Dot All 2025
The webdna team on the ground
We’ve brought a full cross-section of our team to Lisbon: Daniel, our Managing Director; Gemma, from our Marketing Team; developers Georgia, Charlie, Mike and Sam; and from the Delivery Team, Emily and Helen.
Having this mix of leadership, client-facing experts and developers at Dot All is important for more than just networking. It means we hear directly from the people shaping Craft’s future, so nothing is second-hand or lost in translation. By taking part in conversations and sharing our own experiences, we also help influence how the platform evolves.
For our clients, the benefits are immediate. Our developers can test ideas and discuss technical challenges on the spot, while our account managers and content specialists gather fresh ways to deliver better results. And with Daniel and Gemma both speaking tomorrow, we’re not just attending; we’re actively contributing to the global Craft dialogue.
Their presence underlines our commitment to staying at the forefront of Craft CMS development and to bringing back knowledge, techniques and connections that will directly benefit every client project.
Over the next two days, we’ll be updating this page with details of the various talks the team attend and their takes on them, so check back for updates.
Day two morning round-up
After a first day focused on what to expect from Craft 6, day two opened with a packed schedule split into a Development Track and a Business Track. The morning began with a talk by Ben Croker on Real-time collaboration with Sprig and Datastar. Ben introduced Datastar, a new library that builds on the ideas behind Sprig and makes it easier to add real-time, multi-user interactivity to Craft CMS sites. He showed how it simplifies the code and offers better reactivity, making collaborative features such as live editing and instant updates far easier to deliver. Our team loved the potential.
Sam Birch, webdna Technical Director, explained that we’ll be replacing Sprig with Datastar because it will simplify code patterns and make maintenance and scalability easier. He pointed out that simpler, more maintainable code means a more stable platform, faster implementation and debugging, and features that can be delivered quicker and be more cost-effective for clients. Senior Developer Charlie was equally enthusiastic, describing the interactive demos as the perfect solution to some of the issues we’ve worked around in the past.
At the same time over on the Business Track, Thanasis Psarros presented Dev-design tango: crafting the perfect flow. He explored how designers and developers can work together like dance partners, showing how starting with real content and clear goals leads to websites that are both beautiful and practical. He explained how to set the right constraints, work in tight feedback loops and keep everyone aligned so projects stay on track and deliver the best user experience. This talk confirmed that our approach of requesting content first from clients is the right one! And that we should be firmer about setting content requirements and restrictions.
It reinforced how important it is for designers to understand what is expensive to implement so projects remain efficient. It’s always good to be reminded that users expect accessible websites and that Craft CMS makes it easier to create good design because it’s straightforward to use and organises content in a logical way. Thanasis also encouraged open collaboration: sharing opinions, asking questions, balancing reusable patterns with memorable design details, and staying engaged through constant iteration rather than big reveals. It was a powerful reminder that good design is systematic, not guesswork, and that real content and well-defined rules are essential.
Next came Me, myself and AI - using modern tools to never get stuck again from Lindsey DiLoreto. Lindsey showed how AI tools can support developers and designers, from generating code snippets to speeding up repetitive tasks. He shared techniques for effective prompting and offered guidance on adopting AI safely while keeping human oversight.
Sam from our team was keen to remind us that AI can be a useful tool if used with caution: it learns how you like things and won’t replace developers, but our roles will evolve. Charlie recognised some familiar techniques but picked up good tips for fully embracing AI as another tool, helping us work faster. Content Manager Gemma observed that right now it can take us too long to get what we need from AI and it’s often quicker to do the work ourselves! But this will change as the tools improve.
Meanwhile on the Business Track, Zayn Younas delivered Sales and account management essentials for Craft clients. He shared practical strategies for managing Craft clients, including how to build long-term relationships, set clear expectations and generate repeat business. Project Coordinator Emily found the talk packed with ideas on how to communicate well in all situations, day-to-day and on the rare occasion when things go wrong. Zayn discussed methods and tools to keep clients in the loop without adding unnecessary workload, and how managing expectations early prevents bigger issues later. He also recommended auditing new clients for accessibility, performance and security not just to generate sales but to build trust and show we are proactive.
Before lunch we heard from Jan Henckens on Craft + data: creating maintainable integration structures. Jan explored how to create scalable, maintainable integrations between Craft and external data sources and explained how to handle two-way data flows without harming the author experience. For Charlie, this felt like bread-and-butter territory for us, but it highlighted how important it is to document how integrations work and to keep clear audit trails.
