augmenter la vitesse de votre site, mais également supporter un nombre plus élevé de visiteurs simultanément sans équipement additionnel. Apprenez-en davantage sur l’installation et la configuration d’un serveur Nginx pour rendre votre site avec WordPress encore plus efficace.
Préalables: Cette présentation est relativement avancée et demande une connaissance de Linux, SSH, FTP. Elle est principalement destinée aux développeurs et administrateurs de système.
Advanced Customizer Usage
The Customizer is great, but there’s very little knowledge out there for building advanced controls with it, since its JavaScript API is currently undocumented. I’ll share lessons learned building advanced controls for Custom Design on WordPress.com for how you can take the Customizer to the next level.
Prerequisites: Some theming and plugin experience; ideally have added a Customizer control to a theme although the basics will be quickly covered.
Respect de la vie privée avec WordPress : meilleures pratiques
Présentation de quelques unes des meilleures pratiques pour respecter la vie privée des utilisateurs et utilisatrices d’un site WordPress.
Par défaut, le développement d’un site WordPress peut facilement nous entraîner sur une voie qui sacrifie l’anonymat des visiteurs et visiteuses. Les boutons Facebook et Twitter, l’intégration avec Google Analytics, etc., sont-ils incontournables ? Peux-tu monter un site qui est à la fois excellent sur le plan de la communication, mais qui ne soumet pas automatiquement ses utilisateurs et utilisatrices à la surveillance des grandes entreprises et des agences de renseignements, qui veulent suivre nos moindres mouvements sur la toile?
Préalables: Sera utile autant aux développeurs et développeuses qu’aux blogueurs et blogueuses aguerri(e)s.
Growth Tips for Any WordPress Site
Growth talks are usually addressing large businesses or startups but I’d like to take a different angle and give a few valuable tips to anyone who wants to run a project using WordPress in some way or another. It can be a personal blog, a small business or a larger project.
How do define your very own relevant metrics, how to make sure you are focusing your effort in the right direction, how to take important decisions and how to monitor your results. All of this, specifically tied to WordPress sites and blogs.
Prerequisites: For anyone who is in charge of a site or a blog, who has an online business running on WordPress. No special background required, except common sense.
Writing Gooder: How to blog in the big leagues
You won’t believe what happens next! This writing talk will blow your mind & change your life!
Well, now that we’ve set realistic clickbait-esque expectations for ourselves, what you’ll *actually* learn are practical tips from the perspectives of both writer & editor on how to improve your skills, along with some tricks and tools that’ll help you slay that blank page faster than you can say, “Hello, World!”
Prerequisites: Must be at least vaguely literate.
Sassy WordPress
You’ve been meaning to start using Sass in your projects, right? But it looks hard…is it really worth figuring out? Yes, yes it is! In this talk, we will cover Sass basics like structuring projects, mixins and variables, and using extensions. We will then go over how to start using Sass in your own themes as well as touch on a few Sass-ready starter themes. Afterwards, Lara will be available at the Happiness Bar for demos and to help you get set up!
Prerequisites: Attendees should be mid-level theme developers with a solid front-end development foundation.
Fear in a Developer’s World
Kirk is a developer, but he has fears. Dark fears.
Fear is a powerful force that stalks us through most aspects of our lives. Kirk works full-time as a developer, but not a day goes by without having to face feelings of inadequacy, Imposter Syndrome, and making a commit that takes down one of the highest traffic sites on the Internet. He’ll share the power of fear in his life (past and present), give some fun disaster stories along the way, and share tips to ensure we all wake up raring to code every morning.
Prerequisites: Absolutely none. Zilch. 🙂
Démarrer son site – LA To-Do List
Mon atelier survole les actions de bases régulièrement oubliées lorsqu’on démarre un site dans WordPress. Souvent perçues comme de petits détails anodins, ce sont pourtant ces actions qui permettent de présenter un site web professionnel.
Ton nom d’utilisateur est “admin”? Ton mot de passe c’est “password”, ou mieux: “password123”? T’as pas activé le plugin Akismet (Ak-quoi?)? T’as pas changé tes permaliens et t’as pas de Gravatar (C’est quoi ça hein, un “GRAVATAR”)? Le slogan de ton site c’est encore “Just another WordPress site”? Viens donc voir ma conférence, on va arranger ça!
