HostingCon is in Austin this year, which just happens to be where the WP Engine offices are headquartered. We can’t wait to see everyone there! So we’re sending a team of our WP Engineers to the exhibit hall during the conference, to hand out invites to our Meat ‘N Drink Happy Hour. Be sure to look out for the folks in the WP Engine shirts, because their invites include an exclusive HostingCon 2013 discount offer. And don’t be shy, they are expecting you to come up and ask for an invite. The Meat ‘N Drink is an exclusive party being[...]

Holy Moley. If I told you to hire the crazy Brit wearing the beaver skull-cap, would you think I was nuts? Well, aside from the fact that my sanity might be in question, the developer over there on the right is a baller, and you should seriously consider hiring him. Today, we’re talking to Dave Clements, a Brit-born, and now US-based WordPress developer, and author of the book, Do It with WP. And you might think that Dave just submitted a single weird photo because he’s a “cheeky git” or something else that only British people can be, but if[...]

“Treat others the way you wish you were treated.” “The customer is always right.” Successful service teams use these two mantras as guiding principles.WP Engine, like most social businesses, looks to leaders in customer service for inspiration and ideas. Three companies who lead by example are Ritz Carlton, Nordstrom and Disney. These are organizations from different industries that go above and beyond to help each guest, shopper or customer. Anticipate the needs of the guests. Ritz Carlton is known for taking a simple request and anticipating the needs of the guest. Ritz Carlton uses a three step process for customer[...]

Web hosting is a crowded marketplace. When you’re shopping for a new WordPress host and type “WordPress hosting” into Google, you’re inundated with a dozen results from companies who all claim to be fast, and secure, and provide amazing support. But how do you know that a hosting company actually provides the best possible support? When everyone claims to be great, how can you tell the difference between marketing and reality? There are three key areas you can use to to evaluate a company’s support (and overall customer experience): The company promotes its support as a feature What Blog Reviews,[...]

A few years ago, WordPress had fully left behind its identity as a “blogging tool,” and revealed itself to be one of the most powerful CMSs available. Not just for bloggers, This year, WordPress is again quietly undergoing another metamorphosis into an App Engine.  As WordPress evolves, it does a great balancing act of continuing to serve its original users, bloggers and content managers, while also becoming a deeply functional framework for developers to build things like Capsule, a new tool to manage the metadeta and artifacts developers create in their normal workflow. Crowd Favorite, one of the oldest and[...]

We’re going to chat with Jaki Levy, the founder of Arrow Root Media, and a WordPress educator from NYC, now living in San Francisco. Jaki teaches WordPress classes in both cities for folks just getting started, as well as more advanced WordPress classes. Arrow Root Media provides WordPress security and migration services, in addition to custom builds for your sites. Jaki’s portfolio features nonprofits and SMBs as well as individuals. As an agency, Arrow Root does an excellent job of keeping its finger on the pulse of what other agencies are doing, and keeping with a good niche. With WordPress,[...]

WordPress, the popular open-source CMS, turned app engine celebrated it’s 10 year anniversary on Monday, May 27th. The platform which begun as a fork of blogging platform b2/Cafelog has evolved over the last decade into the largest CMS in the world, powering over 18% of the web. As of today, WordPress has been downloaded 21,382,500 times, and more than 65 Million WordPress sites exist on the internet. In other words, when 1/5th of the internet chooses to build a website, they use WordPress to do it. What started as a humble blogging service has matured over the past decade into[...]

Today I’m hanging out with Nick Davis, the man of mystery “somewhere in Italy” behind eSanctuary, the design and development firm that also has an awesome set of video tutorials for WordPress. Nick has created an unofficial (but quality) set of tutorials and how-to’s for WordPress, AND for WP Engine’s User Portal and developer tools that I like to send people to. Nick got his start as a BBC reporter, and moved his way into managing online publishing teams before harnessing the power of WordPress and become a publisher himself. He has a self-styled life running his online businesses, servicing[...]

Since the news of Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr, users of the CMS are migrating their blogs over to WordPress like African Swallows unladed with coconuts. There are quite a few ways to migrate, so we figured we could save you the trouble and share a quick and simple way, which can be done in a few easy steps. 1. Create a WP Engine account You gotta have an awesome place to host your site. Once you have your domain name, create an account with WP Engine to help with all your WordPress needs. 2. Authenticate with Tumblr Inside your WordPress[...]

In a bold attempt at an image makeover this week, Yahoo acquired Tumblr for a cool billion dollars. The acquisition of the CMS slash social network has shaken up the world of blogging and created some uncertainty for folks who have build an audience on the Tumblr platform. Despite Yahoo!’s promise “to not screw it up,” folks are worried that they may lose their content if Yahoo decides to shut Tumblr down altogether. Yahoo’s track record with companies they acquire is spotty. The outcome of Yahoo’s goal to acquire relevancy with the younger set remains to be seen. So what’s[...]