Running alongside this session, Sarah Carr from Happy Cog presented Practical operations for happier agencies. Sarah shared easy wins for getting everyone on the same page, creating simple workflows, and confidently handling tricky internal or client requests. Her emphasis on transparency with clients really resonated: giving them a heads up about possible bumps builds trust and strengthens relationships, even when the news isn’t great. She also championed praising the team, something that fits closely with our own culture at webdna. Managing Director Daniel reflected the importance of defining processes and following them consistently, breaking down barriers so things get done, for example, thorough regular retros. Emily highlighted the value of standardising processes for clients so feedback and testing are faster and more useful. Helen added that healthy boundaries protect against scope creep and that it’s vital to explain how changes affect the project timeline and requirements.
From the newest Craft tools like Datastar, to fresh thinking on AI, collaboration and client relationships, the morning of day two gave us a wealth of ideas to bring back to our own projects.
Day two afternoon round-up of Dot All 2025
After a lively morning of talks, the afternoon sessions continued to deliver practical ideas and inspiration across both tracks.
This afternoon opened with Matthew Bloomfield, Engineer and Technical Lead at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who presented Beyond content: building a complete small business platform with Craft CMS. In his presentation, he discussed how the team created a members platform for their small business using modules for custom functionality. This space had all the functionality members needed to retrieve the information they needed or submit award entries and other similar activities. Matthew took us through his ten key takeaways of the process, sharing his experiences and observations.
We were able to make similar comparisons between his experience and the projects we have worked on. Sam’s observation was: It's not to say there is a right or wrong way of approaching this type of project, but it's reassuring that a large organisation such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which seeks to set a global standard, is doing things in a similar way to us. It also shows our customers how easy it is to create bespoke functionality using Craft CMS.
Charlie felt that there was some useful information around custom modules, which we make use of a lot. It’s always good to hear lessons that other people have learned to prevent us from making costly mistakes. And Developer Mike agreed that it was an encouraging talk about leveraging the extensibility of Craft CMS to do all the things we need while not having to reinvent the wheel.
Next on the Business Track, Souvik Das Gupta gave a super-relatable session called Packaging peace of mind for your clients. He explored how to structure website support so it delivers real value and builds trust. Senior Account Manager Helen noted that support is incomplete without hosting: if a site goes down, clients cannot tell whether the issue lies with the site, the server or even their own internet connection, and we will always be their first point of contact. The key lesson from this talk was that being able to control the hosting environment is crucial for reliability and for offering effective support. Souvik also explained how packaging services can raise their perceived value and position an agency as a mature, professional provider. Clients like choice and need to understand the outcomes they are buying, yet many skip maintenance until there’s a problem. Offering a clear support package makes it easier to keep their sites running smoothly while also allowing an agency to work more efficiently and profitably.
Back on the Development Track, Eli Van Zoeren explored Bulletproof deployments using Docker, showing how to deploy Craft CMS with Docker and GitHub Actions and how to extend Craft’s native health-check controller for site-specific needs. The session was a useful reminder that there are solid alternatives when a managed service such as Servd isn’t the right fit. It highlighted the flexibility and benefits of containerised deployments while also confirming for us that our existing partnership with Servd remains the right choice: it already handles much of the heavy lifting and gives us a dependable, low-maintenance set-up. Understanding how Docker deployments work simply broadens our options and helps us make more informed decisions for future projects.
The talk demonstrated an elegant solution with lots of benefits to non-containerised approaches; but I'm very relieved that we use a service like Servd that does so much legwork in the background for us.
Meanwhile, on the business track, Stephen Callender from Foster Commerce presented The first fifty hours. He stressed that the early days of a client relationship are the proving ground – the pilot episode that sets the tone for everything that follows. Stephen reminded us that clients are the experts in their own business and live with their pain points every day. Forgetting that can lead to bad habits, defensiveness and frustration. He challenged us not just to satisfy clients but to create champions by keeping their trust. Long silences erode confidence like a dripping tap. Showing progress early, something clients can see, touch or click in the first fifty hours, proves we are listening and builds momentum. Clients need proof that we’ve heard what matters to them! Daniel observed that it was reassuring to hear that many of the practices we already use, like regular check-ins and show-and-tell sessions, are exactly the things that help maintain trust and build strong partnerships.
