Escape the Room, More Speakers, and final Sponsors.

Escape the Room challenge

Do you have the wit and team work skills to escape the room? On Saturday April 8th we’ll be golfing, but also taking a group to participate in an escape the room challenge at Dare to Escape. This is a pretty fun activity, one we did as a team on our last company retreat. A $50 ticket is required if you’d like to join us – lunch will be provided [menu].

More Speakers

Lawdan Shojaee is CEO of the software company AxoSoft and an advocate for workplace diversity. Chris Hooley is a walking contradiction in the best way possible – huge sports fan, weightlifter, recovering affiliate marketer of supplements and SEO legend, now turned community activist working to help the Phoenix homeless population. John Eckman of 10up will share his insight and acumen on running a scalable business. Neill Feather of SiteLock and Robert Rowley of Pagely will both be to breaking it down for us about the threats we face in digital security.

Additional speakers announced soon – Maybe your name? We’re still looking for a few more great lightning talk submissions. Have something to share? Do it.

Final Sponsors

Please welcome hosting co’s: DreamHost (Travel Sponsor), BoldGrid (C Sponsor), and Liquid Web (Coffee Sponsor), and SiteGround (Community) to the fold. Finally welcome Astoundify as a community sponsor.

The Cost Of Neglecting Site Security & Speed

Below is a guest post by one of our event sponsors, enjoy.

Don’t Take Security Lightly!

With so many priorities that we have to juggle on a daily basis, an unfortunate reality is that site security is something many of us neglect. Site security can be a lot like insurance. It only becomes a concern when something disastrous happens. The reality is that something disastrous happens to the over 30,000 websites that are hacked each day.

For smaller sites, automated solutions to fix hacked sites start at around $200. Those prices obviously rapidly increase based on the size of the site and the severity of the damage inflicted about the hack. There’s also damage control with Google and more importantly the site’s visitors that need to be taken care of. Shouldn’t you do something to help prevent your site from getting hacked?

Something many WordPress users turn to in hopes of keeping their sites safe is to load their sites down with plugins. Unfortunately some of these plugins will develop their own vulnerabilities if they are not updated on a consistent basis. Even worse is the fact that many users do not uninstall their plugins that they are not currently using. This is another security concern.

A Slow Site Costs!

Adding all of those plugins can also cause an additional issue with your site; slowing it down! While having an insecure site could end up costing you money, a slow site is definitely costing you money.

We know that Google looks at site speed as a ranking factor, but what is the actual cost of a slow loading site? According to a Kissmetrics study, a 1-second page delay in page response can result in a 7% reduction in conversions. That’s $25,000/ year for a site that makes $1000/day. That doesn’t even take into account the impact slow sites have on visitor satisfaction and bounce rates. These numbers make site speed a real concern.

Your All-In-One WordPress Speed & Security Solution
At A2 Hosting, we understand you just don’t have a ton of time to optimize your site for speed and security. That’s why we’ve have created our very own WordPress plugin called A2 Optimized to take care of it all for you. A2 Optimized was developed by our team after they tested a number of configurations. They determined the one with the best speed and security settings. A2 Optimized has taken the guesswork out of how to get the best performance while helping to keep your site safe.

A2 Optimized WordPress from A2 Hosting offers you a more flexible and affordable Managed WordPress Hosting.

New Sponsors and On Sale reminder.

The financial support provided by this year’s sponsors has been unprecedented. Quite simply there are more sponsors than we have spots available and had to turn away a few sponsors, or have sponsors engage at a lower level. I think that means we have a good event 😉

Please help us welcome:

  • MojoMarketplace is back for their 4th year, this time around they are helping us as an Airfare sponsor. With their help we will cover some or all airfare costs for our speakers.
  • TheWPValet as a C level sponsor. Mason and his team are great folks and we send a good chunk of work to them via Pagely.
  • 3five is a newcomer at the community level, and will be sponsoring the coffee this year. Yay Java.
  • CrowdFavorite is back again as a community sponsor.
  • Pressed.net is a first time sponsor at the C level. White-label managed WordPress.
  • a2Hosting is a first time sponsor at the community level.
  • Themeisle is a first time sponsor at the community level.
  • Freemius  is also a first timer at the community level.

