WordPress – Going Beyond The Basics – Slides from Wordcamp Seattle 2012

This weekend I had the honor and pleasure of speaking at Seattle’s WordCamp. I have never attended a WordCamp outside of Southern California before and was pleased to experience the same feeling of community there that I have at other events.

My topic was “WordPress – Going Beyond The Basics: An Adventure Behind the Scenes of your WordPress Site!”

The goal was to introduce some key files, concepts and best practices for WordPress users who are not developers but are ready to take their knowledge of WordPress further than the dashboard. The presentation included a quick live demo of how to make a CSS tweak using Chrome Developer Tools, by way of a child theme.

 

I think the presentation went fairly well. Public speaking is not something that comes naturally, but I do it to challenge myself as well as to give back to the community by sharing what I have learned. The more I do it, the easier it becomes, but there’s always much improvement to be made! That said, I received good feedback from quite a few folks who came and chatted to me afterwards and throughout the day, and saw quite a few nice comments on Twitter. Thanks to all those people – your encouragement always helps!!

The event as a whole was rather awesome. The organizers did a great job, making sure everything ran smoothly all day long. Not to mention the fact that it was held at the beautiful Seattle Art Museum, and they provided a great lunch! I saw some great talks. Amongst the highlights, Scott Berkun gave the keynote and was engaging and insightful. Christine Rondeau’s presentation demonstrating how to make a custom feature slider without using a plugin was really cool! I met lots of lovely people that I hope to keep in touch with in some way, and had many stimulating conversations. As I always say, look out for your local WordCamp event – they are absolutely worth attending!

Were you at WordCamp Seattle? Or have you attended a WordCamp recently? Share your experiences in the comments!