Just off a busy but enjoyable weekend of WordCamp Atlanta @wordcampatl. I was able to attend the friday developer workshop and the Saturday sessions of the conference. Though I was a speaker at WordCamp Atlanta in 2012 (From Photoshop PSD to WordPress Theme), 2013 (Your firstborn child theme. Child themes 101+2), and 2014 (Custom Post Types or Choose Your Own Adventure), I couldn’t make it in 2015, I wasn’t selected this year as a speaker. However, I was also able to volunteer to help out and to take some photos and staff the Happiness Room. I also volunteered a couple weeks ago to speak at a WordPress meetup group (Modifying Your Theme’s Design – Learning CSS), so I feel like I was able to still give back.
Overall
TLDR; It was a great conference and like always, talking to people was the best part, though there were some great informative and even entertaining sessions I attended.
In summary, I can feel my brain growing. Knowledge and friends gained. Until next time! #wcatl @wordcampatl #wordcamp
— Brad Iroff (@bradiroff) March 20, 2016
Beginner WordPress Development – Workshop
The workshop was a great way for many to get started with WordPress development. Micah and Aaron went over from the basics of development through child-theming. I stepped up to help others get started, since we were all installing mamp to get a local wordpress install setup. Even with the famous 5 minute install it was taking most people a long time to get setup, though we can blame the wifi for most of the issues I believe. We then cloned Micah’s child theme demo from github into our theme dir and he get started through the demo. Follow along by reading his blog post length commit messages. It was great to help out! I even learned a few tricks about some WordPress hooks, the loop and template hierarchy.
I’ll share one tip many might not have realized when dealing with child themes. The difference between get_template_directory_uri and get_stylesheet_directory_uri.
get_template_directory_urirefers to the parent theme whileget_stylesheet_directory_urirefers to the child theme
I’ll post an update on Day 2 when I’ve had time to digest some more of the great presentations.