The holiday swing is getting kicked off right with WordCamp Saratoga Springs this weekend on November 21st! Damon will be there; he is one of the organizers and kicked butt to make this happen!
Although I find it hard to believe that any of our regular readers are unfamiliar with WordCamp (come on, now!), for those of you that are completely green: WordCamps are events held all over the world where WordPress nerds unite to share their skills, insights, and learn a whole lot from a bunch of other smarties.
We picked out a few sessions that especially caught our eye, although we know they are all going to be amazing. If you’re going, make sure to grab Damon and say hello!
Saturday, November 21st
10 AM – Creating a Productive Environment: From Personal Space to Development Environment – Tom Harragan
Writing code is only part of the equation. Our ability to get in the right mindset and the efficiency at which we write our code play a large part in delivering quality projects and solutions. There are many factors that play in to this, from our sleep schedules, diets, activity, time scheduling and ability to prioritize, to the space we work in, our desk setups, the developer tools we use, and the resources we utilize when we hit a wall. We’ll touch on all of these as we look at ways to make our days more productive and keep our heads in the game.
11 AM – Hook or Be Hooked! – Jonathan Christopher
Hooks in WordPress are a foundational reason for the success of the platform. WordPress hooks (actions, filters) are essential for extending WordPress in your themes and plugins without interfering with the core code base. If you want to write future-ready code, hooks are your best friend. There’s a slight learning curve to hooks but we’re going to cover that, the philosophy behind utilizing/implementing hooks, and (way) more. If you have any questions you’re hoping get covered, be sure to post them at least a few days before the meetup and we’ll be sure to make sure you have answers!
2 PM – AMP: A Plugin Development Journey – Mo Jangda
This talk will go over how we approached building a plugin to add support for the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) Project to WordPress sites.
The requirement was to provide an alternate presentation of the WordPress site’s content to match the very restrictive AMP spec. During the talk, we’ll discuss the various WordPress APIs that the plugin relies on (rewrites, kses, etc.), some the design decisions we made, and the various challenges we encountered (and still do, in some cases).
3 PM – Build an Online Store with WooCommerce – Patrick Rauland
Patrick will show how to build an online store with WooCommerce. We’ll look at how to add products to your site, how to charge shipping, the right way to accept money online, and some marketing tips for first time store owners.
Session descriptions pulled from the WC Saratoga Springs website–with some edits for clarity.
Hopefully we will see you there–and if not, you can always keep an eye on over @WCtoga or on the hashtag, #wctoga!