Who Attends WordCamp Atlanta

WordPress is a highly adaptable tool that can be tailored to meet a variety of needs. As a result WordCamps tend to attract a wide variety of people with an interest in many different aspects of using WordPress. The following guide is intended for informational purposes only. We realize that there may be a subset of individuals who are not represented in this list or may fall into more than one category. This isn’t meant to label people; instead it is intended to help potential speakers identify their target audience, help us (the organizers) make sure that all of our attendees are represented and to help potential attendees understand what type of conversations to expect at WordCamp Atlanta.

We’re all WordPress users

The term “user” is a big umbrella. In some way shape or form, we’re all WordPress users — directly or indirectly. We’ve broken it down into the following categories:

Content Producers

These are people who mainly use WordPress to publish content. This can range from written content in the form of blog posts to business web pages, podcasts to photo galleries. Most people “start here” with nothing more than a curiosity and a desire to make something meaningful. Content producers likely spend most of their time logged in to WordPress and don’t necessarily need to know anything about programming or the technical side of how WordPress works. Some experienced content producers have probably learned a little HTML and may have even picked up a few clever CSS tricks along the way.

WordPress Admins

WordPress admins are people who know how to set up and manage WordPress sites but may not have any programming experience. They know how to install and configure WordPress and can quickly show you how to change nearly anything with just a few mouse clicks. WordPress admins are comfortable installing themes and plugins and can usually suggest solutions for common challenges. Experienced WordPress admins are probably not afraid to get under the hood to make adjustments if needed and may have some experience with programming.

Theme Designers

Theme designers are the ones who make WordPress websites look beautiful. Theme designers are people who have a keen eye for how things look, they dream about typography and see color in hex. Theme designers probably spend their time hand coding HTML and CSS and probably know a fair amount of JavaScript and PHP too. Most theme designers will say that they work on “the front end” of websites meaning that they work on the parts of a website that end users see. Experienced theme designers have a great understanding of the theme hierarchy and commonly used API’s such as the theme customizer, navigation menus and widgets.

Developers

Developers are the ones who extend WordPress to do things that it can’t do out of the box. They spend most of their time programming WordPress including but not limited to writing PHP, JavaScript, HTML and CSS. They’re comfortable using actions and filters to modify how WordPress behaves (or misbehaves). Developers are the ones that work on the “back end” of a website, the underlying software that makes everything work. An experienced developer is familiar with the majority of the API’s that are included in WordPress, or are at least willing to find out.

Service Providers

There are also a growing number of people who work for a specialized service provider that may not fall into any of the above categories. These include search engine optimization specialists (SEO’s), web hosting providers or systems administrators and third party companies who have technology that works with WordPress in some way (think about PayPal or Twitter). While these people may know a lot about their products or services, they may have different levels of experience with WordPress.

Other

There are a number of other people who may have used WordPress in some way not mentioned above. The diversity of the WordPress platform is reflected in the diversity of the attendees. If you use WordPress in a way other than the ones listed above, please tell us how you use WordPress using the comments section.