After a short break, Lucy Williams and Lauren Irwin our friends from Abstrakt took the stage with How to please humans and search engines with SXO. Lauren presented the SEO perspective and Lucy the design view, illustrating how these goals can sometimes compete. Traditionally, SEO and UX have been handled in silos, “you’d never cross the streams,” as Lucy put it, but SXO brings them together. The idea is to put the user first while still attracting the right visitors. SEO and UX must work together from the start, not as separate steps. The intersection of the two can supercharge a site’s performance. This approach felt very familiar to us because we naturally integrate SEO and design from the outset.
Over on the business track, Karel-Jan Van Haute from Statik delivered European accessibility act in practice. He explained what the EAA means for web compliance and shared practical steps to meet the standards. Karel-Jan covered common mistakes, such as inaccessible PDFs and e-books, videos without captions or transcripts, and login flows that rely on visual CAPTCHAs. He pointed out that making sites accessible isn’t just about avoiding fines or lost tenders; it broadens your audience, improves usability and SEO, and reduces costs by catching issues early. Above all, it’s about people and giving every user a better experience.
It was a clear reminder for us to keep raising the bar and ensure we have internal experts to run regular accessibility audits, both on our own site and for clients.
Managing integrations with websites and external systems is always a challenge for software engineers and developers. In his talk An Introduction to Building Custom Integrations in Craft, Tyrone Tudehope explored the architecture of a module that would serve as a foundation for an integration. He also looked at practical ways for importing and exporting data to and from Craft and offered a full rundown of different options for each step of integration.
The talk illustrated the full use of Craft’s features to integrate websites with 3rd party systems. For Charlie it was another reminder why Craft is such a good platform to do anything a client needs.
This is an approach that we definitely already take, but a good reminder of if there’s an existing integration already out there, make sure to utilise it. And if there isn’t, make sure you know what the client wants and from there you can work out what inputs, outputs and processes you need to get to the solution.
Running alongside this on the Business Track, John Ripmeester from Brik Digital shared From atoms to action: an open storybook. John explained the principles of atomic design, starting with the smallest “atoms” such as labels, inputs and buttons, combining them into “molecules” like a search form, building “organisms” that form larger interface sections, and finally creating full page templates. He demonstrated how using Storybook (storybook.js.org) to build, document and test these components in isolation creates a seamless workflow that bridges design and development. It was a useful look at alternative methods we can draw on to keep refining our own processes and make collaboration between teams faster and more efficient.
From building full-scale business platforms to packaging support, from bulletproof deployments to the balance of SEO and UX, Wednesday afternoon at Dot All proved just as inspiring as the morning. Our team left with practical insights and fresh ideas that we can bring straight back to our clients’ projects, and plenty of energy for the sessions still to come.
Day three morning at Dot All Lisbon 2025
The last day of Dot All opened with three very different but equally inspiring talks, each showing how Craft CMS continues to evolve and prove its flexibility at scale.
Brandon Kelly, founder of Craft CMS, began with the State of Craft keynote. He painted a picture of a platform in excellent health, backed by a growing marketing and developer relations team that now includes Leah, Kenneth and Travis. Their focus on community and content means we’ll soon see more resources to help teams move from other platforms, including import starters, clear 101 guides and a detailed comparison of Craft and WordPress.
For partners like us, one of the biggest announcements was that Craft 5 will be supported for five years after the release of Craft 6, giving everyone plenty of time to plan upgrades.
Brandon also laid out the roadmap for Craft 6: alpha in the first quarter of 2026, about six months of testing, beta in the third quarter and a full release before the end of that year. Craft 5.9 will soon bring an image editor that is fully keyboard accessible, and accessibility features across the platform are now documented and reported.
Looking ahead, we’re excited about content approval workflows and inline commenting within the edit page, which will make collaboration smoother for clients and for our own team. The ability to schedule multiple entries or drafts and improved content importing will be another welcome boost. It’s clear that Craft is investing heavily in the authoring experience and the wider community, promising powerful new tools and a long-term commitment to stability and support.
