The third annual WordCamp Riverside took place from Friday, November 8 through Sunday, November 10, 2019, at SolarMax, located at 3080 12th St, Riverside, CA 92507. The gathering brought together WordPress enthusiasts and business owners to learn about WordPress websites and their benefits.

The event welcomed everyone from casual users to core developers, giving attendees a chance to share ideas and network with designers, developers, business owners, freelancers, and bloggers. As the event’s own tagline put it, attendees came to “learn, connect, and have fun.”

What Is a WordCamp?

WordCamps are informal, community-organized conferences held around the world, focused entirely on WordPress. Unlike a typical vendor conference, WordCamps are run by local volunteers and typically kept affordable, which is part of why they draw such a wide mix of attendees — from someone building their very first WordPress site to core contributors who help maintain the software itself. WordCamp Riverside was one of many such events held annually across the country, giving the Inland Empire region its own dedicated WordPress community gathering.

Most WordCamps follow a similar format: a track of speaker sessions covering everything from beginner basics to advanced development, sponsor tables where local and national companies showcase WordPress-related products and services, and dedicated time between sessions for attendees to network. Many events, including WordCamp Riverside, also set aside an entire day specifically for newcomers, so nobody is left trying to follow an advanced development talk before they’ve built their first site.

Because WordCamps are organized locally, the specific sessions, speakers, and venue change from city to city and year to year, but the underlying goal stays consistent: bring the WordPress community together in person to teach, learn, and connect.

What to Expect at WordCamp Riverside, California

The event featured multiple sessions across three days, along with networking opportunities between talks.

Friday

Friday was Beginner’s Day, introducing new users to WordPress basics, with volunteers on hand to answer questions throughout the day. Participants learned how to prepare sites locally using a local web server — a foundational skill for testing changes safely before pushing them to a live site.

Saturday

Notable sessions included:

  • WordPress at the Heart of Your Strategy by David Mayne on pre-launch website strategy
  • Cloud on a Budget by Joshua James on configuring WordPress hosting with Plesk and AWS
  • Marketing Your Business with WordPress by Matthew Woodard, focused on small business growth through marketing
  • I Dream of WooCommerce by Sean Conklin, covering hosting, caching, themes, and performance for WooCommerce
  • The Art & Science Behind Killer Content by Michael Tesauro and Rob Bonham on data-centered content strategy
  • WordPress SEO 101: Key(word)s to Success by Joe A Simpson Jr on SEO tools and techniques
  • Improve Your WordPress SEO Performance With Google Search Console by Brian Jensen
  • Discover How You Can Leverage Yoast to Achieve Massive Results by Candice Gilliatt on Yoast SEO plugin configuration
  • Website Accessibility: What It Is & Why It’s So Important by Glen Ingram on WCAG 2.1 compliance
  • How to Rank Multi-location Local Businesses Using Content by William Huff

Saturday’s lineup leaned heavily into SEO and content strategy, with four separate sessions touching on search visibility alone — a reflection of how central SEO had become to the WordPress community’s priorities even back in 2019.

Sunday

Sunday’s sessions included:

  • Intro to Security, Who Needs It Anyway? by Jim Hunter on WordPress security basics
  • Headless WordPress and You by Keith Frey on headless WordPress implementation
  • Strategies for Building a Solid Client Base by Scott Tambling on advertising and client retention
  • Finding Your Type: Using the Right Fonts for Your WordPress Website by Amber Hewitt
  • Content Writing for Better Audience Engagement and SEO by Taylor Waldon

Sunday’s topics shifted toward more technical and business-focused ground, from headless WordPress architecture to building and retaining a freelance client base.

Fun Facts About Riverside

Riverside is the 12th largest city in California. The city’s name was inspired by the Santa Ana River, which runs alongside it, and Riverside has long been known for a large art scene, one local legend traces back to an early admiration for Charles Dickens. It’s also home to the historic Mission Inn, a landmark that regularly draws visitors from across Southern California — a nice reminder that a WordCamp trip could double as an excuse to explore the host city too.

The Bottom Line

WordCamp Riverside offered sessions spanning WordPress strategy and effectiveness, plugin and theme development, advanced SEO techniques, accessibility, and website security — all wrapped around genuine networking and learning opportunities for the local WordPress community.

Looking back at an event’s full session list years later is also a useful snapshot of where the WordPress community’s attention was at the time — in 2019, that meant a heavy emphasis on SEO, content strategy, and accessibility, alongside the perennial basics of security and getting started. Many of those same topics remain just as relevant today, even as the specific tools and best practices have continued to evolve.

Events like WordCamp Riverside are a reminder that WordPress isn’t just software — it’s supported by an active, in-person community of developers, designers, marketers, and business owners willing to share what they’ve learned. If a WordCamp is ever held near you, it remains one of the most accessible, affordable ways to learn directly from experienced WordPress professionals and connect with others building on the same platform.