Préalables: Mon atelier s’adresse principalement aux débutants, mais également aux utilisateurs intermédiaires désirant parfaire leurs connaissances des paramètres de base d’une installation WordPress.
Getting Comfortable With Child Themes
Child themes are a simple but powerful way to customize a pre-made theme. Learning how to use them properly means you’ll never risk losing all your modifications when the developer releases a new version and you update the theme. Using easy-to-follow language, I’ll walk you through the steps to set up a child theme and we’ll get started making some tweaks – from CSS look-and-feel adjustments to more substantial changes in functionality.
Prerequisites: Suitable for those who’ve used pre-made themes or starter themes but haven’t made a child theme yet. Basic PHP knowledge helpful but not necessary.
Les données transitoires vous veulent du bien
Je parle bien sûr des transients, cette fameuse API qui ne vous veut que du bien. Voyons des cas concrets d’utilisation pour réduire les requêtes distances et ainsi gagner en performances de temps de chargement. L’auditoire apprendra à utiliser l’API “transient” de WordPress dans le but dé gagner en performances.
Préalables: Développeurs WordPress.
Accessible UX for WordPress
If you are in charge of user experience, development, or strategy for a WordPress web site, Accessible UX will help you make your site accessible without sacrificing design or innovation. Participants will experience difficulties faced by people with vision, mobility, hearing, and cognitive disabilities as they use the interfaces we make for them. Rooted in universal design principles, this presentation provides solutions: practical advice and examples of how to create sites that everyone can use.
Prerequisites: This presentation will be valuable for everyone who cares about making great WordPress sites that provide access for people of all abilities.
10 things you need to know about leaving shared hosting
The hosting world is scary. Sites go down, you complain, you don’t get answers. You feel out of control. Take back control! Get a VPS (Virtual Private Server). This talk will demystify the realm of basic server management and allow you to have better uptime, and not worry if someone else is going to crash your site. Topics of basic server setup and how to host a few WordPress sites will be covered. Plus we’ll go over things that you probably weren’t thinking of like security, firewalls and backups.
Prerequisites: This talk is aimed at developers and people who are not afraid of code and configuration files.
Prenez le CronTrol des tâches planifiées
Connaissez-vous l’API fournit par WordPress pour les tâches planifiées (ou Cron) ?
Un cron est un programme qui permet d’exécuter périodiquement un script. WordPress possède sa propre mécanique interne pour exécuter des tâches planifiées, comme la planification d’un article ou les mises à jour des extensions.
À travers des exemples concrets, découvrez l’API Cron de WordPress pour créer et gérer vos propres tâches cron.
Préalables: Cette conférence est dédiée aux développeurs WordPress de tous niveaux.
L’utilisation de la plateforme Varying Vagrant Vagrants pour le développement de plugins
Cette année j’ai eu la chance de faire partie d’une équipe extraordinaire d’ingénieurs WordPress développant notre tout premier plugin grande échelle appellé Stream. Cette présentation traitera des outils que nous avons utilisé pour collaborer, déboguer, tester, déployer notre code et pour le rendre accessible à la communauté.
Je vais démontrer:
- comment tester plusieurs version de WordPress avec Varying Vagrant Vagrants (VVV)
- comment utiliser le framework de test de WordPress
- comment utiliser Vagrant Share pour collaborer en temps réel
- comment utiliser votre instance local de WP-CLI pour intéragir avec des serveurs externes
- comment utiliser git et github et pouvoir déployer facilement vers WordPress.org
- comment utiliser le déboguage à distance et le proffilage pour optimizer votre code à l’aide de VVV
- comment utiliser Travis CI comme plateforme de tests continue gratuitement
- et bien plus!
Préalables: Bonne connaissance de la ligne de commande et de php.
WordPress, APIs and You
This developer-oriented presentation will focus on explaining what an API is in the context of WordPress and why you should care about them. We’ll dive into the WordPress.com & Jetpack REST API, its surrounding developer ecosystem. Finally we’ll touch upon the new proposed WordPress Core REST API and how it might fit into the picture. The presentation will include a Q&A where attendees can ask questions about APIs, general WordPress development and Automattic.