Logistics Update

  • Tickets go on sale Sept 1, at 10am PST.
  • The hotel booking codes will be in your emailed ticket receipt
  • Sponsors will be sent an email a few days prior with a special access code to secure their tickets (book your room early)
  • Past Attendees will be sent an email a few days prior with a special access code to secure specially priced tickets. These are limited in quantity to act fast.

1 speaker announcement with many more to follow soon.

AAEAAQAAAAAAAAU2AAAAJDFhODMwNjJkLWVjZWItNGMxZC04OGUwLWE1OWY0NzE3YTdlZQPlease help us welcome back speaker Marcus Nelson. Marcus spoke at PN1 and in the time since has had quite the adventure in business. He’ll be catching us up, and trust me it is a story worth hearing.

 

 

Thank you all sponsors

pn4-sponsors

The Top 50 New WordPress Plugins of 2014 via Envato

This is a sponsored post supplied by one of our primary sponsors Envato. Envato has been a strong supporter of PressNomics sponsoring all 3 events. Read on and learn the top 50 New WordPress Plugins of 2014 as curated by them.

 

If you’re looking to add some extra functionality to your site with some of the latest and greatest WordPress plugins, then this is the post for you. There are plugins for adding extra features to WooCommerce, addons for extending Visual Composer, UserPro extensions, plugins for social sharing, for creating an event, for adding parallax scrolling, for creating galleries, sliders or carousels, for calendars, for mega-menus… there really is plugins for everything.

Top 50 New WordPress Plugins of 2014

1. Ultimate Addons for Visual Composer

Ultimate Addons is an extension that adds many new features, elements and components to Visual Composer. Elements include: Info Boxes, Info Lists, Flip Boxes, Counters, Interactive Banner, Modal Popup Box, Timelines and Extended Google Maps.

Ultimate Addons for Visual Composer

And on top of all of those elements, Ultimate Addons also comes packaged with a selection of easy-to-use tools for creating parallax (vertical or horizonatal), video, or image backgrounds.

2. Easy Social Share Buttons

The Easy Social Share Buttons plugin for WordPress is an all-in-one social sharing solution that allows you to share, monitor and ultimately increase your social popularity. The plugin also includes 12 native social like, follow and subscribe buttons.

Easy Social Share Buttons for WordPress

3. Essential Grid

The super easy to use Essential Grid plugin allows you to display various content formats in a highly customizable grid. Possible applications range from portfolios, blogs, galleries, WooCommerce shops, price tables, services, product sliders, testimonials, and anything else you can imagine.

Essential Grid WordPress Plugin

4. Composium – Visual Composer Extensions

Composium is a Visual Composer extension that includes 60+ beautiful new elements, including integrated galleries, lightbox & modal popups, custom post types for Teammates, Testimonials & Skillsets, and much, much more. Each individual element and feature can be completely disabled via the plugin settings, saving server and memory load.

Visual Composer Extensions

5. Master Slider

With touch navigation support, Master Slider for WordPress is an image and content slider that comes with some super smooth hardware accelerated transitions.

Master Slider - WordPress Responsive Touch Slider

6. Ultimate Social Deux

Ultimate Social Deux is a customizable, easy-to-use WordPress social plugin that won’t slow down your website. It comes with supports for the following networks: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, LinkedIn, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Buffer and vkontakte.ru.

Ultimate Social Deux

7. WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts

The Dynamic Pricing & Discounts Woocommerce extension lets you manage product pricing rules and cart discounts very easily. You can run special Christmas, Easter or Black Friday promotions, or even set up clearance or flash sales. With this extension you can set up the most powerful promotions in minutes!

WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts

8. Responsive Timetable Schedule

Responsive Timetable Schedule is a powerful and easy-to-use schedule plugin for WordPress. It will help you to create a timetable view of your events in minutes.

Timetable Responsive Schedule For WordPress

9. Testimonials Showcase

Testimonials Showcase is a plugin for displaying testimonials, reviews or quotes. It comes packaged with two optional layout views: Grid or Slider.

Testimonials Showcase - WordPress Plugin

10. Real 3D FlipBook

As the name suggests, the Real 3D FlipBook plugin will create a flipbook directly from a PDF file, or from a selection of JPEG or PNG images. Just enter the URL(s) and your 3d FlipBook will be automatically generated.

Real 3D FlipBook

11. Live Composer Page Builder

Live Composer is a frontend WordPress page builder plugin that allows you to build posts and pages directly on the page, not from within the WordPress backend.

