Learn from Sakin Shrestha on approaches to WordPress theme development

While developing any theme, choosing the right approach can make or break your theme. Taking a particular approach that suits your theme development goals, will not only increase your chances of making a great theme, but also have a good time doing it.

At WordCamp Mumbai 2016, Sakin Shrestha will tell us more on taking these approaches to WordPress theme development.

About Sakin

Sakin has developed and reviewed themes since 2012. He has experimented with various approaches including starting from scratch, parent and child theme, using starter themes, or using a framework. He will shed light on when to use each of these approaches, drawing from his own experience.

Join this session if you want to get started with WordPress theme development, or are a developer looking to get some tips on choosing the right approach.

You can tweet him @sakinshrestha

Raghavendra will speak on WordPress accessibility features

raghavendraOne of main issues with making themes and product accessible on WordPress is a lack of discussion around it. It is a major topic that should be addressed at every WordCamps where designers and developers are present.

Raghavendra Satish Peri will cover the basics of accessibility & how designers & developers can leverage the tools out there to make their WordPress themes more accessible.

Raghavendra will tell his own story and will show a few demos.

About Raghavendra

Raghavendra brings more than 5yrs of experience to the table in the niche area of Digital Accessibility; has worked with various clients ranging from travel & hospitality, e-commerce, entertainment & media, banking & finance and more.

He currently works with Deque Software as Digital Accessibility Consultant.

When he is not busy with his day job He spends his free time blogging,
training for marathons, listening to audiobooks, traveling & attending
conferences/local meet-ups.

Currently he is focusing his energy on enabling the wider design & developer community in India to understand why digital accessibility & digital equality is important.

Darshan will show you the magic behind permalinks

darshan sawardekarURLs are the means we use to view and share content in WordPress. In this talk Darshan will talk about the URL architecture of WordPress. He’ll review the various permalink tags provided by WordPress and how to choose which ones to use. Finally we’ll look at different approaches to further customize these URLs to best match our content.

Darshan Sawardekar (@_dsawardekar) is a full stack software engineer with a keen interest in Test Driven Development. A relative newcomer to WordPress having only started out a few years ago with the 3.1 release he particularly enjoys working with the Plugin architecture of WordPress.

He is currently a Lead Web Engineer at 10up where he works on some amazing projects and helps scale very High Traffic WordPress installations.

Darshan is also an avid Vim user and plugin Developer. He built the WordPress.vim plugin which brings advanced IDE functionality like Auto-Completion, Syntax Highlighting, WP CLI integration to Vim.

Build it, and they WON’T come – Nirav Mehta shares the hard truths of WordPress plugins

WordPress has more than 50,000 public plugins. Should you build the next one? Will it be worthwhile maintaining it over the next five years? How will people discover your plugin? What activities can suck you away from building great plugins? How do you land up with great reviews for your plugins? Does it make sense to listen to customer feedback? How do you run a business around WordPress plugins and make money?

Those are some of the questions you will get answer for, in Nirav’s session.

nirav casual photoNirav is on an entrepreneurial journey for last 17 years – creating a series of successful (and impactful) businesses on the way. He started India’s first electronic magazine – while still in college, founded a top notch web services company, localized Linux and OpenOffice to Gujarati, authored two books, and took a business from 0 to six figures in two years. And then he ventured into WordPress. This session is going to highlight some of the biggest lessons he’s learned facing the ground realities of building a business around WordPress plugins.

Mahangu Weerasinghe on “The Jugaad Way: WordPress Dev for Non Developers”

mahangu-speakerHailing from Colombo, Sri Lanka, Mahangu first found WordPress when he stumbled upon 0.70 in the dark recesses of #wordpress on Freenode. He has used and provided support for every major release of the software, and is excited about the impact the platform can have on South Asia.
Though once a high school English teacher, his desire to help make online publishing more democratic led him to Automattic, where he now works as a Happiness Engineer. He sincerely believes that stellar support will play a pivotal role in helping WordPress power the next 25% of the web!

