Session: Ten Features of Jetpack You Can’t Live Without
Track: Sunday Workshop
Time: Sunday, December 14, 2:30 PM

Here’s how Suzette describes her session:

“Since its inception from WordPress.com Stats several years ago, the Jetpack suite of plugins has matured into a well-rounded group of helpful tools that you’ll wonder how you could ever live without. A must for any self-hosted WordPress site owner, this session will cover how to leverage the top ten most useful social media features and the WordPress.com cloud-powered awesomeness to collect stats and provide feedback, such as the contact form, related posts, the top posts and pages widget, and more.

This 75 minute hands-on presentation with Q & A will cover the basics of how to get started with and how to use some of the awesome modules that come with Jetpack. Jetpack requires a WordPress.org account and a publicly accessible WordPress website, which will be necessary to participate in the class lessons. Others will be encouraged to ask questions and take notes for later.”

About Suzette Franck
Suzette Franck has been in web development for over twenty years; she started making hand-coded HTML websites on geocities with font tags and tables back in 1995. Since then, she has taught herself CSS, Sass, PHP, MySQL, as well as becoming a WordPress expert; evangelizing and presenting at over twenty-three WordCamps across the country and multiple WordPress meetups in Southern California where she resides, about all aspects of building and maintaining sites on WordPress.

Suzette is passionate about WordPress the application as well as the WordPress Open Source Community, and loves to code and teach others the wonders of WordPress. She is a purveyor of lowbrow art, and when she is not WordPressing, she is painting or visiting Los Angeles art galleries to add more work to her growing art collection.

Your Company:
WebDevStudios

Your Website:
suzettefranck.com

What do you love most about WordPress?
I found out about WordPress in 2008, but I have been developing for the web since 1996. Since then, I have used WordPress to create over 200 custom themes of all types of functionality and appearance very quickly. The ease and extensibility of WordPress, along with the amount of support online and in the community is incredible, and is the reason why I use WordPress every single day.

What are some of your favorite WordPress-built websites?
http://thinkspacegallery.com, I redesigned this website several years ago for WordPress. It has a very simple minimalistic design but conveys a lot of information. It works well with a variety of different artwork styles, which is important for a gallery website. I worked with this site long before WordPress came about, so to have it in WordPress is such a dream to update and mange.

What are some of your favorite WordPress plugins?
Since I discovered Admin Columns, I find that I can’t do a simple site without it! It allows you to pick and choose the columns that are displayed in the back-end of WordPress for Post, Pages, CPTs, Users, Media, and more. It also has support for custom fields, so those may be shown in the admin listing as well which is very useful. A few other favorites are Jetpack, Advanced Custom Fields, Custom Post Type UI, and Wordfence. You can find all of my favorites listed on my WordPress.org profile at https://profiles.wordpress.org/suzettefranck.

What should everyone know about WordPress?
Using WordPress is definitely what is happening now and in the future of web publishing. It is the most widely used and supported web software in the world, and the community is always there to help with problems. Especially if you are not using a CMS of any kind, once you get past the learning curve which is not very high, you will be amazed with what WordPress can do.

What do you love about Las Vegas?
Las Vegas has a great WordPress community, and I am happy to be presenting to them at this WordCamp. Besides that, it is a lot of fun to see the awesome lights, especially vintage neon signs. I hope to get a chance to see some awesome shows and art exhibits while I am there.

Are there any fun activities you have planned while you’re in Vegas? If so, what are they?
I’d really love to go see one of the Cirque Du Soleil shows and visit one of the local art museums while I’m here.

Favorite movie in 2014 and why:
I find that I am too busy to go to the movies, but one I’ve been wanting to see is “The Lego Movie”, it looks fun and I hear I will love Unikitty.

Favorite non-WordPress activity?
I am a closet-crafter. I love painting, creating things, baking, and I also have a website that showcases my creations: http://suzettefranck.me.

What are three of your pet peeves?
Cable TV is really annoying, 500 channels and still nothing to watch. I do not subscribe, and I would rather put my cable subscription money towards independent film makers or public broadcasting by supporting local radio stations like KCRW. Not being able to connect to WIFI is a big pet peeve of mine, but we do the best we can with what we have. Using a Windows PC use to be a huge pet peeve, but now that I’ve switched to Mac I find that I am much less irritated by hanging applications. I guess my pet peeves are minor and luckily, most can be avoided, I’m pretty blessed.

Anything additional that you would like to add?
“Never stop learning and being curious, self-education is the key to a happy and fulfilling life.”

To register, please visit vegas.wordcamp.org/2014/registration