Live Composer - Front-End WordPress Page Builder

12. WooCommerce Extra Product Options

WooCommerce Extra Product Options allows you to create extra price fields on your WooCommerce products. The current version supports checkboxes, radio buttons, select boxes, textareas, input boxes, uploads and date.

WooCommerce Extra Product Options

13. Video & Parallax Backgrounds

Video & Parallax Backgrounds Visual Composer extension allows you to easily add image parallax scrolling effects and video backgrounds to your WordPress site. The plugin integrates straight into Visual Composer’s row settings, and is flexible to suit your theme’s design.

Video & Parallax Backgrounds For Visual Composer

14. Visual Composer Extensions All In One

Visual Composer Extensions All In One is a selection of several Visual Composer add-ons that have been bundled together into a single mega-bundle.

Visual Composer Extensions All In One

15. Chat X – Chat Plugin for Sales & Support

Chat X is a plugin that allows you to speak/chat directly with your visitors on your website.

Chat X - WordPress Chat plugin for Sales & Support

16. Ninja Kick Contact Form

The Ninja Kick Contact Form is a plugin that adds a responsive contact form, with push/sliding animation effects on every page of your site.

Ninja Kick: WordPress Contact Form

17. MiniGO – Flat Coming Soon Plugin

MiniGO is a very easy to set up and customize plugin that will create a coming soon or under construction page in less than 5 minutes after purchasing.

MiniGO - Uber Minimal Flat Coming Soon WP Plugin

18. Meta Data & Taxonomies Filter

The Meta Data & Taxonomies Filter plugin will make your WooCommerce and Jigoshop products searchable by: product attributes, product categories, custom taxonomies, price and any other meta fields all at the same time

Wordpress Meta Data & Taxonomies Filter

19. Gravity Forms Styler

Gravity Forms Styler is a powerful extension that will create and apply beautiful styles to Gravity Forms’ standard fields, advanced fields, titles and descriptions, buttons, form borders, form labels and form backgrounds. And you can even customize the form confirmation and error messages.

Gravity Forms Styler

20. Awesome Gallery

Awesome Gallery is a plugin for helping you build nice looking galleries using images pulled from various sources, like posts, attachments, pages, custom post types including WooCommerce products, Flickr, Instagram, Facebook, 500px albums, NEXTGEN Gallery, and even RSS feeds.

Awesome Gallery

21. WooCommerce Request a Quote

The Request a Quote WooCommerce extension allows your visitors/customers to add products to a wishlist and submit an easy “request for a quote” from the site owner/admin. This offers a rare opportunity to offer special rates based on the quantity/amount of the order.

WooCommerce Request a Quote

22. Private Messages for UserPro

Private Messages is a useful UserPro addon that allows users to interact with each other better.

Private Messages for UserPro

23. NEX-Forms Builder

NEX-Forms Builder is a high quality and easy to use drag and drop/single click form creator for WordPress. It offers a wide range of customizability, flexibility, design and usability that makes online form building a walk in the park.

NEX-Forms - The Ultimate WordPress Form Builder

24. Mapplic – Custom Interactive Maps

The Mapplic plugin will turn any vector graphic map into a interactive map application that is supported by every major browser and even works perfectly on all mobile devices. The supported map file formats are: JPG, PNG and SVG.

Mapplic - Custom Interactive Map WordPress Plugin

25. Parallax Gravity – Landing Page Builder

Parallax Gravity is a WordPress plugin that allows you to create unlimited landing pages. You can add multiple sections within each page. Dor each section you can set a background, add any type of content including shortcodes from third party plugin,s and much more.

Parallax Gravity - Landing Page Builder

26. Responsive Accordion Slider

Accordion Slider is a fully responsive and touch-enabled WordPress plugin that combines the functionality of an accordion with that of a slider.

Accordion Slider - Responsive WordPress Plugin

27. Flat Estimation & Payment Forms

The Estimation & Payment Forms plugin will allow you to quickly create a flat and responsive cost estimation popup form that can be used to sell any type of service or products.

Flat Estimation & Payment Forms

28. Bookly – Appointment Booking & Scheduling

Bookly is an easy-to-use and manage booking tool for WordPress. The plugin supports a wide range of services.

