In early May, Dustyn attended the best WordPress developer conference called LoopConf at the Westin Lake Las Vegas in Las Vegas, NV. LoopConf is a developer focused WordPress conference with workshops from Wednesday, May 6th to the 8th. LoopConf differs from WordPress’s WordCamp events because it is much more focused on the most recent development topics instead of catering to all users.
Dustyn found out about LoopConf after seeing it mentioned on Twitter by a leader in the WordPress community. After looking at their website and seeing the speakers and talks that were going to be at this conference, he knew it would be beneficial to attend. People attending varied from WordPress Core Developers to Freelance Developers/Designers all there for the same purpose – learning the latest technologies and staying up to date with industry best practices.
There were a variety of topics presented, from Responsible Web Design to Building JavaScript Apps with the WP JSON API. Dustyn said his favorite topic was from one of the Workshops by Jack Lenox entitled “Building Themes with the REST API”. This was his favorite because it was a very in-depth talk on how the upcoming WP API can be used to create apps or websites. Dustyn explained that this will change the way WordPress is used by giving developers the opportunity to use WordPress to create single page apps. Using the API also allows for sites or apps to work offline and respond quicker than a normal WordPress site, resulting in faster load times. Although the WordPress REST API is not out yet, it should be released by the end of the year.
Another session he found to be most useful for LaunchDM’s current workload would be the session by Ilya Grigorik entitled “Performance Guide RAIL”. This session revolved around optimal loading times and utilizing load time. One of the biggest takeaways was how to compensate for a site that takes too long to load, and how to possibly reduce that time by maximizing the load time for different actions. Also, if an in-site action happens too fast, there are ways to show a user that something happened so they are not confused.
Overall, Dustyn’s overall LoopConf experience was very positive and he brought back some new techniques and improvements to LaunchDM’s current process. All the attendees and speakers were very nice and willing to help or answer any questions attendees might have had. All in all, he would recommend any developer to take a look into future conferences in order to learn more about WordPress.
