Mermaids Seafood Restaurant is a local Northwest Arkansas favorite! Mermaids is hosting our speaker dinner and Friday night welcome reception at their location at 2217 N. College Ave.
Their gorgeous restaurant sits back from the road a bit but is easy to know you’re in the right spot because of the painted mermaid pig outside and the classic black awning. A little confused why a seafood restaurant has a fiberglass pig outside? It was part of the PIGSHibition project that helped promote the Ozark Literacy Council.
Mermaids has a lovely dining area and several event rooms that are spacious and inviting. Co-owners Chef Todd and Nickki Golden have created a true experience in their restaurant with delectable food and a charming atmosphere. Not a fan of seafood? No worries! They have a variety of non-seafood items on all their menus. Mermaids also features one of the most popular catering menus in the area.
We hope you’ll join us at Mermaids Seafood Restaurant Friday night for the welcome reception!
Jetpack is a plugin for WordPress.org sites that brings the functionality of WordPress.com to self-hosted sites.
Huh?
A lot of WordPress users don’t know about Jetpack, but it includes a lot of fun and fancy stuff, and it’s free.
What does Jetpack provide? Site stats, for one thing. If Google Analytics is too rich for your blood, Jetpack’s site stats give you a handy overview of how many visitors you have, how they found you, and what they read while they were there.
My personal favorite is Beautiful Math, which allows you to add mathematical formulae easily and attractively. But there are also features like social sharing buttons, a carousel, Publicize and Enhanced Distribution, both of which share content automatically, and Related Posts, all of which might be just what you need.
There are in fact 27 different cool tools included in Jetpack. You could seriously cut down on the number of plugins you use if you use Jetpack instead, and you could reduce compatibility issues as well.
And you’ll connect your site with WordPress.com. There’s a lot of support and connection over there which we self-hosted folks may be missing out on.
If you haven’t tried Jetpack — and let’s be honest, most of us probably haven’t tried all 27 of the features even if we’ve played around with it a little — it’s time to give it a shot.
WordCamp Fayetteville has a varied schedule of speakers in the Developer and Designer tracks this year.
Tammy Hart from Uptrending kicks things off with a Designer/Developer session on building modular WordPress themes. Tammy has spoken at WordCamp Fayetteville in the past and is looking forward to being back in town.
Sky Shabatura is up next with a Designer/Developer session on the Customizer, which is becoming increasingly important to WordPress themes. If you’re building a theme for sale, it’s a must, and even though there has been a lot of controversy about it in the WordPress developer community, it offers a lot to love. “Customizer? I barely know ‘er!” is Sky’s title.
Sean Morrison is up next with the last of the Designer/Developer combined sessions, bringing some wisdom on SEO. Content may be king, but designers and developers can actually do a lot for their clients in this area.
After lunch and the keynote session, Daniel Herron invites designers to think more deeply about the creative content surrounding us and how we can use it to our best advantage. Daniel is with Scout Retail here in Northwest Arkansas.
Dave Navarro compares and contrasts a whole bunch of responsive plugins and brings some new ideas to the mobile first vs. responsive controversy in the Developer track. Dave works with radio and manages a large number of websites, so he comes to WordPress from a different perspective.
Tom Hapgood shares a live demo of responsive techniques in the Designer track next. Hapgood is a custom WordPress website designer with Haden Interactive and also teaches web design at the University of Arkansas.
Michael McCranie of Type 3 Web Design in Bentonville knows how to speed up a website, and he’s going to let us all in on his secrets in the Developer track. McCranie’s current focus is on WordPress sites for small business, but he has a varied development background.
Next in the Developer track, Sean Borsodi says, “Protect Yo Self Or Wreck Yo Self” with the REST API. This is the Developer track session on security — there is a security session in the Business track as well, but the focus is different in each.
Last but not least, Eric Huber of Blue Zoo Creative explains to designers how to avoid the robot apocalypse through clever strategies designed to keep your robots busy. Eric works with business and nonprofit clients, helping them meet important goals like avoiding the robot apocalypse.
Everyone can attend any session, but these sessions assume quite a bit of technical knowledge.
Today is the last day to register for WordCamp Fayetteville and still get a tshirt. We’re so excited about all the features we have planned!
Even today we got more swag to share with you. Anyone who attends WordCamp knows how fun it is to get the official WordPress buttons in all the colors.
Haden Interactive is a content-focused WordPress shop based in Fayetteville. They’ve built websites for local organizations like Medical Associates of Northwest Arkansas, Economic Opportunity Agency, Clark Partners Realty Group, Multi-craft Contractors (forthcoming), and Uncle Sam’s Safari Outfitters, as well as for remote clients like Lockton Insurance and The Puerto Rico Report.
As content and strategy specialists, they’ve worked with Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and the Walton Arts Center, as well as an Oklahoma goat farm and a wide range of businesses on four continents.
In addition to a far-flung client base, they also have a far-flung team, with team members living in Shreveport, Louisiana; Ft. Collins, Colorado; Kansas City, Missouri; and Cavite, Philippines as well as in Fayetteville and Lowell, Arkansas.