Bookly – Responsive WordPress Appointment Booking and Scheduling Plugin

29. Web 2.0 Directory Plugin

The Web 2.0 Directory plugin for WordPress will allow you to build any kind of business directory site: classifieds, events directory, cars, bikes, boats and other vehicles dealers site, pets, real estate portal… anything!

Web 2.0 Directory plugin

30. Indeed Smart PopUp

The Indeed Smart PopUp plugin allows you to easily create unlimited popups from within WordPress. And wth more than 100 features, you can truly create any types or style of popup.

Indeed Smart PopUp

31. Directory & Business Finder

Directory & Business Finder extends the functionality of Ait‘s Directory WordPress Theme, Business Finder WordPress Theme and Tour Operator WordPress Theme.

Directory & Business Finder

32. WooCommerce Category Accordion

The Category Accordion WooCommerce extension allows you to list product categories and subcategories in a toggle accordion with expand/collapse options.

WooCommerce Category Accordion

33. Ninja Kick: Sliding Panel

The Ninja Kick Sliding Panel plugin for WordPress adds a hidden off-canvas sidebar with push or sliding animation on every page of your site.

Ninja Kick: Sliding Panel

34. foodpress

foodpress is an easy to use restaurant menu management plugin for WordPress. You can build unlimited menu items for your restaurant, categorize them by dish/meal type, or build your own custom categories.

foodpress - Restaurant Menu & Reservation Plugin

35. WooCommerce Shortcodes

This plugin offers a very simple method for adding WooCommerce Shortcodes to Visual Composer.

Woocommerce shortcodes for Visual Composer

36. Icon Box for Visual Composer

The Icon Box extension for Visual Composer will allow you to create nice looking information boxes with icons very quickly. It offers over nine customization possibilities with each of the three pre-designed styles, which means you can create at least 25 different information box designs.

Icon Box for Visual Composer

37. WooCommerce Simple Auctions

The Simple Auctions extension for WooCommerce will quickly add auction features to your site. You can easily make an Ebay clone with regular and reverse auctions along with your regular products.

WooCommerce Simple Auctions

38. Booki – A Booking Plugin

The Booki plugin, with it’s built-in form builder, will create almost any type of booking system within your WordPress site.

Booki - A booking plugin

39. Color/Image Variation Swatches

The Color or Image Variation Swatches WooCommerce extension will convert your normal variable attribute dropdown select to a nice looking color or image select.

Woocommerce Color or Image Variation Swatches

40. Media Grid – Overlay Manager

Media Grid is an Overlay Manager addon that does exactly what it’s name suggests: lets you create and manage unlimited overlays. Once you install this add-on, there will be eight preset overlays waiting to be used or customized.

Media Grid - Overlay Manager

41. Custom Order Status & Actions

The Custom Order Status & Actions is an extension that gives you complete control over your WooCommerce’s order statuses./p>

WooCommerce Custom Order Status & Actions

42. WooCommerce Product Filter

WooCommerce Product Filter is a powerful WordPress plugin that instantly enables your visitors to filter out products. You can create unlimited filter presets and use them with the Product Filter shortcode or to override your product archives.

WooCommerce Product Filter

43. Product Options for WooCommerce

The Product Options plugin will add image, image upload, text, number, number slider, dropdown, calendar, color picker, checkbox and radio options to WooCommerce Products.

Product Options for WooCommerce

44. Kingdom

Kingdom is a plugin that allows you to easily create and customize a WooCommerce store using the theme, and sell anything from Amazon as an affiliate.

Kingdom - Woocommerce Amazon Affiliates Theme

45. WooCommerce Catalog Mode

The Catalog Mode extension can be used to turn a typical WooCommerce layout into a ‘catalog-style’ layout. In catalog mode, the “Add to Cart” buttons are removed, so the shopping functionality will be disabled from the site. Visitors can then just view your products and its details.

WooCommerce Catalog Mode

46. Bulk Edit Product Variations

With the Bulk Edit Product Variations plugin you can bulk edit simple or variable WooCommerce product fields such as SKU, Stock, Regular Price, Sale Price, Weight, and Height.

Woocommerce Bulk Edit Product Variations

47. Suppamenu – All Purpose Mega Menus

Suppamenu is a responsive, customizable and powerful Mega Menu plugin for WordPress.

Suppamenu - All Purpose WordPress Mega Menus

48. Products Badge Management

The Product Badge Management plugin gives you complete control over the badges from your WooCommerce store. You can define and design a badge for: single products, single categories, multi-categories, store-wide, and much more.

