Tired of building disposable websites? Learn to design with maintenance in mind!

Agenda:
From 5:30 until around 6 you'll have a chance to order some tasty food, socialize, and ask questions.

Presentation:
Most websites are disposable - they are built once and not changed until they are replaced or turned off. Frequently, this is despite the best intentions of the original owner, designer, or developer.

But some sites and applications are made to last—to be updated frequently as part of doing work, for weeks, months, or even years. These sites are an integrated part of a high-performing business or organization—one that can do a job well and then adjust quickly to meet changing business needs.

In this talk, we will explore best practices that smart developers use when building things to last for years. In addition to technical design and development topics, we’ll cover some of the human factors that are at play in IT projects, especially when it comes to WordPress.

• WordPress as a critical tool for business (not just as a workaround to IT policies)
• Themes and plugins and custom development (how not to paint yourself into a corner)
• Ownership through collaborative construction (how to avoid hand-offs that disappoint)

Our Presenter this month: Anca Mosoiu
Anca is the founder of Tech Liminal, where people with various skills and backgrounds come together to learn and build using technology. She is a programmer and consultant who loves complex, large-scale technology projects, where her curiosity and ability to translate between technical and non-technical helps teams get things done. She is a graduate of MIT who has worked on the web with companies like Razorfish, Cisco Systems, the Lawrence Berkeley Lab, and many, many startups.