Over the past year, Mahangu went from 0 code contributions to 50+ commits. In this talk, he hopes to draw on his experiences getting there and debunk several myths about WordPress programming.
This talk will assume a basic knowledge of HTML/CSS, but nothing further, and will look to draw non-technical people down the rabbit hole of theme and plugin development by showing how you can make WordPress do a lot of cool things without a very deep understanding of PHP or programming in general.

Learn how to retain talent in the Indian WordPress Ecosystem with Saurabh Shukla

Saurabh-Shukla

Saurabh will explain how to create a culture that keeps developers stimulated and satisfied, especially in the view of international players with deeper pockets.

Key points that will be covered:

  • Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and satisfying basic needs (physiological & security)
  • Satisfying needs of love & belonging via culture and organisational structure.
  • Satisfying self-esteem needs via training, 360 degree feedback and recognition.
  • Satisfying self-actualisation needs using the WordPress community.
  • Deepening your shallow pockets by recognising your organisation as an entity and satisfying its needs.

Saurabh writes code and other stuff (insert your preposition here) WordPress. He also likes to talk about it. A former teacher and developer, he’s recently shifted his focus on WordPress education and education with WordPress.

You can follow him on Twitter @actual_saurabh

Michael Eisenwasser will help you increase user engagement using BuddyPress

Modern websites like Facebook and Youtube keep you hooked all day, while you visit most WordPress blogs only on occasion. What’s the difference? Social sites allow you to participate in the creation and sharing of content, so of course you stick around! Learn how to use BuddyPress to turn your own visitors into highly engaged participants, who regularly log into your site to produce content. With this power, you can build sites for collaborative education, social blogging, social commerce, social portfolios and more, all on WordPress.

michaelMichael is a BuddyPress enthusiast, with experience designing and building themes and plugins.

He is co-founder of BuddyBoss, a company that helps entrepreneurs to create successful BuddyPress communities. He previously managed the development and growth of SongLyrics.com, one of the most highly-trafficked websites in the world with over 100 million annual visitors. He has spoken at WordCamp Pune, WordCamp Miami, BuddyCamp Brighton (UK) and several universities about BuddyPress and web design.

Vijay Nallawala is the speaker who will teach you to create awareness for a cause

vijay-nallawalaVijay has built a bustling online community for the bipolar disorder afflicted in India. He’s (literally) written a book on his experiences on how he managed to break the stranglehold of stigma & isolation associated with bipolar disorder. This community has also led to him writing a fortnightly column on Mental Health on DNA Online.

In WordCamp Mumbai Vijay will talk about WordPress for Social Cause and his work on how he has guided people to medical professionals or has motivated them and made them believe in themselves and their ability to deal with the dreaded condition.

Vijay Nallawala (@VijayNallawala) is a digital storyteller who helps people build their personal brands. He’s also the author of ‘A Bipolar’s Journey ~ From Torment to Fulfillment”, Speaker and a Mental Wellness Facilitator.

 

Naoko Takano will tell us how WordPress became successful in Japan despite language barriers

According to W3Techs research, WordPress is the most popular CMS among the Japanese with a 78% market share.

Naoko’s talk will show you important key factors that made this happen. You will not only learn how to flourish your local WordPress community, but also get inspired to spread the word for your own product or service that you love.

A Globalizer at Automattic Naoko Takano is a part of Team Global, which facilitates internationalization and localization of WordPress.com and other products.

She has been involved in the Japanese WordPress community since 2003,
contributing in the areas of translation, documentation, community including  meetup and WordCamp organization.

You can follow her on Twitter @naokomc

Kshitij Patil will explain how to sell your web designing skills

Kshitij-patilWeb designing skills are easier to learn than to sell, is what one could say. A lot of people struggle to sell their skills. Learn from insights Kshitij will offer about how to sell your web designing skills in the Indian context.

Kshitij is a self made entrepreneur who started his journey by selling computer parts during the first year of his college for pocket money. From there he went on to form Zetabyte Solutions Pvt. Ltd., a Web Development Company along with his school mate. He has recently diversified into starting a News Media website kshitijpatil.com to provide daily content from multiple verticals.

Being a salesman at his core, he boasts that he can sell anything to anyone (as long as it’s legal, ofcourse).

You can tweet to him @thekshitijpatil

WordCamp Mumbai 2016 is over. Check out the next edition!