Building, Contributing, and Creating at WordCamp US

The Power of WooCommerce Blocks – Rich Tabor

Hey there, I’m Rich Tabor, a designer, developer, and all around product guy. I have a tip for you. WooCommerce Blocks let you place products, grids, reviews, and more all within the Block Editor, drop in your latest products on the homepage, or show your bestsellers at the bottom of every post. There’s a ton of flexibility for filtering products to show in just about any way you can think of. If you’re using a block theme with full site editing, you can add the mini cart block to your theme’s header, which when clicked on triggers a flyout displaying cart contents.

WooCommerce also has a number of more experimental blocks, like the cart and checkout blocks. Moving the checkout to a block-based experience is challenging, but the reward is that instead of using complicated filters and templates, you can drag and drop checkout components to a page. One last bit to add. The WooCommerce team is actively exploring the interplay of block themes and full site editing within a Woo store. If you haven’t given it a look, try it out with the 2022 block theme and give your feedback for how we can make block-based commerce better.

The future of WordPress is here, and I’m positive that WooCommerce will continue to push forward as the leading open source eCommerce platform for WordPress. If you’re headed to WordCampUS, come check out my session on this New Era of WordPress Themes and how they will drive the WordPress experience forward for both sites and stores. ~ @richard_tabor

Building Diversity in the Community – Cassandra Decker

I’m Cassandra Decker, owner and principal researcher of CRD Impact and a project manager at Thrive Marketing Agency. I have a tip for you, but first, a little context. We have accounted for certain dimensions of diversity within the WordPress community. Even those limited aspects of diversity, we do not handle well. Many of our interactions occur via the written word, which leaves a lot of room for misunderstandings and assuming negative intent. My tip is twofold. First, we need to build diversity in our community that is as nuanced and brilliant as the world in which we live.

In order to serve others in the world, we must ensure that those building the web have the lived experiences of more than just a few. Second, we must do better about embracing diversity and taking practical steps to accept each other and bring equity into our community. Currently, learning diversity refers strongly to those for whom English is a second language and the neurodivergent community. In a stronger, hopefully near-future WordPress community, where we have significantly more diversity in our community, active learning will include people of numerous races, religions, income levels, genders, sexual identity, abilities, and more.

Be intentional about building diversity and be intentional about learning how to embrace the strengths of diversity. If you’re coming to WordCampUS, please check out my session, An Anthropologist, a WordPress Developer, and a Lawyer Walk Into a Bar. It will be on Friday, September 9th, at 1:00 PM Pacific Time. ~ @CRDimpact

Security Bugs and Developers – Robert Rowley

Howdy friends. I am Robert Rowley from Patchstack, and I have a tip for you. Security is easy, or at least it could be. Developers who have the experience and exposure to some of the many security bugs that could exist in code already know this.

While there may be a variety of security bug types out there, the patches that are needed are typically simple, and some could only be one function call away. Over the years, I have reported a fair number of security bugs to developers, open source and not. I can tell when a developer is familiar with security, because they have no problem patching quickly. Unfortunately, I can also tell when the opposite is true too. When a security bug report goes unanswered or is ignored, I see this as a potential learning experience that is being missed by that developer.

I propose that all developers, young and old, junior and senior should embrace security as a topic to study, to discuss, and to collaborate with one another. By sharing notes about what we know about security topics with each other, we will only make the community better. Here’s how, and this is especially useful for anyone in between projects or jobs, especially true if you’re just starting out as a WordPress or WooCommerce developer. Do some source code review. If you spot and confirm a security bug, let the project owners know, respectfully, of course. Because you might just be talking to a new future boss or colleague. This just might be a great way to help the community while building your own resume and proving your knowledge in security as a WooCommerce or WordPress developer.

If you are coming to WordCampUS, please check out my workshop, Making Security Easy for WordPress Plugin and Theme Developers. I will go over a lot of these security bugs and show you how to spot and fix them, so you too can gain the experience needed to spread the word that security is easy. Thank you. ~ @iamlei

Future of Block Themes – Daisy Olsen

Hey there. I’m Daisy Olsen. I’m a WordPress developer advocate from Automattic, and I have a tip for you. Not too long ago, an entirely new way of building themes was introduced to WordPress. These themes are commonly referred to as block themes. As the name suggests, they are themes that are made up almost entirely of blocks. With these themes, it’s possible to create an entire theme with absolutely no PHP at all. Though, depending on your needs, you may still need to use some.

The future of WordPress theme development and design is incredibly exciting to me, as the Gutenberg project continues to move forward with options to create entire websites with blocks, with or without code. I’m so grateful for the opportunity to help to spread the word about block themes. While there’s still much to be done in this area, one small but neat thing that I have just discovered related to WooCommerce is that when using a block theme you can edit the colors used for the flyout for the mini cart feature from the templates area of the site editor. Start by adding the mini cart block to your header or wherever you would like the cart icon to be displayed. Then head over to the template parts area of the site editor to access the mini cart.