Prerequisites: Users should have a basic understanding of Javascript, PHP, HTTP Requests and JSON. You don’t have to be a professional developer to follow the presentation.
WordPress Jurassique
À l’époque où les dinosaures tel que Frontpage et Flash étaient rois du web, et que les plans d’hébergement se comptaient en mégabytes, installer WordPress était simple. Mais les temps ont beaucoup changé.
Cette présentation vous offrira 10 techniques pour améliorer la performance et la sécurité de votre site WordPress. Pour chacune, nous montrerons différentes approches (code, services, extensions) gratuites et commerciales. Que vous soyez sur un plan d’hébergement mutualisé, un VPS ou votre propre serveur dédié, les concepts discutés auront un impact majeur sur votre site.
Venez voir comment sortir votre site de la préhistoire !
Préalables : les concepts discutés varient de simples à complexes, mais les techniques sont conçues pour être appliquées par un débutant
10 façons de vendre avec WordPress
Du simple bouton Paypal aux fonctions avancées de WooCommerce en passant par l’intégration d’une boutique Shopify avec WordPress.com, il existe de nombreuses de façons de vendre en-ligne avec WordPress. Nous présenterons des options très simples accessibles à tous et d’autres un peu plus complexes avec des exemples concrets pour chacune. Nous parlerons aussi des passerelles de paiement, de l’expédition, de la gestion des stocks, de petits détails qu’on a tendance à oublier et des erreurs qu’on a faites et qu’on veut vous éviter.
Préalables: Accessible et pertinente pour toutes et tous, du commerçant qui veut vendre en-ligne sans faire une ligne de code à la développeure qui veut mieux conseiller ses clientes.
Wireframe Secrets Revealed
Wireframes. Such a mysterious and elusive term. You may have heard rumours that they exist deep in the depths of waste bins napkins to top secret security compounds. Legend states that wireframes transcend powerful benefits of website creation. But rumour has it, they could be dangerous or almost extinct. Could this be all true?
If blueprints are to a building, what wireframes are to a website, you could be missing out on fundamental knowledge. Let us embark on a LoFi to HiFi journey, discovering wireframe types, tools and much more.
Prerequisites: For beginner and intermediate designers. No WordPress experience needed.
WordPress Media Tools for Creatives
Put your masterworks up on a solid pedestal. Whether you need to build a home page for your band, a portfolio for your art, or a viewing hub for your videos, there are native and external WordPress tools for hosting, embedding, and presenting your multimedia content in ways that are easy, responsive, and cost-effective.
- WordPress.com portfolio post types and related themes
- image gallery options: what’s included in .org and .com, and what you can customize using Jetpack or other plugins
- audio and video: embeds and hosting
- promotion tools: widgets, plugins, and subscription services for interacting with outside content networks (like bandcamp, spotify, pinterest, more)
- showcase of creative sites and great uses of the tools
Prerequisites: For beginner and intermediate bloggers and site developers.
Google Analytics and WordPress for Beginners
Google Analytics produces thousands of different numbers, metrics and statistics. There’s so many numbers it can be more confusing than enlightening trying to figure out which ratios should be taken into account, which stats are the most important.
This session is a beginner’s guide to best practice set up of Google Analytics and navigating the user interface so you can look at your traffic more critically. We’ll also talk about how Google Analytics WordPress plugins simplify your set-up and analysis.
Key things you will learn by attending this session include how to:
- Identify your most valuable (not popular) web pages
- Discover your most valuable traffic sources
- Interpret your data by understanding key concepts and terms
- How to get more from your Google Analytics plug-ins.
Prerequisites: For beginners – No Prerequisites
i18n por favor
Les capacités multilingues de WordPress reposeront toujours sur l’attention portée par les développeurs d’extensions et de thèmes sur l’internationalisation correcte du code qu’ils rédigent. La présentation proposera une révision complète des principes d’internationalisation, des fonctions GETTEXT de base de WordPress jusqu’aux situations les plus complexes. Je fournirai aussi quelque solution à des problèmes fréquents d’internationalisation que j’ai rencontrés, par exemple la compatibilité avec les extensions de gestion multilingue ou la conception de phrases complexes.
