This page is being built to showcase resources reviewed from our in-person and online meetups. After the conclusion of an event, within a few days our mission is to collect resources shared from the event and create an ongoing list for future reference. The Burbs WP group hopes you will find this useful.
November – An Internal Link Srategy | October – Child Themes | September – Reed Gustow Memorial
August – Newsletter Automation | July Accesibility
Having an Internal Linking Strategy
By: Matthew Lewis – 11/11/24
A presentation by Matthew Lewis about improved usage of inline links to improve search engine optimization for WordPress (or other technologies).
The tools highlighted include:
Useful Links:
This presentation is based on a video from Delos Inc on the subject of Internal Links Matter available here.
The main premise of this talk is highlighting the benefits of placing links within the text of your websites to increase how Google or other search systems can crawl, catalog and share your website. Without any links your pages can be considered orphaned and may only be accessed by those with whom a direct link has been shared.
A key consideration then is to make use of descriptive text in various locations that can prompt search systems to build connections directly to deeper content within our websites and can directly increase relevant traffic to those pages.
Building Child Themes (simplified)
By Jonny Shaw – October 2024
This presentation goes through a process to make it easier to understand what a Child Theme does and what it actually is (in terms of files, directories and how it appears once loaded to your WordPress installation.
In general a child theme is a small set of “theme” files which you can tag as your theme in your WordPress installation. The convenience is that the Child “inherits” the traits of it’s parent theme based on links encoded within the child theme files. Behcause of this, all the traits of your parent theme control the behavior and appearance of elements within your site, unless you over write those details within the child theme.
There are a couple of pre-requisites to hanfdling themes at this level where you should understand code basics, Basic HTML, CSS & scripting along with understanding file transfers via FTP using a tool or command line UI.
This is the link to my presentation on Building a Simple WordPress Child Theme.
(not my best work, I apologize but the general details are there)
Next I’ll include a set of Child Theme files which can be used if you want to test how they work. There were those in the meeting who also suggested plugins available to quickly create child themes. Using such a plugin might be a great way to install and familiarize yourself with Child themes but I’m sure it’s still also a good idea to know how they work as it’s fairly straightforward if you understand the foundational concepts.
Here is a link to a working set of child theme files primed for upload and editing to your liking. If you want more information on this idea or presentation please visit me at StormDesigns.com.
Reed Gustow
This month we arrived at the sad news that a very honored and valued member of pour local WordPress community had passed away. Reed was a gentle and kind man and everyone liked him. He made the effort directly to me to assist in learning new wordpress skills that have served me for years for which I’m hugely appreciative. We miss you Reed Gustow.
– September 2024
It was with very heavy hearts that we collected this month at Ryan’s Pub in West Chester to celebrate the life of this gentleman who will be greatly missed in this community and certainly in others as well.
A Memorial to Reed from the Philly WordPress Group posted to Linkedin
A Memorial on WordPress.org sharing his accomplishments in the WordPress Community
Newsletter Automation
By: Matthew Lewis – 8/12/24
A presentation by Matthew Lewis on creating and managing newsletters in a manner which integrates your WordPress site and data into the newsletter publishing and content. As suggested the presentation highlights different aspects of choosing and effectively using a newsletter solution and how to incorporate and automate it for your website and business use cases.
Web Resources
The tools highlighted include:
Brevo: Link – An email/Newsletter publishing platform.
Twilio: Link – Tool for integrating SMS text sending from your WordPress website data.
Litmus*: Link – A tool for testing email layout via various mail clients.
WordPress Plugins
Gravity Forms: Link – An integrated way to share data collected by the website into your email/Newsletter publishing.
Accessible Design and Development
By: Andy Stitt – 7/15/2024
This presentation is geared to providing a foundational and basic understanding of accessibility best practices, some legal framework and tools to assist in making sites more accessible to those with disabilities whether those are temporary, situational or permanent. The slide deck for this presentation is located here.
Andy’s Background:
Web Developer and Accessibility Lead, Government Information Center, Delaware Department of State.
Front-end developer since 2008; WordPress-focused since 2016; accessibility specialist since 2021.
For more information Andy Stitt can be reached at his website here.
Web Resources
The Web AIM Million Report: Link
Testing Tools
Web Aim Wave: Testing Tool: Link
Axe Dev Tools: Testing Tools: Link
ANDI: Testing Tools: Link
Trusted Tester Certification: Link
Code Libraries
Deque Code Library: Link
Inclusive Components by Heydon Pickering: Link
WAI ARIA Authoring Practices Guide Patterns: Link
Plugins
There were no WordPress specific plugins shared during this meeting. What was shared is to be very cautious of plugins that mask your content and promise “accessibility” by virture of a masking layer or similar technology. According to the speaker these can create additional problems and can’t possibly serve all accessibility issues correctly. Additionally they can cause unpredictable issues with design, function and layout.