WordCamp Toronto 2018 is coming to the North York Civic Centre [North York station right on the Yonge Subway line] on Saturday Dec 1st. And as always it is crammed with attractive sessions that makes for Sophie’s choice decisions on what to attend to immediately  and what to wait for their appearance on WordPress.TV.

Session Choices

This year the theme of the sessions is Gutenberg and the Future of WordPress. And the timing could not be better because at least fixed feature Gutenberg RC will be out on the Web. This means users will be able to figure out what features are in the release of WordPress 5. And even more important,  how existing UI infrastructure of the  Classic Editors, PageBuilders, Custom Post Type tools and Multi-Purpose themes will work in this new Gutenberg world.

So my first session choice is Our Beloved Plugins and Gutenberg with Thiago Loureiro at 11:30AM. Thiago addresses the very concerns I have just listed above and so it will be interesting to hear what the Gutenberg prospects are for a nearly a dozen high impact plugins. WordPress is underoing sever change stress because Gutenberg and the React.js coding structure it uses imposes a new layer on top of PHP/MySL  that WordPress developers currently work with. And as seen here, Gutenberg is a lot less capable of doing what the ageBuilder tools like Themify Builder and Visual Composer that work in tandem with the Gutenberg editor. This is a major Gutenberg shortcoming. 

Second choice is CSS Grid, Gutenberg and the future of Layouts with Juan Pablo Gomez at 2:30PM This is is a revolution in UI Design as profound as the transformation of PageBuilders to Sitebuilders with  the combination of PageBuilders with multiPurpose themes. What CSS Grid brings to the design table is responsive blocks, two dimensional positioning [both horizontal and vertical control] and deliberately overlapping blocks providing 3rd dimessional  z-index layering with transparency control. Designers are already taking advantage of this deliberate overlap and resizing possible. Now to see which plugins and PageBuilder expedite this CSS legerdemain.

Third choice is Making websites accessible and complying with the AODA with Sandy Feldman. This  is partly dictated by the necessity to become up to date on AODA and other Accessibility reuirements as the Ontario Government time frame on implementation for all websites looms closer in March 2021. But there is a second payoff – many of he Accessibility neds broadly serve better UI Design.

Fourth choice is Current Trends in SEO For Businesses and Bloggers with Brian Rotsztein at 3:30PMwhich look s at the fast changing SEO scene. This is a tough assignment because the new players are beyond keywords and CPPC. But the new players like conversions enhancing notifications and chatbots are themselves changing. It will be interesting to see if Brian has this dance straightened out.

Summary

At WordCamp  leave open some time for the Happiness Bar, chats with fellow WordCampers and keeping the ears close to the ground on what is working well in the WordPress world. And now with WordCamp available for free [to a maximum of 350 attendees – first come , first served for registrants], there is.every reason to take part in the annual WordPress conference or see the results  on WordPress.tv.