Préalables: La présentation s’adresse à quiconque code ou recode des thèmes ou des extensions. Une compréhension des fonctions PHP de manipulation de chaines est un atout. Il est aussi préférable de parler au moins une langue.
Grow Your Audience with Content Marketing
Content marketing is a hot buzzword right now and for good reason. It’s the latest trend being implemented to increase search engine visibility, social media networking, brand awareness, and sales. WordPress is a great platform that businesses and bloggers can harness to achieve their inbound marketing objectives. This session will cover important aspects of content marketing and emphasize how to promote content and grow an audience. Attendees will learn ways to integrate content marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and social media to expand their reach. Topics such as social influence, guest posts, and social signals for SEO will be discussed. Key plugins and relevant online tools will also be highlighted.
Prerequisites: To get the most out of the session, attendees should have a basic understanding of search engine optimization (SEO) and social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Panel: How To Get Started Building Custom Websites with WordPress
Creating a custom website on WordPress can be daunting for designers new to WordPress. It’s common to sink a lot of time into a theme or process, only to discover a major limitation — or to be overwhelmed by the learning curve. Our panel of designers will discuss which methods they’ve found to be the easiest/hardest, as well as the limitations and prerequisites of each approach. Before & After slides will demonstrate what can be achieved via a range of methods such as:
- child themes with Official WP themes (TwentyFourteen, TwentyThirteen, etc)
- premium themes (Thesis Theme, Canvas by WooThemes, ThemeTrust, Envato, etc)
- Underscores by WP and other roll-your-own custom starter themes.
Each panelist runs an indie web/graphic design shop and currently makes a living designing custom sites with WordPress. You can too.
Prerequisites: For Beginner to Intermediate-level web designers. Basic understanding of HTML & CSS.
Blogging on the Go
Inspiration can be a fickle friend. Miss the moment and sometimes it’s difficult to get it back. Why not write whenever inspiration strikes and embrace mobile blogging? This presentation will be packed with tips for posting from your mobile devices and managing your blog whether you use WordPress.org or WordPress.com. We’ll talk about:
1. WordPress mobile apps
2. Writing posts, uploading photo and video from your phone.
3. Blog management from within the apps
4. Post by Email
5. Letting connected social accounts work for you
Prerequisites: A mobile device and a WordPress site.
Sélecteurs CSS à la rescousse: techniques incontournables pour WordPress
On vous a convaincu, vous voulez bien faire les choses. Vous ne modifierez pas le code de WordPress, des extensions ou de votre thème. Mieux encore, vous êtes sur WordPress.com et vous ne pouvez tout simplement pas modifier ce code. MAIS… vous aimeriez _tellement_ que la sidebar soit à gauche plutôt qu’à droite (seulement dans les pages, pas dans les articles). Tant qu’à y être, on pourrait pas enlever le texte “Les commentaires sont fermés.”?
On peut tout faire ça en CSS, et bien plus encore. À l’aide d’exemples concrets, nous illustrerons comment la puissance des sélecteurs CSS vous permet de modifier pratiquement toute l’apparence de votre site, sans toucher une ligne de PHP ou de HTML.
Préalables: Vous apprécierez mieux cette présentation si vous possédez une connaissance de base du HTML et du CSS. Si vous connaissez la différence entre ceci, #cela et .encore-cela, vous êtes au bon niveau.
There’s A Plugin For That
Plugins are what make WordPress extra-awesome and enable you to make your website do pretty much anything you want it to. Need to add collapsible sections to a page or make your gallery images circular? There’s a plugin for that! How about making your widget titles into links, or duplicating pages at the click of a mouse? Yep, plugins can help you do that too. Whether you’re just getting started with WordPress or use it everyday, there are over 30,000 plugins to choose from and finding the right one for the job can be tricky. We’ll look at how to choose an appropriate plugin and I’ll introduce you to a few I just couldn’t live without.
Prerequisites: For beginners, anyone using the backend of WordPress.