Sessions

Stay tuned as we will be announcing our selected speakers in the coming months!

If you are interested in speaking, please fill out our application here.

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WordPress + Divi = LOVE

Discover how Ebbeka Design has incorporated using the Divi Theme to not only make building websites easier, but also FUN! Our team loves it, our clients love it. Divi takes the pain out of working with themes and makes building WordPress websites a breeze. Learn more about how this theme not only changed our process, our bottom line, and our overall professional happiness.

E-commerce Basics

Learn the basics of setting up an online store using Woocommerce, one of the most popular e-commerce WordPress plugins. Topics will include installation and basic configuration of Woocommerce, adding products and their corresponding attributes correctly so shoppers can find what they want, and examples of how Woocommerce works with the rest of a WordPress site to provide a seamless shopping experience for the end user.

Workflows for Agencies and Freelancers

There is no question that workflows are important.  They provide a blueprint on how to repeat a process so that the end result is accurate and consistent and even more importantly, they provide a starting point to delegating work out to new and existing employees. The reality is, we are all so busy, heads down, that workflows end up at the bottom of the to do list.  Join Stacy as she walks you through how to easily establish a habit of creating workflows in your business and how to get started creating a foundation for future growth of your business.

Theme Casting

Selecting the perfect theme for your website is much like casting the perfect actor for a role in a movie. Like movie talent, there are a lot of great candidates out there. However, the role of your website is very specific. It’s extremely important that your theme matches the character of your site, has a professional reputation, and contains the key characteristics that separates the extras from the stars. You want a theme that adds value to your site and helps you crush the box office (or Google rankings in our case). In this talk, we will discuss: free vs. paid themes, multi-purpose themes vs. industry specific themes, the best places to shop for themes, modern web design trends and which themes are following them, theme features that don’t meet today’s standards to theme features that may be too extra, theme responsiveness, and much more.

The Next Generation of WP AJAX

One of the most commonly asked questions when I discuss WordPress development is how to efficiently perform AJAX requests from within the WordPress environment. We will discuss: 1) How and why performing AJAX in WordPress is a bit tricky 2) The old way of working with AJAX in WP 3) The new and better way to use AJAX in WP using the WP REST API added to core in 4.7 4) What to consider when converting plugins from the old AJAX method to the new standardized one 5) Some examples of cool and common use cases for AJAX in WordPress.

Design Better, Faster, & Stronger

If you are just getting started with WordPress or have had some experience, you may not know common best practices or not be utilizing existing technology for creating a top notch website. These topics will not only be short-cuts to your process, but will give you and your clients the best possible websites.

Opening Remarks

The WordCamp Omaha 2017 team will be making some opening remarks prior to the keynote speaker.

A Primer into what Headless and Brainless WP even means

Ever since the release of the WordPress Rest API, there has been this buzzword flying around: Headless.

I’ve found that most of the answers as to what Headless even is are largely focused on “How” to do it as opposed to a clear response of “What” it is, and “Why” you should do it. In my talk I aim to educate on 3 approaches that I’ve come across on how to use WordPress, JavaScript, and the Rest API.

  • Limbless
  • Headless
  • Brainless

In my talk I hope to inspire the community to further consider WordPress as more than just a CMS, but an entire Framework capable of producing anything we can imagine when partnered with JavaScript and the Rest API. I do not intend on sharing JS Framework specific examples (IE: Here is how to do this with React, or Angular, or Vue). Rather, I’m going to provide a larger picture of Pro’s and Con’s, Strengths and Weakness, Successes and Caveats to using any one of these three approaches.

Help Desk

Running concurrently to our Sunday speakers, we’ll have an open, walk-in room for getting help on your own projects/websites. Work with other attendees and other volunteers!

Help Desk

Running concurrently to our Sunday speakers, we’ll have an open, walk-in room for getting help on your own projects/websites. Work with other attendees and other volunteers!

Help Desk

Running concurrently to our Sunday speakers, we’ll have an open, walk-in room for getting help on your own projects/websites. Work with other attendees and other volunteers!

Easy WordPress Security for Everyone

WordPress security isn’t as difficult as most people think; the leading causes of hacked sites and malware tend to be some combination of misinformation and inaction. This talk aims to show folks how easy it actually is to keep your WordPress site secure, and offers simple steps to prevent issues like hacks and malware from ever occurring with implementations that any WordPress user can handle, from developer to user.

Creating WordPress Plugins from Scratch

We’ll walk you through how to create a WordPress plugin from scratch. We’ll start simple, showing how to create a shortcode for displaying store hours on the website, with a handy little admin store location/hours management screen. We’ll then fast forward a little bit with some code snippets, and changing it so that the short code simply displays the store hours that are set on your Google Places profile – allowing a store owner to simply manage their store hours in one place.

A Step by Step Plan for WordPress Content Marketing

A WordPress website is an advantage for content marketing, but getting results requires an effective strategy and implementation. We’ll start from the beginning and examine how to map out goals, build personas, determine the target market’s path to purchase, identify the best keywords, and choose plugins to make follow through easier.