Next, Egil Fujikawa Nes shared How we scaled Craft Commerce to handle 1,000+ orders per hour, drawing on his work with global retailer Interflora, which makes more than 32 million deliveries every year. He described twenty lessons from scaling Craft Commerce to handle huge seasonal peaks such as Christmas and Mother’s Day, when orders soar far beyond normal volumes. The project had to cope with multiple delivery locations and stores rather than a few central distribution centres, as well as complex processing rules.
It was fascinating to hear how his team created parent–child relationships in Craft Commerce, allowing different products to be sent to multiple recipients while keeping everything under one user account and one payment. He concluded that Craft Commerce was absolutely the right choice thanks to its ability to customise and scale, and Sam noted that some of the technical solutions for boosting performance are well worth exploring further. Perhaps most impressive, Egil estimated that the system could comfortably scale to 3,000+ orders per hour, a powerful example of Craft Commerce’s capacity to grow with a business.
That was seriously impressive.
The morning closed with Andrea De Carolis and his talk A Swiss knife in a fashion environment. Andrea gave a visually striking look at his work for Italian fashion brand C.P. Company. Moving from agency work to an in-house role, he faced a steady flow of new requests and the need to keep building modules to meet them. Craft CMS proved to be the perfect fit: its flexibility allowed C.P. Company to deliver a highly tailored digital experience that reflects the unique character of the brand while managing a catalogue of more than 100,000 items. Daniel highlighted how smoothly the author experience supports such a complex site while still giving the team freedom to evolve it. It was an inspiring demonstration of how Craft can power a large, design-driven ecommerce brand without sacrificing creativity or control.
These three talks underlined the breadth and strength of the Craft ecosystem: from the platform’s own roadmap and accessibility improvements, to its proven ability to scale for high-volume commerce and to deliver distinctive, content-rich experiences for major brands. It’s exciting to see how these developments will feed into the work we do for our clients in the months and years ahead.
Day three afternoon round-up
After a packed morning of keynotes and case studies, the afternoon continued the energy with sessions that showed just how flexible and forward-thinking the Craft CMS community has become.
The afternoon opened with Ryan Irelan and Andrew Welch in Dueling developers: two ways to the same experience. They demonstrated how there’s never just one “right” way to build a Craft site. By approaching the same project with completely different front-end technologies, they proved that Craft is perfectly happy at the heart of a project no matter what stack surrounds it. Their friendly duel highlighted the platform’s strength as a reliable core that plays well with almost any modern toolset.
Next, our own Gemma Fenyn took to the stage for Transforming interactive exhibits with Craft CMS at Mobile World Congress. Gemma shared how we used Craft CMS to power an ambitious set of interactive exhibits at one of the world’s largest tech events. She explained how our team designed a flexible, content-driven system that let organisers update and adapt installations in real time, keeping the experience fresh for thousands of visitors. You can read Gemma’s talk in full here
After a short break came the always-popular Lightning Talks, a quick-fire round of ideas and inspiration:
- A demo of a tool to archive static versions of websites showed a smart way to keep old sites available for reference.
- A talk on dynamic pricing in Craft Commerce explored selling customisable products, an approach very close to solutions we’ve implemented for our own clients.
- James Coleman of Supercool explained how to prepare for huge spikes in traffic and keep communication clear with clients when things go wrong.
- Lupe Camacho from Pixel & Tonic showcased Craft’s new fully accessible image editor, giving a glimpse of how carefully the team is building features that work for everyone.
Later in the afternoon, our MD Daniel Hammond presented Pitched perfect: selling Craft CMS to non-technical stakeholders. Dan showed how to explain the benefits of Craft CMS in plain language, from its flexibility and scalability to the stability it brings to complex projects. He shared practical advice for helping decision-makers see why Craft is the right choice and how to build confidence at every stage of a pitch.
You can read Dan’s talk in full here.
To close the day, Travis Gertz delivered AI or Bust(ed): why ‘adapt or be replaced’ is a false choice. Travis argued that the usual “learn AI or get left behind” message misses the real story. AI will certainly change creative and development work, but the important question is who gets to decide how those changes happen. He drew on history to show that individual adaptation isn’t enough when systemic forces are at play, and encouraged collective responses organising around the technology that shapes our work so that we retain both power and agency.
From lively technical duels to thought-provoking discussions on AI and the future of our industry, the afternoon perfectly rounded off an inspiring second day at Dot All Lisbon 2025.
Craft CMS is a powerful, flexible system with the functionality to deliver custom digital experiences. Why not take a closer look and see what it can do for your business?
