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Top Speakers and Sessions at WordCamp US 2024 – Portland’s Must-Attend Event

[ad_1] WordCamp US 2024 is right around the corner, and this year’s list of speakers is bigger and more impressive than ever. Taking place over three days from September 17–20 at the Oregon Convention Center in vibrant Portland, Oregon, the annual WordPress community gathering boasts a jam-packed schedule full of unmissable demonstrations, presentations, and workshops. With so much going on, attending North America’s biggest WordPress event of 2024 means making some tough decisions when it comes to planning your itinerary. To help you out, we’ve rounded up this year’s top speakers at WordCamp US ’24 and the must-see sessions they’ll be delivering. 10 WordCamp US 2024 Speakers You Don’t Want to Miss 1. Alexandra Guffey Reach for the Sky: Disney Experiences’ Magical Transformation with Gutenberg Source: https://us.wordcamp.org/2024/speaker/alexandra-guffey/ Alexandra Guffey leads on user experiences at The Walt Disney Company. On the opening day of WordCamp US, she reveals how the global entertainment giant used over 50 pre-made Gutenberg blocks and that trademark Disney magic to create an enchanting multi-site communication hub. This engaging session highlights the challenges, successes, and valuable lessons learned in creating the ultimate Disney Experience. Alex will also be showcasing the brand’s unique approach to WordPress design and development. 2. James LePage Deeply Integrating AI with WordPress Source: James LePage Linkedin Of all the product demonstrations we’re looking forward to at WordCamp’s first-ever showcase day, James LePage’s introduction to the AgentWP artificial intelligence agent may be the most exciting. We’ve covered scores of top AI WordPress plugins over the past few years. Of them all, we’d argue that AgentWP has the potential to be to WordPress AI what Yoast is to SEO or WooCommerce is to WordPress eCommerce. LePage, whose company WPAI created the AI product, will take to the WordCamp stage to show us how the platform can transform the way we use WordPress. He’ll also provide a glimpse ‘under the hood’ to explain how AgentWP works safely and stealthily within WordPress. 3. Jon Ang & Stuart Shields How We Grew and Optimized RecipeTin Eats to Reach 45 Million Monthly Views (from 25M) Stuart Shields: Source – WordCamp US Jon Ang: Source – WordCamp US Jon Ang and Stuart Shields come to Portland representing Human Made, a digital agency that works with high-profile enterprise clients. In this presentation, the duo share how Human Made inherited a content website, optimized it to enterprise-grade standards and grew its monthly views from 25 million to 45 million. A fascinating look at integrating newer technologies with legacy websites, there’s sure to be a lot of insights into large-scale growth and the infrastructure behind it. 4. Christy Nyiri Highlights from the Automattic Special Projects Team Any time you see Automattic among the list of WordCamp speakers, you know it’s a must-see. This particular speaker is Christy Nyiri who heads up the design side of the Automattic Special Projects team. In this engaging session, Christy shares the team’s favorite websites and digital tools and explores how the team contributes to the wider WordPress community. Source: WordCamp US 5. Joseph Jacks Open Source Is Eating Software Faster Than Software Is Eating the World Source: WordCamp US OSS Capital founder Joseph Jacks kicks off Thursday’s proceedings with what is sure to be a fascinating keynote speech on the vital importance of the open source ecosystem. Covering its impact on crypto, AI, and software technology, Jacks’ opening speech will certainly set the right tone for this annual celebration of our favorite open source platform. 6. Bryce Adams & Travis Lima Decoding the Woo and WordPress Strategies of Industry Giants Bryce Adams: Source – WordCamp US Travis Lima: Source – WordCamp US Bryce Adams is the founder of reporting and email marketing platform Metorik. Travis Lima is an online entrepreneur and Customer Success Manager for Woo. Between them, the two have helped develop and support scores of large-scale eCommerce sites. In this session, Adams and Lima share examples of how major brands have leveraged WooCommerce to grow at scale. 7. Linnea Huxford From Bottlenecks to Breakthroughs: How the New York Post Mastered Scalability Source: WordCamp US If you ever had any doubts about WordPress’s capacity for scalability, Linnea Huxford’s deep dive into how the platform powers The New York Post is a must for your WordCamp schedule. Huxford is a Principle Software architect a WordPress core contributor and Principle Software Architect at Alley, a digital agency focusing on enterprise-scale publishing solutions for news and media sites. Catering to technical leads and developers, her session uses the New York Post WordPress site as a jumping ground to provide both important lessons and solid proof that WordPress has what it takes to handle massive sites. 