Cheers to MailPoet

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Siobhan

MailPoet (formerly Wysija) is a powerful plugin that makes sending newsletters from WordPress easy. They’ve got a team of 7 people from across the world including France, Italy, and Vietnam. Over the past few years, MailPoet has grown from a small plugin developed by a few friends to being a leader in the premium plugin market. They’re supporting WordCamp London as an Angel Islington sponsor and we’re super-excited to have them on board.

Need to send newsletters, post notifications or autoresponders? Do it from WordPress with MailPoet, a newsletter plugin. We used to be called Wysija, but that name sucked, so we got rebaptized in September. Since you don’t like to read the regular marketing blah blah, let the stats speak for themselves:

Over 600,000 downloads on the repository, in less than 2 years.

50,000 active users, which is an estimate

Over 800 five star reviews. That’s a lot

We’re on the first page of the highest rated plugins

We’re way up there in Google.

Behind the stats, we’re real people. Our team is 7 guys (no girls, unfortunately), and we’re from far and wide: France, Italy, Vietnam, Georgia, and Canada.

Every team member does an equal amount of support, in 6 languages, 7 days a week. This is paramount since emailing can be frustrating at times. We also take great pride on our user interface. Everybody in the team participates in making the user experience a little easier. The perfect UI is never achieved, we know that.

One of us, Kim, will be in London for the WordCamp. He’s tall and skinny, and will wear a MailPoet t-shirt. Say hello, and ask him for a beer, which is proof you read this. He’ll oblige!

Thank you Deploy!

Posted on November 15, 2013 by Siobhan

Deploy is a deployment platform much loved in the WordPress community. The tool makes it easy to reploy code from Git, Mercurial, and Subversion to your server. As a home-grown UK product, developed by aTech Media in Poole, Dorset, we’re really proud to have them on board as a Piccadilly sponsor. Stop by their table for a demo to check out their awesome tools for developers.

Deploy is fast, powerful and easy to use code deployment platform. You can deploy your Git, Mercurial or Subversion repository to your server via FTP or SSH & SFTP or to Amazon S3 or Rackspace. Deploy is perfect for anyone wanting to deploy their project, whether it is a WordPress installation or a custom web app.

Lightning Talks for WordCamp London

Posted on November 14, 2013 by Siobhan

And the lightning talks at WordCamp London will be….

Hanni Ross – 10 Silly Things You Didn’t Know About WordPress
Vineeta Greenwood – How WordPress changed Marks and Spencer
Caspar Hübinger – Refactoring expectations
Matthew Haines-Young – Refining tools and processes to work better as a team.
Kim Gjerstad – UI guidelines for plugin developers
Ivelina Dimova – 3 Useful JQuery Libraries
Tom Greenwood – What is the future of the visual editor?
Robert O’Rourke – Safe Search/Replace Reloaded
Sam Hotchkiss – Securing your website in 5 minutes
Adam Onishi – The UX of WordPress custom admin functionality

See you there!

Big thanks to interconnect/it

Posted on November 13, 2013 by Siobhan

interconnect/it has been a stalwart of WordCamps in the UK for years. They have sponsored every WordCamp in the UK and we were stoked that they wanted to keep up that tradition by supporting WordCamp London as a Piccadilly sponsor. And they don’t only support WordPress by sponsoring WordCamps – the Director, Dave Coveney, has spoken at a number of WordCamps, and the team is responsible for the popular MySQL search and replace script.

Interconnect/it is a WordPress Design and Development agency with a focus on three distinct areas: frequent content publishers such as magazines and research institutes, developer tools, and multi-platform web design.

The firm is headed up by David Coveney – an outspoken old-school developer who decided that financial and payroll systems for twenty years was fine but another twenty years didn’t look much fun. The company really did pivot into one providing WordPress services in 2007 and has since gained and kept clients such as NATS (air traffic control in the UK), The Spectator, Apollo Magazine, CGIAR, Nottingham University, The Tab and many more.

Thank you Webzilla!

Posted on November 12, 2013 by Siobhan

Thanks to Webzilla for supporting WordCamp London as a Regent Street sponsor! Webzilla is a hosting company dedicated to making the complex simple, with a team of support experts dedicated to doing that. We’re really appreciative of their support of WordCamp London. There’ll be a number of the team at the conference so make sure to stop by their table and say “hi” and see how they can help you out with your hosting.

Webzilla is a premium hosting company, providing enterprise-class IT infrastructure solutions to businesses in the most data intensive industries. Webzilla’s portfolio includes traditional Dedicated Server Hosting, Colocation options and Content Delivery Network (CDN) services for fast and efficient delivery of information assets. Since our launch in 2005, we have worked towards creating a scalable, reliable and cost- effective hosted infrastructure environment for our customers around the world.

Party at WordCamp London!

Posted on November 8, 2013 by Siobhan

After a day of WordPress, what better way to unwind than hanging out with new and old friends, sipping on some beverages and munching on some snacks? The WordCamp London after party will take place at Kings Stores, 14 Widegate Street, London E1 7HP.

The Kings Stores is just around the corner from Bishopsgate Institute so will be kicking off around 6pm. We have private rooms booked upstairs and there’s a huge pub downstairs, so plenty of room for everyone. Come along, hang out and spend even more time talking WordPress!

Woo! it’s WooThemes, a Regent Street Sponsor

Posted on November 6, 2013 by Siobhan

WooThemes were one of the first large WordPress theme shops, and are no doubt to familiar to you due to their immensely cute Woo Ninja. From a team of three guys, WooThemes has now grown to being one of the largest WordPress businesses around. A number of WooThemes employees are based in the UK, and you’ll see them running around at WordCamp London. Make sure you say thanks for supporting us as a Regent Street sponsor.

WooThemes is an international, market leading, bootstrapped business providing a platform to extend standard WordPress-powered websites via a range of innovative themes and plugins. With WooThemes businesses and individuals can get professional WordPress sites launched quickly and affordably.

From our humble beginnings selling a handful of commercial WordPress themes we now offer a huge catalog of feature rich themes, and a suite of plugins that extend your WordPress experience.

Thank You WP Engine!

Posted on November 4, 2013 by Siobhan

If you haven’t heard of WP Engine, where have you been? Over the past few years they’ve become one of the most popular providers of managed WordPress hosting. WordCamp London 2013 is the first WordCamp to be held in WP Engine co-founder Ben Metcalfe’s home town. We’re excited to welcome to WordCamp London and to thank them for being a Regent Street sponsor.

WP Engine is the one of the most mature premium managed hosting platforms for websites and apps built with WordPress. WP Engine powers tens of thousands of websites, delivering the fastest, most reliable, and most secure web experience. Businesses large and small have come to rely on WP Engine’s exceptional customer service team that specializes in solving problems ranging from troubleshooting plugins, making themes scalable, and mitigating site migration headaches.