Past Meetups

October 1, 2019

Growing WordPress by Reducing Complexity & Fragmentation

In this talk we discuss 1) the nature of WordPress growth, 2) how reducing complexity & fragmentation are keys to accelerating growth and 3) walk through examples of this with Gutenberg.

What’s in it for you?

Develop a better understanding of WordPress growth and the direction WordPress is going so you can:
– Users: Make better decisions for your own website.
– Freelancers & Agencies: Make better decisions for client projects.
– Plugin & Theme Developers: Make better decisions for your business.

This talk is for Beginner/General Audiences (non-technical).

About the Speaker

Gabe Mays is the Head of WordPress at GoDaddy and has been using WordPress for over 10 years. Prior to GoDaddy he founded two WordPress based startups and served as a Captain in the Marine Corps for 8 years.


September 10, 2019

Ready! Filter! Action!

One of the most powerful (and proper) ways to modify WordPress core, themes, or plugins is through the use of action and filter hooks. Come learn what these hooks are, how to find them, and how to use them effectively to alter the default behavior of WordPress core, themes, and plugins to make them do our bidding. We will be diving into code, so experience with PHP is recommended.

About the Speaker

Amanda Giles has been hooked on building websites ever since she built her own on her college’s server in 1994. In 2009 she got turned onto WordPress and now building custom WordPress themes and plugins is her primary business. She consults on her own and as part of Spark Development – a WordPress development-focused agency in NH. When she’s not building sites or running a WordPress meetup in Seacoast NH, she also write and performs spoken word as well as organizes the Portsmouth Halloween Parade. Learn more at https://amandagiles.com.


July 2, 2019

WordPress Roulette – Q&A

What are you curious about?

This talk will not have a specific topic. Instead, we’ll spin the wheel and answer questions submitted by attendees ahead of time and engage in discussions about how you can relate the topics back to your site and/or business!

About the Speaker

Jonathan Desrosiers has been using WordPress since 2007 to build sites covering the entire spectrum of local businesses to enterprises and large universities. He has been a WordPress Core contributor since 2013, and a Core committer since 2018. He is also the WordCamp Boston 2019 lead organizer, and an organizer for the Boston WordPress Meetups. He currently works as a WordPress Developer at Bluehost, where a majority of his time is spent contributing to WordPress Core and related projects.


June 4, 2019

Legal Challenges for Online Businesses

When you are doing business on-line, you face a range of legal challenges. Infringers might try to steal your brand. Copyright trolls might try to extort payments from you. Under recent changes in the law, state tax authorities might try to do the same. Government agencies might examine how you pay influencers or protect data. Do you know whether you can use that photograph? Attorney Gene Curry will offer practical advice on avoiding online traps for the unwary.

About the Speaker

Gene Curry is an attorney whose practice is devoted to providing corporate and regulatory advice to entrepreneurs, artists, and business managers and owners, with particular emphasis on the needs of clients operating in the digital environment. He serves as General Counsel to the Cape Cod Technology Council and Chair of the Council’s Infrastructure Committee. Gene is on the Board of Directors of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce and the Cape Cod Blue Economy Foundation, Inc.


May 7, 2019

CSS Grid & Flexbox

This presentation is on the basics of flex-box and CSS grid and is for the Front-end Developer or anyone who knows markup languages, CSS, and JS.

You don’t actually need to know any JS. It will be a somewhat technical talk but, there will be information that non developers will find useful as well.


April 2, 2019

Meta and Schema: Defining the Content about your Content

You know how your content looks on your own website, on desktops, laptops and phones, but how does it look when it leaves your site and appears in search results and on social media sites? Using open source protocols like Schema.org, Open Graph, and W3C specified meta data to markup your content in a structured way, you can help boost your content’s chances of outperforming its competition.

We’ll demystify what information Google, Facebook and Twitter are looking for from your site, and how to validate the markup on your site.

This session will present a whirlwind, two fisted, no holds barred, data filled session that has almost too much information about implementing Schema.org schemas for structured data and current best practice meta tags in WordPress using plugins, themes, and widgets.

Attendees will come away from the session knowing how to implement and test Schema.org schemas, and current meta tag best practices in WordPress to gain search features in Google and enhance the look of your content on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.