8. Markus Robinson Empowering Black-Owned Businesses: The iOne Digital Story Source: WordCamp US Kick off your Friday with a dose of inspiration and insights courtesy of Markus Robinson, SVP of Product and Technology at iOne Digital. Robinson talks attendees through his company’s use of WordPress to launch 70+ online platforms for black-owned businesses. A must for WordPress users involved in managing multisite networks, there’s a lot to learn about the technical and strategic elements of growing digital spaces. 9. Jonathan Desrosiers & Aaron Jorbin Releasing a Version of WordPress in 8 Hours or Less If the title of this session alone isn’t enough to leave you captivated and curious, the story presented by Jonathan Desrosiers and Aaron Jorbin surely will be. Aaron Jorbin. Source – WordCamp US Jonathan Desrosiers. Source – WordCamp US Desrosiers and Jorbin are experienced WordPress Core committers who were there the day Core contributors turned around an entire new WordPress release in less than a day. Their joint talk provides compelling insights and useful lessons, making it a must-see session for anyone involved in WordPress security, development, and release management. 10. Matt Mullenweg Keynote Address and In-person Q&A Last but certainly no means least, the festivities wrap up with a word from the WordPress co-founder himself, Matt Mullenweg. Source: Wikimedia Commons Attiribution: Cmichel67, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro: Comparing WordPress’ 2 Top Page Builder Plugins

[ad_1] Choosing a page builder plugin is less certain than it was even a couple of years ago, as there are lots of solutions on the market. Even so, for many users, the options boil down to Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro. As such, this is good place to start your journey. Both of these plugins have a long-standing and distinguished pedigree among WordPress users. Each has a wealth of features and functionality, along with reasonable pricing. As such, your decision will be based on how each solution suits you and your workflow. In this post, we’ll look at Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro in a few different areas. By the end, you’ll understand which option is right for you and why that is. A Quick Primer On Page Builders Before we move the comparison, let’s get on the same page (pun intended). For the unaware, a page builder is a way to create your site using a visual interface, rather than through code. You’ll work using a so-called ‘front end builder’. This means you’ll see the site as it will appear to users in the browser. The built-in WordPress Block Editor is great for writing blog posts and other content. Though, when it comes to layouts and site design, it’s still a baby. This functionality is improving, but you can’t yet rely on it to help you build you entire site. Enter page builders. These are third-party solutions for building your site’s layout and content. You’ll often have the functionality to customize almost every aspect of your front-end display. Some solutions will let you build custom headers and footers, and more. You’ll also find features to help you add in advanced elements such as interactive buttons, pop-ups, animations, and more. The goal of a page builder is to help you create your site without the need for code, yet with the same flexibility and scope. With regards to Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro, both page builders have plenty to offer here. Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro: Introducing Both Plugins The comparison is coming up, but before that, let’s introduce both Beaver Builder and Elementor Pro. Note that we’re talking about the premium versions of each plugin. While both offer free tiers, these vary in scope and functionality. In any case, most users will often opt for the fuller-featured premium solutions, so it makes sense to talk about these in the first instance. Beaver Builder Beaver Builder is the ‘elder statesman’ of page builder plugins. It’s been around for a number of years, and was one of the first page builders on the market. It’s a drag-and-drop builder, with a collection of modules that lets you add almost any piece of functionality or formatting to your site. For example, you can add a Call To Action (CTA), basic forms, video embeds, and much more: We’ve talked about Beaver Builder on the blog before. This article is worth reading to get some more context and information on how Beaver Builder works on a day-to-day basis. Elementor Pro Elementor is a relative newcomer when it comes to page builders. While it hasn’t been around for too long, it has developed a stellar reputation among end users, site owners, developers, and even investors. It’s also a drag-and-drop page builder that works as though you’re viewing your site’s front end. Much like Beaver Builder, you pull modules (‘elements’ here) into place, and work on the attributes and properties of each one. Again, there are lots of elements to choose from – you shouldn’t need to go hunting for additional elements to build your site. Because Elementor is so popular, we’ve also featured the page builder on the blog before. For a more in-depth look at how the plugin works, we encourage you to check out that post too. Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro: Comparing Both Page Builder Plugins We’re now into the thick of this Beaver Builder vs Elementor Pro comparison. Over the next few sections, we’ll take a look at each solution and compare them in the following areas: Features, functionality, and Ease of Use 🧰. We’ll look at what each plugin can offer, along with any additional functionality provided. Support and resources 🙋. Here, we’ll look at how much support is on offer for each plugin. We’ll also look at any further resources available to help you build and manage your site. Pricing 💵. This straightforward section will look at the cost factor for each plugin. It will also touch on any free tiers, although it’s not a fair comparison (as we’ll explain). There may be some cross-over between sections. For example, ease of use and features will overlap in an organic way. As such, while we encourage you jump around the post to read about aspects that interest you, taking in the full post will let you learn the full story of each page builder. Features, Functionality, and Ease of Use 🧰 Because both Beaver Builder and Elementor Pro are popular and powerful, this comparison will be close. Each page builder offers a drag-and-drop editor as a matter of course. Elementor looks more modern in our subjective opinion, although Beaver Builder looks more like a native WordPress feature. With Elementor, you edit from the sidebar at all times. There are three panels to choose from: Layout, Style, and Advanced. This is a nice way to separate different aspects of your design, but you sometimes get the feeling there is too much for this sidebar to handle. For example, there’s also a ‘hamburger menu’ full of site-wide options, along with further menus and sub-menus. Though, we do like that there’s always a link to the Elements screen. This gives you access to all of the functionality for your site, and you can even add aspects such as Lottie animations and forms. For the latter, there’s a dedicated builder that will often mean you don’t need a plugin to do the job: As for Beaver Builder, it took us a while to

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5 Top Tools to Help You Manage Multiple Sites from Single Dashboard

[ad_1] It’s normal to run multiple WordPress websites as a modern site owner. The best place for visibility is on the internet, which means each business or blog will often have its own site. Though, running all of these sites could be a hassle and an administrative nightmare. As such, you’ll need a tool to manage multiple sites from a central location. The great news is that there are lots of services to make running multiple WordPress websites a breeze. The time you save can go back into running your business, rather than your site – and you could save some money too. In this post, we’ll look at a few solutions to help you manage multiple sites from a central WordPress dashboard. By the end, you’ll be able to find a service that fits your needs and say “Goodbye” to your old method of multiple site management. 5 Top Tools to Help You Manage Multiple Sites from Single Dashboard We’re going to look at five different ways to manage multiple sites from one dashboard. While some integrate with the WordPress dashboard, others have a custom solution. Here’s the list we’ll look at: MainWP. This runs from WordPress, and balances budget, functionality, and complexity within its features and functionality. ManageWP. The tool is a mainstay of WordPress site management, and comes with a unique pricing model. InfiniteWP. While the free tier is light on features, the premium solution will appeal to developers. Glow. This newcomer is going to become a front-runner for managing multiple sites, given its feature set and price. WP Remote. If you have the budget, and run a lot of sites, WP Remote could fit the bill. The list isn’t in any order, so feel free to jump around to look at a tool that appeals to you. Though, we recommend reading the whole list at some point, if only to compare your chosen solution to the rest. 1. MainWP First up, MainWP is a free, open-source tool for WordPress websites, with a lot of powerful features in the box. It offers great flexibility when looking to manage multiple sites and keep them secure. The MainWP dashboard features an intuitive interface that takes the hassle out of managing plugins, themes, and other aspects of your site. For example, it checks the update status of your themes and plugin, and sends you a summary notification. Though, it can do more than notify you of updates. MainWP’s one-click access to your network of sites makes it a breeze to administrate sites. A big time-saver is that you don’t have to type in individual URLs. Instead, there’s a direct link to each admin panel, which means you’re in an instant position to start managing the site. Once you’ve configured each site’s login credentials from the dashboard, you won’t need to remember them. On the whole, MainWP offers a stellar experience for WordPress users who want to manage multiple sites. What’s more, you can extend the platform using a number of free and premium extensions. Pricing MainWP’s core services are available on a free tier for unlimited sites. Though, there’s also MainWP Pro – a premium version (around $20 per month) that includes a number of otherwise inaccessible extensions. This includes functionality such as Wordfence and Yoast SEO integration, staging functionality, and advanced reporting. 