You may or may not have read about our prior trips to WordCamp, but for those uninformed, WordCamp is an informal convention organized by WordPress users and contributors in various cities internationally. It includes swag, presenters, snacks, and vendors presenting their products or representing their company.
Our most recent trip took us once again to Montclair, New Jersey in our never-ending pursuit of new ways to improve our business, both for us and for our clients. We’re proud to be a part of a community so dedicated to improving functionality for developers and users!
The life of the WordCamp party, you could say, is the presentations. Filing into a big auditorium and getting a chance to learn again–except instead of droning lessons on trigonometry or calculus, we’re educated by our peers on how to present our best selves online.
One of our favorite presentations was David Zimmerman’s “Things Well-Meaning WordPress Developers Do That Hurts SEO in 2023.” SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, describes the practice of curating a website’s design and content in such a fashion as to make it more appealing to search engines such as Google and Bing. With proper SEO, your website will rank higher when searching for related topics on the Web. We learned a lot about how to avoid common SEO pitfalls.
Another useful talk was Gen Herres’ “Introduction to Web Accessibility.” Accessibility is important for a website because if it can’t be easily used by everyone, it may as well not even be there, and with the recent trend of predatory litigation, having a fully accessible website is even more vital.
Those were just two of the many informative presentations we attended at WordCamp Montclair.
While the next stop for Kristy, Aaron and myself is WordCamp US in August, our next blog will feature our project manager Althea, who recently had the privilege of attending a WordCamp in her home country of The Philippines!