Everyone on the team is dedicated to creating a web presence for clients that meets their goals, from hardworking websites to creative approaches to social media. Haden Interactive also provides analytics and SEO strategy as well as professional blogging and content marketing.
Rebecca Haden, Josepha Haden, and Tom Hapgood are all speaking at WordCamp Fayetteville 2015, while Rosie Haden and Julianne Darnell are serving as volunteers.
The 101 Track is not a highway in California but WordCamp Fayetteville’s version of freshman classes, like Bio 101. For people curious about creating their own website or blog, these sessions are for you. WordPress, an open-source platform*, also has the advantage of being largely free. That, and it’s both stable and innovative.
First, and this is important, you’ll find on checking in Saturday, Aug. 1, (advance registration required) a light continental breakfast in the lobby of the Donald W. Reynolds Center for Enterprise Development at the University of Arkansas.
The track begins at 9 a.m. with the 101 of the 101, “Intro to WordPress,” led by Fayetteville-based freelance writer Ben Pollock, who also is the coordinator for the beginner classes. The session will cover the basics of using WordPress to create — for free — both blogs and conventional websites for personal and business projects. WordPress.com will be the basis of demonstrations to create a site then create individual pages and posts. WordPress.org — and there are differences with WordPress-dot-com and -dot-org — details will be integrated into the presentation.
At 10, Neal Colston of Paze Interactive will discuss “Essentials about Themes and Plugins,” the building blocks of your WordPress website. Themes are sets of templates for the overall look and features of your WordPress website. Plug-ins are special apps to customize your site.
People exploring website building often see advice or marketing about SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Angela Belford of The Belford Group gives the primer “SEO for Beginners.” Basic settings in WordPress are a great start in optimizing SEO, and primary strategies that Angela will present are wise to keep in mind as you develop your site.
Noon means lunch, included in your registration. Afterward is the 2015 WordCamp keynote address, by Josepha Haden Chomposy.
Beginning the afternoon 101 sessions is Jamie Smith with “Writing in WordPress for Beginners.” Jamie, an independent writer for businesses and organizations, explains, “Writing for online audiences is different than writing for print in several ways including different patterns and SEO considerations. This session will give an overview of how online audiences read content, best practices for working through WordPress to get the best SEO and reader-friendly content, and best practices for writing engaging content.”
The last formal 101 session belongs to Christopher Spencer, a content strategist for the University of Arkansas, with “Beginning Google Analytics.” Christopher explains, “The first step to solid content strategy is looking at the behavior of visitors.” He’ll explain how to install Google Analytics into your site and basics to understanding the data.
The beginners track concludes with “WP101 Q and A.” If you didn’t already have lots of questions about WordPress, you surely will by 4 o’clock. Bring in those curiosities and confusion, and experts will be on hand to answer them. Our panelists will include teachers of the 101 programs.
*Open Source — what’s that? Below is a little video with the basics, “What is Open Source, Explained in Lego.” Open-source code is in wide use — Mozilla’s Firefox browser is an example — and it has historical underpinnings going back to Benjamin Franklin.
Entrepreneurs and established businesses alike have a valuable tool in WordPress. From having a powerful, effective website to utilizing a corporate blog to increase SEO, businesses can use WordPress to grow their business.
WordCamp Fayetteville is an excellent opportunity to meet new people. At the conference, everyone you will meet shares a common interest with you: WordPress. Knowing this may help you to feel less apprehensive if you tend to be introverted. It also helps to know that the WordPress community is a friendly and welcoming group of people. Still, it can be intimidating to enter a large room full of people whom you may not know.
WordCamp will be a little sweeter this year as sponsor Kyya Chocolate joins us as a Subscriber Sponsor.
Kyya Chocolate is Arkansas’ first bean-to-bar chocolatier that makes artisan, hand-crafted chocolate in their Elm Springs manufacturing facility. They make the country’s first single-origin, Uganda dark chocolate syrup, cocoa powder, baker’s chocolate, and of course their delicious chocolate bars and bon-bons. They will be providing free hand-crafted, imprinted chocolate dessert bars for WordCamp Fayetteville 2015.
Besides making some of the best chocolate you’ve ever tasted, Kyya focuses on making lives better for other people. Their goal is to develop relationships with 40 small farmers in countries where many chocolate companies don’t go to find their cocoa beans. Ten percent of Kyya’s profits go back into projects that support the communities where they purchase their chocolate, which they buy at higher than fair-trade prices. They also plan to help farmers discover more sustainable farming practices.
Kyya sells special edition chocolate at their facility in Elm Springs and their four main origin bars (Ecuador, Madagascar, Uganda, Guatemala) at coffee shops and stores throughout Northwest Arkansas. They also have a growing retail base in Tulsa, Little Rock, Kansas City and other parts of Arkansas.
More Swag from our sponsor DreamHost has arrived! We’re grateful that they not only sponsor WordCamp Fayetteville but provide great stuff to take home with you.
You only have one week to reserve your ticket and still get a t-shirt. Only a couple weeks after that to register without a t-shirt!
For $35 you get a full day of learning and networking about how to better use WordPress, a free reception Friday night, social on Saturday, and the Sunday Jam Session.
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Beginning the afternoon 101 sessions is 