💲Don’t forget to use our MainWP Coupon to get 15% OFF. 2. ManageWP Our next tool to manage multiple sites is ManageWP – one of the popular and best services for the task. It lets you access all of your sites through a single dashboard, and makes carrying out site admin a straightforward process. As you’d expect, the service is a snap to use. You’re able to perform almost all common routine tasks for your site through ManageWP. For example, you’re able to carry out basic updates to plugins and themes. Though, you can also add content to a site, create backups, and even start a new WordPress site. No matter what the task is, ManageWP features an intuitive, user-focused interface. It lets you jump in and begin regardless of your technical expertise. In addition, ManageWP offers premium-quality customer support. It’s available 24/7, highly knowledgeable, and on hand to help you solve any issues. Pricing The pricing model for ManageWP is unique. While, it offers core features for free, the service takes a modular approach. In other words, you can upgrade your experience on a per-extension basis. For example, you’re able to white-label your site, add backup functionality, and more, all for $1–2 per site, per month. This keeps the cost down for a handful of sites, but could see prices scale. Though, ManageWP also offers bundles of add-ons and extensions to help keep costs down for large-scale management projects. 3. InfiniteWP Next, InfiniteWP is a powerful tool to help you manage multiple sites without wasting time, effort, and money. You can manage all of your sites from a single intuitive and powerful admin panel, without the need to remember your admin credentials. Because it focuses on agencies, developers, and freelancers, it’s almost unique in the niche. InfiniteWP offers a global overview of your sites from a centralized admin panel. Its one-click update feature makes it easy to update site elements across your entire network of websites. What’s more, it includes a free backup and restore service – something not all solutions offer. Compared to the competition, InfiniteWP is light on core features. In fact, the free edition gives you little more than one-click admin access and updates. This isn’t enough to compete with other free solutions, although the premium upgrade is great quality. Pricing At the base level, you’re able to install InfiniteWP for free. Though, as we said, this only gives you one-click admin access, one-click updates, and backup functionality. If you decide to upgrade, you unlock more of InfiniteWP’s features. There are a number of premium features to choose from, including a lot of reporting and monitoring tools. One feature we like for developers is the

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10 Top Free and Premium CDNs for WordPress

[ad_1] Speed is a practical necessity for all websites. While there are lots of ways you can do this, and Content Delivery Network (CDN) is ideal for getting your site to load fast regardless of where the end user is located. Though, as this list of free and premium CDNs will show, there’s overwhelming choice. Though, you don’t have to bog yourself down with decision paralysis. There are a few top solutions to suit a variety of needs. What’s more, because WordPress is popular, integrating a CDN is a piece of cake. This means you can concentrate on what a solution will offer, rather than how you’ll implement it. As such, this article will look at some of the popular free and premium CDNs for WordPress. Before this, let’s fill in the blanks when it comes to how a CDN can help you. What a Content Delivery Network (CDN) Is In a nutshell, a CDN is a network of servers across the globe. The goal is to take your site, distribute it across those servers, and call on it when a local user accesses your site. For example, if you’re a site owner in the US, you’re often going to use a server located in the country. Users close in a relative sense to that server won’t see any issues. Though, for an end user in Australia, the time it takes to get your site from one server to the other will cause lag. In fact, this is a big aspect in testing your site speed with tools such as Pingdom or GTmetrix: A CDN chooses the most relevant server (read: the closest) for the end user, and serves that. It’s the same site for all practical purposes, but offers a dramatic difference to your visitors. As such, they’re vital for a