A RESTed Development: Understanding the WP REST API Once and For All

Though I knew WordPress itself extremely well, the REST API may as well have been maritime law.

What is JSON? What’s the big deal with the REST API? Why is everyone dancing like a chicken over this thing? I had a lot of questions, and I made a lot of huge mistakes that had me shaking my laptop yelling “C’mon!” But I thought, maybe—surely—I could actually seal the deal, stop feeling so disarmed, and find freedom from these fears.

In this talk, I’ll be sharing what I now know, touching on the illusions I had, and hopefully bringing light/reason to learning the basics of the REST API. So hop on, take knowledge of JSON, sprinkle in some HTTP methods, and baby, we’ve got a stew going.

Gravity Forms Cookbook

Gravity Forms is a premium plugin offering powerful tools to collect user data, make your site more interactive, and keep your visitors coming back. In this presentation, Abby will start by discussing the basics of Gravity Forms and some more advanced features, but most of the time will be spent examining specific forms, including an advanced contact form for a large business, a sweepstakes entry with followup page, and a multi-step form to help customers order the correct quantity of a product for their needs. These “cookbook” forms will be available as Gravity Forms Export Files so that you can modify and use them with ease.

Facebook Live! The Secret Sauce

Over 80% of all social media users have a Facebook account.  And Facebook Live! is the fastest growing live-streaming product on the internet. I will show you how short Facebook Live! sessions can drive traffic to your web site and improve your overall social media engagement.

Stop Blogging! More Valuable than a Blog Post: All the Things Your Business Website is Missing

Since day one of owning your small business website, experts have told you that you MUST blog regularly if you want to be successful online and compete with competitors in search engine rankings.

Stop blogging. Stop wasting time! Before you ever type a single sentence of a single blog post for your business make sure your business website has all the basic business website features, functions, integrations and relevant sales-focused content perfected. Only then, start blogging for your business.

In “Stop Blogging! More Valuable than a Blog Post: All the Things Your Business Website is Missing” Travis Pflanz, of WebWorks of KC, shares the most frequently overlooked aspects many small business websites neglect and gives advice for creating website content that is much more valuable than most business blog posts – also with advice for creating blog posts. This actionable advice will immediately help small business owners out-perform competitors in Google search results.

As a search engine optimization professional, Travis creates SEO and digital marketing strategies for businesses with budgets of all sizes. Even small businesses with a zero dollar SEO or digital marketing budget can implement the strategies discussed in this session to quickly outrank competition in search results.

Stop blogging, take care of the basics and start creating bottom-of-the-funnel targeted content that out-performs the competition – Now!

This presentation also includes tools and plugins recommendations for business owners to use on their WordPress website.

Using WordPress to Bridge the Digital Divide

A brief look at the Digital Divide as it stands today and what current technological trends mean for it in the future. This talk will mainly be focused on what it takes to be literate in the digital landscape our students find themselves in and how WordPress can be used to build and perfect those skills.

Keynote Speaker

Dusty is a technology entrepreneur located on the Silicon Prairie. Over the past 10 years he has launched a number of ventures, including Tripleseat, Silicon Prairie News / Big Omaha, and most recently Flywheel – a platform built specifically for web designers and agencies building WordPress websites – and one of the fastest growing technology startups in Nebraska. Dusty has been building WordPress websites for nearly 10 years as well, and now with Flywheel gets to build products and solutions for fellow WordPress designers and developers around the globe.

Lunch –  Chicken Rice Bowls

All of the ingredients will be separate so you can build your own rice bowl exactly how you want it!

Toppings:

  • Diced Chicken
  • Steamed Rice
  • Black Beans
  • Cheddar Cheese
  • Black Olives
  • Chopped Tomatoes
  • Shredded Lettuce
  • Sour Cream
  • Ranch Dressing

Culture of Hustle and Celebrating Failure

I will focus my talk on the need for entrepreneurs to embrace the culture of hustle. Regardless of the size of the team, hustle and work ethic can be injected into a culture from the top down. I will talk through celebrating failures, taking ownership, neglecting excuses, and pushing through the difficult obstacles. These topics will help entrepreneurs better their leadership qualities and demonstrate the type of mentality required daily in their organization. All of these concepts lend themselves to scaling with purpose. Far too often, entrepreneurs want to scale their operations because that is what the “market” tells them they need to do. Hiring for the sake of hiring, can be a monumental disaster if one is not prepared to overcome the obstacles presented with growth. I will talk through smart growth and attracting natural talent and creating a culture of hustle.

Page Builder Basics

A fairly common plugin type can be found pre-packaged in many themes today. The page builder makes it easier for non-developers to build unique and good-looking websites. Come learn the basics!

Organizing With Custom Post Types

WordPress is content management system. But what does that mean? Take advantage of custom post types and taxonomies to make a site that is well organized, better to maintain, and easier to navigate. I’ll take you the journey of one site where post types made all the difference!