#116 XML Feeds to WordPress and WPLDN Talk Feedback  ## Metadata - Author: [[WP Café]] - Full Title: #116 XML Feeds to WordPress and WPLDN Talk Feedback - Category: #podcasts - URL: https://share.snipd.com/episode/708c0e41-1d19-45a0-bb7c-fbf7b938339b ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Keith's WordPress London Experience** - Keith Devon shared his experience of preparing for and attending WordPress London with a busy schedule and social weekend. - He highlighted how the event and its surrounding activities impacted his work rhythm and energy. Transcript: Keith Devon London. Yeah, our talk at WordPress London, which we'll talk about in more detail. But yeah, so busy run up to that, bit of a hangover from that, but no time for a hangover because then I was off for the weekend to create an actual hangover. It was a double birthday celebration. So we went and hired an Airbnb with one, two, three, four families or four yeah and uh yeah had a really had a really nice weekend and then yeah back to work on monday and here we are so a bit Of a bit of a more chilled out week this week actually which has been quite nice felt like last week there was the lead up to the talk um which always stresses me out anyway but there was also Like a few you know rec press builds and things there's there's a a bit more going on. There's a bit more urgency about that week. I think it's probably because I'd been away the week previously. So it's just been, it's been hectic. ([Time 0:01:40](https://share.snipd.com/snip/806c6cc5-9bd4-4d5e-8cfe-63d875b9f719)) - **Avoid Over-Niching Website** - Avoid niche-only website positioning if it confuses potential clients; Keith and Mark reshaped their homepage to better serve varied sectors. - Provide clear landing pages for different audiences instead of forcing a narrow focus that limits inquiries. Transcript: Keith Devon So we decided quite a few years ago now that we were going to just try to push the recruitment side of things because of our experience with job relay. I'm building job boards. You have to niche. Yeah, yeah. You need a niche. You need a niche. And like, I don't, I don't disagree with that as advice, but it didn't, work for us in terms of changing the focus of our homepage and our website towards recruitment. It definitely did not result in any more recruitment website builds, which was interesting. And now that we've done a few of the independent schools and we're getting more and more inquiries in that sector, it felt like it'll just be super confusing to potential independent School um and prospects uh for them to kind of come along and they land on our home page and it's all recruitment agency focused and um so we've we've changed changed the home page to be Something more generic with links to those two specific landing pages to those specific sectors and then links out to our products and stuff so um it was quite a lot of work in the end because I needed to get the landing pages done and case studies so that those landing pages had case studies so there's like just to change the home page i needed to i needed to like rejig or or create Like four pages. ([Time 0:03:07](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c9bc28a2-dc96-4a1c-aba2-4d5314c0ec19)) - **Enhance Block Spacing and Animation** - Use custom CSS or the customizer to tweak block spacing when default block editor controls are insufficient. - Experiment with scroll-based CSS animations for subtle parallax effects but avoid overly distracting designs. Transcript: Keith Devon Necessarily change it in this case, but there's a section where it's what we're up to, and I use the grid block, or should I say the grid variation of the group block? Is that what it is? And it's very, very... There's not very much space between each of the grid items, and I have no control over that, And I want some control over that. And even on the homepage hero, I want to reduce the amount of space above the kind of hero image. I can't do any of that. I can obviously do it with the customizer or some custom CSS and stuff. But I would like to kind of get, yeah, make some of that stuff available to us. I actually, the other thing I want to play with is scroll-based CSS, CSS scroll-based animations. Because I've watched a really cool video about that the other day with some logos that were like whizzing across the screen as you scroll. You weren't a massive fan of thatptaker example, which is fine. ([Time 0:08:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d332d0e7-6777-49ee-96dd-fa62e1e250b0)) - **WPLDN Venue Impression** - Keith Devon enjoyed the WPLDN venue for its cozy, non-corporate atmosphere and smaller crowd. - He praised the event team for smooth organization, making it a fun and comfortable experience. Transcript: Mark Wilkinson That was last week, wasn't it? Yeah, well, this time last week, wasn't it? Yeah. So we went and did a talk. And attended, obviously. So down to London. And we spent uh stayed overnight so we got some time to to chat and catch up with people which was good yeah um really enjoyed it really enjoyed it so nice to be back chatting to people and Um it felt like a lot of the I don't want to say like the old school people there, but like. There were. There were. It was good to catch up with everybody. So if you were there and we said hello, it was fantastic to be able to speak to you. What were your thoughts, Noah? I loved it. ([Time 0:16:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/27504f9f-1589-4fd8-b488-8a52f0596b89)) - **Louise's Accessibility Agency View** - Louise Towler gave an accessibility talk from an agency perspective emphasizing strict accessibility standards. - She described balancing client branding needs with accessibility requirements and handling client overrides responsibly. Transcript: Keith Devon So Louise Towler did a talk on accessibility. And I've been to a lot of accessibility talks, usually by Graham, who was there. Graham Ornfield. But Louise's was from an agency angle, which I thought was an angle I hadn't really heard before, like what they have to do as an agency to make sure that their sites are accessible. And fair play to her because they really take it seriously. They really take it seriously. It's very, very impressive, actually, and made me feel a little bit guilty as well because you know that stuff is hard like for her it's a non-negotiable like if we're building your website It is going to be um like double a 2.1 or 2.2 or whatever it's going to hit those metrics and at one point she was talking about branding this is