While most of the blocks in the mini cart are locked to prevent accidentally breaking things, you can change the colors for text, background, and link using your theme’s color palette, or any other colors you like. I think that’s a cool thing. I was able to create a black background with white text against my white background on my test site, and I thought it was pretty cool. If you will be attending WordCampUS, I would love it if you would check out my workshop, Build Your First Block Theme, where participants will have a chance to build a real working theme from scratch. Thanks. ~ @DaisyOlsen

Be Original, Be Unique – Ronnie Burt

Hi there. I’m Ronnie Burt from Sensei LMS and Automattic and I have a tip for you. Many of us spend a lot of time looking at what our competitors are doing in whatever industry we are in, and beyond. We see something cool on a website or app and we use and try to copy it. I know I’m guilty of this, for sure. I just today saw something in an email campaign from a product outside of WordPress that I use and I liked. I’m already trying to do something similar in a campaign that I’m working on.

My tip to you is to don’t do what I just am doing right now. This strategy can be limiting and is often too little, too late. Markets change, tastes change. What works and doesn’t work changes. It’s also important to always be looking for ways to be original, be unique, and incorporate character into whatever it is that we are working on. I’ll be elaborating on this and sharing more in my session, Gamify Your Content, at WordCampUS. Please check it out. ~ @ronnieburt

An Easy Woo Accessibility Tip – Amber Hinds

Hi. This is Amber Hines from Equalize Digital, and I’m here with you for a tip on how you can make your WooCommerce store better. Have you heard of website accessibility? In the United States and many places around the world, websites are required to work for people with disability.

How can you know if your website works for disabilities? Here’s a quick and easy way to find out. Take your mouse, turn it off, stick it in a drawer and use only your keyboard to navigate your website. That’s the tab key, the return key, maybe the space bar and arrow keys. Can you add a product to the cart? Can you go to different product category pages, or search and filter your products? Can you check out with the keyboard alone? If you can’t do those things, or if you have challenges doing those things, then it’s very likely that people with disabilities will not be able to purchase products on your website.

Obviously, you want the biggest customer base possible, so you want to ensure that your website works for people with disabilities, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but also to ensure that you’re meeting all the website accessibility laws that may apply to you. If you’re interested in learning more about website accessibility testing, or want to have a hands-on experience with screen readers, and keyboard testing, and other automated testing tools, join me at WordCampUS. I’ll be leading a website accessibility testing workshop with Alex Stine on Friday, September 9th. We look forward to seeing you there. Join us and learn more about how you can ensure your website works for everyone. ~ @heyamberhinds

Stay Involved  and Make a Difference – Jonathan Desrosiers

Hi, my name is Jonathan Desrosiers. I’m a full-time sponsored WordPress contributor at Bluehost, and I have a tip for you. My tip is to become more involved in WordPress and WooCommerce. Contributing can be many things, including personally fulfilling, but it also opens many doors. One of my favorite things about contributing is you meet a ton of great people, and many of them are subject-matter experts that you can learn a ton from. Whether it’s a new process, or a new way of thinking, these things can be taken from contributing and put into your everyday life.

Another great part of contributing is you can have a say in how WordPress and WooCommerce evolves. As implementers and builders, you have such valuable feedback to offer the project. This real-world feedback will help shape new features, old features, and fix bugs in a way that benefits the greater community. If you’re coming to WordCampUS, please check out my session, You Can Contribute Too, or stop by Contributor Day to learn how you can get started contributing to the project. ~ @desrosj

Google Shopping Filters – Ronald Gijsel

Hello. My name is Ronald Gijsel, and I work at WooCommerce. I have a tip for you. I’m speaking to you as developers and consultants and maybe freelancers. A little fact that in 2021 the WooCommerce economy was worth $31 billion. That’s similar to a country like Latvia or Estonia. Our statistics tell us that 60% of WooCommerce stores are influenced by people like you. That is a similar GDP to a country like Iceland or Cambodia. That’s a lot of power. How can we as developers empower local stores and give them a chance to compete against the tech giants?

Well, one easy way is by using a feature in Google Shopping which allows the user to filter by what’s nearby. As long as you have your address of the location of where the item is located and your catalog is uploaded, you should appear pretty close to what the searcher is looking for. If you know what your acquisition costs are, set up a return on acquisition spend, and you know the next time somebody in your locality is looking for a particular item that maybe they want to collect on that day, you know you’ll appear right on top. You can add labels to your display or in stock today, available, pick up or collect. It’s a very easy way to stand out and compete against the giants.

Come and see my talk on Saturday at WordCampUS. The title of the talk, it’s a lightning talk, is Empowering Local Stores: Learn from the Tech Giants While Staying Local. See you then. ~ @Just2Ronald