high-performing website that runs fast almost anywhere on the planet. The Perks of Both Free and Premium CDNs for Your Site and Its Users The general benefit of using free or premium CDNs is speed. Though, if you drill down further, there are specific reasons why a fast site is better than a slow one: In short, search engines prefer fast sites. Google considers speed to be an important factor, and uses it in part to determine a site’s PageRank calculation. A site that loads quickly improves the user’s experience, which is crucial for optimizing conversion rates. After all, even a two-second loading time can hammer your bounce rate. There’s also a bandwidth saving for your host too. Because a CDN uses its own servers, your host won’t be responsible for allocating resources. As such, you can better use your host’s resources, and farm out others to your CDN. 10 Top Free and Premium CDNs for WordPress Over the next few sections, we’ll discuss ten of the best free and premium CDNs on the market. We’ll talk about the general features of each solution, along with their pros and cons. Of course, we’ll also tell you the cost of each one. Here’s a summary of our inclusions: StackPath. An enterprise-level solution that comes with similar-sized pricing. Amazon CloudFront. It integrates with AWS, so will be suitable if you use that service. CDN77. This is the only CDN that can work from space! It’s another service that best suits huge networks. Cloudflare. The perennial choice of users with low budgets, Cloudflare is great regardless of whether you’re on the free or premium tier. CDN.net. The pricing is better than other large CDNs, but offers less in the way of features and functionality. jsDelivr. This servers your JavaScript dependencies from a network of servers. Site Accelerator. Automattic’s own solution is an image and file CDN that’s ideal if you’re a Jetpack user. KeyCDN. Good pricing and solid features means KeyCDN is a top-tier solution for all users. Swarmify. A video CDN that works great alongside other full-featured CDNs. BelugaCDN. This budget CDN is an outlier pic if you’re looking for a long-term and cheap CDN. While you might have heard of some solutions here, others could be new. As such, we encourage you to jump around the post and check out whatever CDNs appeal to you. Let’s begin! 1. StackPath First on our list of free and premium CDNs is a solution you may not know in its current guise. StackPath is a rebranded and enhanced MaxCDN – a product we’ve covered on the blog before. Regardless of its name, it’s an industry-standard CDN, trusted by millions of users. StackPath offers high-performance and better security, along with a bunch of other features and specifications: A direct connection to the StackPath network – great for high-traffic applications. The ability to serve Secure Sockets Layers (SSL) certificates from StackPath’s servers, rather than from your ‘origins’. You’re able to set custom rules for your setup, to make sure StackPath works for your needs. StackPath also offers in-depth support across a variety of channels. In the past, we’ve shown how MaxCDN and WordPress integrates, and it will be a similar case for StackPath too. Though, it’s worth noting that we couldn’t find any pricing on StackPath’s website. This often indicates that you’ll need a substantial budget to afford its service. As such, this could be a deal-breaker for you. Try StackPath 2. Amazon CloudFront Amazon (of course) are an integral part of online shopping for millions of users. What’s more, there are various ‘wings’ of the brand, and you can find services such as audiobooks, and cloud computing too. Amazon’s CloudFront is their take on a CDN that’s worth investigating. CloudFront is one part of the whole Amazon Web Services (AWS) offering. As such, your AWS resource allocation includes millions of ‘function invocations’ for the platform. As you’d expect, you’re in good hands with CloudFront. Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Slack, and more all use the CDN to deliver content across the globe. This is down to a robust, enterprise-level set of features and functionality: There’s deep integration with the whole AWS network of

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4 Top GoDaddy Hosting Alternatives and Competitors for 2021