March 5, 2019

How to Skip 4 Years of Design School in 1 Hour

Have you seen that new commercial for WordPress.com? Don’t they make it look so easy for anyone to just grab a few photos, write some text, and bingo! have a polished, professional looking website in just a few clicks?

Well, they got the technical ease of creating a website part right, but what about all the other decisions about the visual design that go into creating an effective and pleasing website? If you are new to designing, you’ve probably figured out by now that there’s a lot of effort that goes into making something look effortless.

So what’s the secret? Talent? Nope. It’s about using the foundational tools all designers learn and hone their craft around: the principles and elements of design. And I’m going to tell you all their secrets.

We’ll go over the different principles and elements of design that are used behind any effective visual communication—whether it’s a website, direct mail, social graphics, email newsletters, or your own business card. I’ll show you how to use these principles and elements to your advantage, when to stick to the rules, and when to break them. So whether you are a one-person shop, a marketing manager, a content creator, a programmer who wants to venture in the front-end, or someone who wants to better communicate their ideas to a designer—having these foundational tools in your tool belt will take your design from blah to ta-da!


February 5, 2019

Getting Started with Yoast SEO

Sorry for the video quality, it didn’t capture the screen well. We have a new camera on the way!

For February’s meetup, Shane Skinner of Devadigm (devadigm.com) will provide a demonstration of how to install and setup the Yoast SEO plugin and how to optimize each page and post. He’ll share best practices and tips for success that, when utilized effectively, should help improve your websites’ SERP.

Yoast SEO is a WordPress plugin that helps you start optimizing your website to improve your SERP (Search Engine Ranking Position). From the initial step-by-step setup to on page features such as focus keywords, meta title, and meta description, Yoast SEO provides a user-friendly way to insert the information needed for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

About the Speaker

Shane Skinner owns and operates a web development company called Devadigm [Dev-uh-dime]. Devadigm works with small businesses to develop the paradigm of their web presence. We work with clients to create a consistent, relevant, and successful brand message across all their utilized digital platforms. Our primary focus is to solve problems and help clients exceed their goals. He is a fan of the WordPress CMS platform and a small business advocate, and teaches classes on WordPress and other aspects of Web Presence. Shane enjoys spending time with his wife and their five children and watching NFL football.


December 18, 2018

Getting Started with Gutenberg

Gutenberg is the new site editing experience going into WordPress core in the 5.0 release.

In a meetup earlier this year we covered a high-level introduction to Gutenberg. In this meetup we’ll go deeper into the new experience and get some hands-on practice on the basics of using it.


October 11, 2018

Website Accessibility: A Crash Course

In 2017, Winn Dixie was sued by a disabled website user for having an inaccessible website. The judge presiding over the case sided with the plaintiff and ordered Winn Dixie to conform to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 AA (WCAG 2.0 AA). This remediation cost the company over $250,000.

Over the course of 2017, over 800 more cases were filed against companies with websites that were inaccessible to disabled users. Many of these companies bore the cost of expensive remediation.

So what does it mean to be WCAG 2.0 AA compliant? What are the risks of not being compliant? And what tools are available to help make your website more compliant?


September 13, 2018

WordPress Happiness Bar & Open Discussion

Happiness Bar

The Happiness Bar is for WordPress users to help eachother with problems and answer questions. Stuck on a WordPress problem? Need help finding the right WordPress plugin or theme? Not sure what kind of hosting you need? We can help!

Open Discussion

This is an open forum for meetup members (especially advanced WordPress users) to discuss topics of interest.


August 9, 2018

How to Pick the Perfect Plugin

How do you pick the perfect plugin? The vast WordPress plugin ecosystem is what makes WordPress great. But with over 50,000 plugins, how do you know which plugins to use? In this meetup you’ll learn how to find & evaluate plugins and indicators of a good plugin.

Our presenter, Jonathan Desrosiers, is a seasoned WordPress veteran and a WordPress Core contributor at Bluehost, one of the largest WordPress hosts in the world.


July 12, 2018

Intro to Gutenberg: The New WordPress Editor

Gutenberg is the new site editing experience going into WordPress core in the 5.0 release. This meetup will be a high level introduction to Gutenberg. Until then, learn more about Gutenberg here: https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/