Woocommerce Products Badge Management

49. Event Booking Pro: Forms Manager

Forms Manager is an Event Booking Pro extension that allows you to create custom event forms using an easy to use interface.

Event Booking Pro: Forms Manager

50. WordPress User Bookmarks for UserPro

User Bookmarks is a UserPro extension that allow users to bookmark any content they want, categories, posts, forum topics, custom posts, and also manage their bookmarks into collections.

WordPress User Bookmarks for UserPro

Finshed!

Congratulations to everyone that made it into our top 50! Hopefully we will be including many of you next year!

Welcome MOJO Marketplace as commercial sponsor for PressNomics.

The team at MOJO, based in Salt Lake City, recently announced they joined the EIG group. Their library of themes and plugins are now integrated in the hosting panels of HostGator and Bluehost. That is by definition: Winning. We would like to welcome then onboard as a commercial sponsor to PressNomics. I as I am sure all of you look forward to hearing their story.

MOJOMarketplaceMOJO Marketplace is the webs one-click marketplace for themes, plugins, installations and more. MOJO is fully integrated with the leading web hosting companies so that customers can browse, shop and installs easily with one-click. Our goal is to change the way people buy, sell and install the latest themes, plugins, and applications on the internet.
w: www.mojomarketplace.com | t: @mojomarketplace

Welcome Hosting company SiteGround as a commercial sponsor.

WordPress is a big tent with many talented folks doing a lot of very interesting things. The niche of WordPress hosting has been growing and SiteGround has recently created hosting plans specifically for WordPress. Please help us welcome SiteGround as a commercial sponsor to this event. We look forward to meeting them in person and getting to know another company adding value to the growing WordPress ecosystem.

SITEGROUND-new-logo-Black
SiteGround provides managed WordPress hosting that does not miss a thing: unique in-house crafted WordPress speed and security solutions for ultimate performance and protection, 24/7 support that knows WordPress and wide variety of WordPress tools – automatic updates, SuperCacher, CDN, staging. All this combined with the good old features of standard hosting – email service, ftp service, domain registration and the reasonable pricing.w: SiteGround | t: @siteground

Hooray Zendesk! Please welcome them back as a sponsor.

If you were lucky enough to attend PressNomics last year, one of the highlights was the great presentation Mikkel Svane, the CEO of Zendesk did on friday morning. He shared the journey of starting from nothing but an idea to the amazing success Zendesk enjoys now and care involved in the building the company culture along the way.

We use Zendesk daily in our business, we depend on it to provide support to our thousands of customers. We feel it is the best support desk software available. Please help us welcome them back as a commercial sponsor.

wordpress-logo-love-rgb-500 copy
Zendesk is the proven cloud-based help desk software that is the fastest way to enable great customer service in rapidly growing companies. Loved by support teams and their customers worldwide. More than 15,000 organizations including Adobe, Sony, and Groupon, trust Zendesk.

They also have a sweet WordPress plugin to make integration a breeze. Say hi to them on twitter – @zendesk

Welcoming Windows Azure as a commercial sponsor.

We are very happy to welcome Windows Azure onboard as a PRESSNOMICS commercial sponsor. Give em a shout out at @WindowsAzure

Windows Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage WordPress sites across a global network of Microsoft-managed datacenters. Build your WordPress sites on Windows or Mac OS X. You can choose to deploy to our managed Windows Azure Web Sites with native MySQL using FTP or GIT or you can deploy to your choice of 3 flavors of Linux. Microsoft’s global data center presence and ensures you can scale your WordPress site up or down to meet your needs. Whether creating new WordPress Sites or enhancing existing sites, Windows Azure lets you take your ideas to market faster and respond quickly to changes in business and your business needs.

Thanks to our new sponsor Site5

We are very happy to have Web Hosting company Site5.com on board as a C level sponsor.  I met these guys last year in SF and we chatter over a beer or 5. Happy to have Ben and his team on board. Big thanks to Site5 and all our sponsors.

Site5 provides fully managed web hosting built upon a global platform. Choose from over 17 locations around the world with more being added all the time. Start with an inexpensive web hosting plan and scale up to a powerful fully managed virtual server as your needs grow. All backed by a support team whose face you can see on every support ticket and chat. Try our free trial and once you are convinced we will migrate your website to Site5 for free!