Talks

Over the past 5 years, I’ve given talks and workshops at national and international tech conferences as well as local and virtual user group meetups. I love sharing what I’ve learned along the way!

Below is a list of talks I’ve given. See my Joind.in profile for some talk reviews and Sessionize for other talks I’ve given.

Enjoy the resources! ☺️



  • Serverless Services for Serverful CMSes

    Serverless Services for Serverful CMSes

    As static and headless WordPress sites become more common and mainstream, it’s important to know how to build solutions for dynamic actions these sites make. Common examples are form submissions, site search, real-time updates, etc. How can you build dynamic solutions for static sites? Enter serverless functions and services! If you’ve built custom plugins or…

    See abstract…

  • A Hike Through the WordPress Database

    A Hike Through the WordPress Database

    Have you ever wondered where the content on your WordPress lives? What about the settings of your WordPress. Or have you ever wondered how taxonomies related to posts? Or… maybe you’ve never wondered any of this… 😂 🤓

    See abstract…

  • Wait, wuuut? Where did my CMS go?!

    Wait, wuuut? Where did my CMS go?!

    Static, headless, decoupled, Jamstack, serverless (geez, are there any more names for this stuff?!) sites have already made their way into the mainstream of WordPress and other CMS development. While these sites offer speed, scalability, and security, there are also inherent pitfalls and “gotchas” to be aware of when building in this ways for WordPress…

    See abstract…

  • An Ideal WordPress Workflow Development & Deployment Workflow

    An Ideal WordPress Workflow Development & Deployment Workflow

    I know the title is a mouthful, but, this was a lot of fun to put together 🤓… This talk was for Certified Fresh Events (CFE.dev), and this was the abstract: At over 40% of the web, WordPress maintains a massive footprint on the Internet. While this platform, with its 20+ years of code, can…

    See abstract…

  • Using WordPress as an API

    Using WordPress as an API

    Wait, what’s an API and why would I use WordPress as an API? What the heck is a BYOFE, and what does it have to do with WP? Why are there so many acronyms?!?! 😉

    See abstract…

  • WP101 for Developers

    WP101 for Developers

    This is a 3 hour workshop for the YWeb cohort. It’s a developer-focused introduction to WordPress. We cover the following with hands-on activities:

    See abstract…

  • WordPress and Laravel: The Hows, Whys, and Intersections

    WordPress and Laravel: The Hows, Whys, and Intersections

    Do you work with WordPress and wonder if there are other tools and frameworks where you could leverage your PHP or JS knowledge? Should you be using WordPress for all your projects? Do you work with Laravel and wonder why some developers still choose (and love) to work on WordPress? Come along on the journey…

    See abstract…

  • Less Snark, More Spark

    Less Snark, More Spark

    How can you be the developer people want to hire, work with, and promote? Good question! Abstract: Even the most introverted, self-sufficient developer interacts with other people. Sometimes these folks are a joy to work with, sometimes not. Sometimes as a developer, you might be the difficult one to work with (we’ve all been that…

    See abstract…

  • Building and Deconstructing a Gutenberg Block

    Building and Deconstructing a Gutenberg Block

    This presentation walks through the new Block Editor in WordPress, covering: what comes out of the box from WordPress Core plugins that will add blocks to your site importing demo content styling blocks with CSS creating your own blocks with Advanced Custom Fields and ES5 to ESNext.

    See abstract…

  • Templating in PHP with REST APIs

    Templating in PHP with REST APIs

    Here are the slides for the presentation I gave at Madison Area Technical College’s Advanced PHP class in the spring of 2019 semester. The main objective is to learn some templating principles and see how partial templates can be managed in a larger project, and how templates can work with data, specifically received from REST…

    See abstract…

  • More Secure API Requests with WordPress Helper Functions

    More Secure API Requests with WordPress Helper Functions

    Making API requests with JavaScript is something web developers do everyday. API services often require you to keep API keys out of the browser or route your requests through a server to secure the request.

    See abstract…

  • Customizing WordPress

    Customizing WordPress

    Everyone wants a unique web presence. WordPress makes this easy by allowing us to customize our website to our heart’s content.

    See abstract…

  • Talk: Getting Started with WP-CLI

    Talk: Getting Started with WP-CLI

    Do you work with or maintain WordPress sites and wonder if there’s an easier way to keep things updated? Are you looking for a way to automate a site setup, turning a five minute install into a 5 second install? (Well, at least less than 5 minutes) Are you bogged down by repetitive tasks that…

    See abstract…