an interesting point. And I can't remember if she raised it or someone else raised it, that like if the branding is kind of delivered to you and the color contrast isn't right or isn't accessible, how does she Deal with that? And she was basically like, I'll get them to write to me to say that we've advised them that this isn't correct and that they still want to go ahead which is interesting because then they're Not building an accessible website uh doesn't really solve the problem now does it so doesn't solve the problem no it doesn't and i guess at some point as a business that does show that There's a limit to the uh sticking to principles and being a bit more pragmatic in certain circumstances because you wouldn't want to throw away a whole build knowing that they're happy To pay for it to be, by and large, very accessible, only to fail on a really tiny contrast issue, especially if it's really borderline. So I get that. I totally get that. She was kind of honest about that. And I thought that was quite a good solution in a way. It's just like, ([Time 0:18:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1511202a-b83d-4ffd-a4e8-0f1c54ebfd4f)) - **Challenge of Broad Presentation Scope** - Delivering a broad 25-minute talk limits deep technical details; focusing on one aspect allows more useful content. - Audience value varies, but detailed tutorials differ from broad presentations that only introduce concepts. Transcript: Keith Devon And then we were on after, we were on in the second half. And I thought by and large, we did okay. But on reflection, I don't think it was the best talk. I mean, it wasn't the best talk, but maybe not the best talk we could have delivered. Mostly because I think we kind of tried we spread ourselves a bit too thin so we it was a case study it was a case study on the recent uh school website we built um kimbolton school.com uh And we wanted to give kind of a general this is how we built it because we'd come up against some interesting challenges and we wanted to kind of highlight those and but it just we just didn't Cover anything in any depth um and actually we we titled it like this is how we built it with fsc and actually it wasn't really an fsc full site editing talk at all really we didn't actually Touch on many of the full site editing features or workflows and it was most the more interesting stuff was kind of some of the features that the site had and how we approach those rather Than how we're setting up templates and patterns and all that kind of stuff so yeah i spoke to some friends about it this morning and apparently there were some people uh nodding along And taking notes in the crowd. So I think we hopefully added some value to some people. But just interestingly, like I didn't get the. When I've given some talks before. I get people come up and you can tell that they're like, they're a bit buzzing with it. They're like, thanks so much. That was really useful. It's such a great talk. And I didn't get that. Know i had a lot of oh well done good talk you know it's like i think very low-key you ([Time 0:20:22](https://share.snipd.com/snip/68183b19-8ccc-4091-9830-c78197aee31c)) - **Keith's Public Speaking Nervousness** - Keith Devon felt physical nervousness waiting to speak but found calm while delivering content. - Sharing the stage with Mark Wilkinson helped him feel supported and manage nerves. Transcript: Keith Devon I'm always nervous. I'm always nervous, like standing up in front of people. It's not my natural habitat at all. But interestingly, when you were talking, my legs started shaking. Like I just felt because I'm just standing there with nothing to think about, except that I'm standing in front of loads of people. And then whenever I started talking, I calmed down because I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about delivering my content. And then you'd start talking again and the shakes would start again. I was like, God damn it. It's like, yeah, just trying to hold it together so I wasn't visibly shaking in front of everybody. Because I was actually quite enjoying it, but my body was saying, get the hell out of here. You're in danger. You know, it's just that like internal. Mark Wilkinson Weirdly, I usually don't get nervous up until ([Time 0:24:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/88db0054-b700-4a7a-a799-93fc7db44d9a)) - **Combine Defaults with Dimensions Controls** - Combine default spacing rules with optional block dimension controls for flexible, user-friendly layout. - Provide smart margin and padding defaults, overridden when users apply custom dimension settings. Transcript: Keith Devon Yeah. Mark Wilkinson In terms of like our website and being able to use them. So we need to sort that out, I think, on our site, don't we? And we do use them for clients, don't we? We allow block dimensions to be turned on usually. Keith Devon We do. And it was part of the talk, actually. And I kind of wish that's a talk I'd quite like to give all on its own is uh like default spacing and dimension rules that can be overridden by uh by the editor um because that is a marriage Made in heaven so for me i really like to create clever defaults for margins and paddings. And I thought that that couldn't exist in a world where you also had the dimensions, dimension controls. But it turns out that you can. So you just create, you create the nice defaults. And then you basically, whenever you add dimension controls, that overrides your defaults. That would be the default. Yeah. I might do it as little video or something. But yeah, so now I always want those two things because it's super useful to have them whenever you need them, but it's great to have the nice defaults built in so that you don't need to Reach for them too often. It's the best of both worlds. A ([Time 0:27:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/5cdf4524-34f8-4843-a414-6c6109d82b2c)) - **Many Awards Favor Poor Usability** - Many design awards recognize visually impressive but technically poor and inaccessible websites. - This reflects a disconnect between artistic merit and practical usability in web design. Transcript: Keith Devon God yeah and performance yeah lots do don't they really most website awards are given to horrific websites basically they're just it's just so it's it's almost they're like works of Art rather than actual usable websites. Mark Wilkinson Yeah. Rhys says hello. Hi, Rhys. Hi, Rhys. Thanks for joining us. And Nick ([Time 0:29:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6f2b2f0d-08f8-4255-ae0a-56524657d101))