[ad_1] Hosting is a perennial topic among site owners. The conversation can get fanatic and fervent at times too. GoDaddy is one of the more popular hosts on the market. Even so, it’s not the only option. In fact, there are a lot of GoDaddy alternatives available that may suit you better. For example, you may not need GoDaddy’s collaboration tools. It could be that you need more when it comes to server specifications. Regardless, each provider has a different approach – and one could be better for your needs. Given this, we’ll look at some of the best GoDaddy alternatives, and discuss why they could do a more effective job. First, let’s give you some background on GoDaddy. A Quick Introduction to GoDaddy In short, GoDaddy is a monster-sized hosting provider. In fact, it covers many bases with its services, but hosting is a primary offering. The target user is small and medium business owners, which is why you’ve likely come across GoDaddy in the past. As such, the product lines and feature sets are all geared around running a business. Team-based solutions are also front and center too. GoDaddy is also a domain registrar, which means you can buy your domain and hosting from the same place. While this isn’t always recommended, it is convenient and in some cases can save you money. On paper, GoDaddy can cater to lots of different users and business. Even so, some users are looking elsewhere for hosting. Let’s take some time to find out why. Why You’d Want to Find GoDaddy Alternatives to Host Your Website Of course, GoDaddy is not the only host on the market. As the saying goes, “variety is the spice of life”. As such, there are lots of general reasons why you might want a GoDaddy alternative: The feature set doesn’t align with your site’s goals. There are too many features you’re not using. You’ve found third-party solutions for some of the built-in offerings. It could even be that none of the above is true. If you take a look at a site such as Review Signal, you’ll notice that GoDaddy is not in the top ten for any category. In fact, it’s struggling to remain in the top 20 hosting providers: This is down to a few reasons: Customer support can be poor, and the process to resolve simple queries is made into a complex number of steps. There have been user reports of poor server stability and speed over the years. The price can be cheap if you’re only using hosting. Though, if you’re buying more services from GoDaddy, the cost could spiral out of control. Despite this, GoDaddy can be a solid host for you, if everything hits the mark. More often than not though, you can find higher quality at a cheaper price point. 4 Top GoDaddy Alternatives and Competitors Let’s get down to the ‘nitty-gritty’, and look at some top-quality GoDaddy alternatives. Here are the providers we’ll feature: A2 Hosting. This cost-effective host has all the power of GoDaddy, but none of the ‘fluff’. WP Engine. If you’re after a dedicated WordPress host, WP Engine is a top-tier solution. Kinsta. For ‘hall of fame’ class hosting, Kinsta offers iron-clad dependability and functionality. DreamHost. A WordPress-approved host that offers value for money, and platform-specific servers. First off, we’ll look at the cheapest option on our list. Though, it’s not the worst performer by a long shot. 1. A2 Hosting First off, we have A2 Hosting. This provider has grown to become one of the major players over the past few years, and for good reason. It provides a number of plans for hosting your site, such as shared and dedicated plans, and a Virtual Private Server (VPS) if you need one. It also offers shared and managed WordPress hosting, which might have pricked up your ears. From the four dedicated plans, all but the lowest tier offers an unlimited number of websites. While all plans offer at least Solid State Drive storage, higher tiers give you Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) drives for blazing speed and reliability. The more expensive plans also give you A2 Hosting’s ‘Turbo Boost’ servers. This lets you handle more traffic, reduce your page load speeds, work with a higher-powered processor, and get access to stellar caching. As for support, there’s a comprehensive knowledge base for all types of hosting. If you’re after a more personal experience, A2 Hosting also as a wealth of options to access the support team. Compared to GoDaddy, A2 Hosting offers less on the whole. Though, this isn’t a knock on the latter. What’s here is focused on solid, stable hosting – especially if you’re a WordPress user. If you’re after good all-around hosting without the bells and whistle that come attached to GoDaddy, this is a top-notch option. 💲 Use our A2Hosting Coupon to get up to 51 % off Get A2Hosting 2. WP Engine Next up, WP Engine is a perennial host within any discussion on the topic. Even so, it more than matches up to GoDaddy in a number of ways. WP Engine bills itself as a ‘Digital Experience Platform (DXP)’. Rather than focus only on hosting, WP Engine looks to provide an all-around solution for managing your online presence. The idea behind a DXP is that your brand can be where your users are, through homogenized social media and other branding channels. This is in contrast to the traditional passive approach. Given this, its no surprise that WP Engine offers solutions catered to marketers and developers. It’s a fully-managed host with three different options for your site. Each of these has five tiers. It can be confusing, but no more so than other hosts. Though, the price for using WP Engine is clear. It’s more expensive than most other competitors, including GoDaddy. This isn’t always a negative, though. There’s a lot packed into each tier. If you have everything you need to run your site, it’s money well spent.

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