Presentation by Tony Zeoli, WordPress Coach, Trainer, and Consultant and founder of Digital Strategy Works on standardizing your WordPress workflow.

1. Standardizing
WordPress Workflow
by Tony Zeoli
WordPress Coach, Trainer & Consultant

2. @tonyzeoli
linkedin.com/in/tonyzeoli
facebook.com/tonyzeoliwp
https://tonyzeoli.com

3. Background
• 23-year digital media career
• Web 1.0 - read only
• Web 2.0 - read, write, publish
• Web 3.0 - semantic
• Web 4.0 - mobile
• Web 5.0 - AI
• Lived through innovation and the evolution of software products
• We didn’t have the connective tissue with APIs we have today
• Slack is really just an AOL Chatroom on steroids

4. Innovation
• Evolution causes Innovation
• Innovation fueled by problem
solving
• Problem solving spawns ideation
• Ideation creates solutions
• Solutions adopted by tribes
• Tribes coalesce around solutions
to solve problems

5. Tribes
• Tribe, in anthropology, a notional form of human social organization
based on a set of smaller groups (known as bands), having
temporary or permanent political integration, and defined by
traditions of common descent, language, culture, and ideology. -
Encyclopedia Britannica
Source: https://www.britannica.com/topic/tribe-anthropology

6. Today’s Tribes
• “…despite the years of evolution and technology that have created
the foundation we currently stand on, there is one common
denominator that has remained unchanged, even after centuries of
growth: The inherent desire to form tribes.”
• “Historically speaking, a tribe was a community of families that
bonded over one goal – to survive and raise their next generations.
Today, however, we can define tribes as something less critical, like
individuals who are linked by their social interests.”
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/insiders/what-are-marketing-tribes

7. WordPress Tribes
• WordPress
• Plugin Developers
• Theme Developers
• SEO Experts
• Social Media Managers
• Bloggers
• Form Builders
• Analytics Analysts
• Digital Marketers
• Podcasters
• Videographers
• Photographers

8. Common Traits
• Leadership
• Trust
• Community
• Economic
• Shared Knowledge
• Accountability
• Support
• Security
• Context
• Popularity

9. Competing Tribes

10. Organizational Behavior
• Your perception is your reality.
• Storming, norming, and
performing
• Joharis Window

11. Overload

12. Competition for Attention

13. Even more competition

14. WP Elevation

15. Workflow

16. Build Your Own Toolbox

17. Avoidance
1. But I always use this one…
2. But my friend said…
3. You’re going to use this one…
4. This one seems okay…
5. Oh, I use Theme “Black
Forest…
6. Let’s just install it…
7. Conflicts
8. Going down that road…
9. Let’s use email or just text me,
okay?
10. Do what you want!

20. Lead Your Tribe
• Be the leader of your of your
tribe
• Exude confidence
• Explain why your method(s)
works for your business and
their brand
• Potential Cost (+/-)
• Ease of use
• Simplicity
• Duplication
• Hard conversations
• Education

21. Their toolbox
• But we already use…
• Sometimes you’re stuck, and that’s okay. You’re joining their tribe.
• Be flexible, but firm in your convictions.
• Other times, remove and replace, as long as it works and doesn’t
increase costs or client (internal/external agrees to pay costs
(time/labor/deadlines) if necessary.

22. `
• Basecamp for simple project
collaboration with clients with tasks
and timelines. Store project assets.
• Trello for agile sprints with card’s for
product backlog items
• HarvestApp for project time tracking
• Evernote for note taking
• Slack for team communication
• Team Viewer, appear.in, join.me,
Skype, GoToTraining for,
FreeConferenceCall.com
• Google Calendar for online meetings
• Drop Box for sharing large files
• Cloudup, Cloudapp for screenshots,
screen records
• Camtasia for screen records
• Email (the last resort!)

23. My Toolbox: Invoicing
• Generate and send invoices from Harvest
• Take payments through Stripe
• Deposits sent to bank
• QuickBooks connected to bank and Stripe for reconciliation

24. My Toolbox: Themes
• Bet the farm on Make by The Theme Foundry
• Make Plus companion plugin
• Page builder functionality
• Developed great rapport with support team who are responsive and
help with code snippets and suggestions to solve problems

25. My Toolbox: Plugins
• JetPack
• Akismet
• All in One SEO Pack
• Gravity Forms
• WooCommerce,
Cart66
• The Event Calendar
• OptinMonster
• WP Smush
• Cloudflare (free SSL)
• Adsanity
• Edit Flow
• Co-Authors Plus
• Blubrry Powerpress
• Google Analytics
Dashboard
• Video Background
Plus
• Featured Video Plus
• WP Charitable
• Open Menu
(restaurants)

26. My Toolbox: Hosting
• Got off of cheap shared hosting plans with CPanel
• Moved to WordPress managed hosting with WP Engine
• Daily Backups, Staging, Git connectivity, SFTP, 24-hour chat
support, multisite, free SSL, push storage to Amazon, and more…
• Bill clients monthly for hosting, or get referral fees through affiliate
program

27. GSuite
• Moved email to Google GSuite
• Better Spam protection
• Other integrated services, like Hangout
• Email, Docs, Calendar, Drive, Sheets, Groups
• Better team collaboration

28. Agreements
• Adobe Sign
• DocuSign
• Or, I just set up terms in Harvest App, client accepts estimate and
accepts the terms.

29. Use Cases - Client 1
• Removed Ninja Forms in favor of Gravity Forms
• Client didn’t even know how they got Ninja Forms, nor did they know
where their license key was
• Rebuilt and launched new forms in Gravity Forms

30. Use Cases - Client 2
• Client using unsupported theme from Theme Forest
• Switched to Make theme framework by Theme Foundry
• Now client has support for theme and a page builder
• Easier for me to manage

31. Use Case: Client 3
• Client using Yoast SEO
• Was not using to full extent
• Switched to All in One SEO Pack Pro
• Export/Import Data
• No cost to client; hour of my time to work in tool I know

32. Questions

33. Links
• Slides:
• https://slideshare.net/tonyzeoli
• https://tonyzeoli.com
• Sites:
• https://tonyzeoli.com
• https://digitalstrategyworks.com