Sponsoring WordCamp Nashville 2013 at the Diamond level was an easy call for Metacake.

“We are passionate about WordPress and WordCamp gives us an opportunity to sow back into the community.” says co-owner Bob Strachan. “A platform like WordPress that can help businesses do more with less money is good for business and good for Nashville.”

Metacake is a Franklin-based ”digital bakery” that offers digital strategy, user experience and visual design, development, and marketing services, among others. When lead developer Randy Hicks, one of WordCamp Nashville’s main organizers, joined the Metacake team four years ago he brought WordPress expertise with him.

“When Randy joined our team in 2009, we quickly became big advocates of WordPress,” Bob says. “Those were the early days of WordPress, but even then its potential was clear. Over time WordPress has proven to be a robust and flexible framework to build any kind of site on. We’ve built large and small sites, everything ranging from complex e-commerce to video platforms on WordPress.”

Maintaining other frameworks was time-consuming, for Metacake and their clients. As an agency head, Bob could see that it would frustrate clients when small site updates required developer intervention. With WordPress, clients could easily make their own minor changes and manage their own content in an environment that was familiar to them.

Check out a few recent Metacake WordPress sites:

Daniel Island, a real estate development in Charleston, SC
Thoughtronix, a Nashville-based research firm that organizes and engages big data to unlock its potential
The People’s Church, a Christian church with campuses in Franklin and Spring Hill

As WordPress has matured from a blogging platform to a full-fledged Content Management System (CMS) used by more and more businesses, Metacake wants to help spread the word.

“I am not a developer. My role at Metacake is to be the bridge between the business and the technology ” Bob says. “WordPress to me is an awesome platform that allows us to design and build web infrastructure that meets the business needs of our clients.”

Contact Metacake:
Bob Strachan
metacake.com
o: 615-852-6166

Wow.

WordPress is alive, well and thriving in Nashville and Middle Tennessee. WordCamp Nashville 2013 sold out, with 260 attendees and three tracks.

It takes a village, and Nashville showed up!

Businesses are using WordPress and talking about it. Local participation in related LinkedIn groups has tripled in a year. More businesses are moving to WordPress as their Content Management System (CMS), showing what many of us already knew – that WordPress is no longer a simple blogging platform.

WordCamp Nashville 2013 showcased local talent, enthusiasm and hunger for more. Nashville is on track to become a major collaboration center for WordPress in the South. Consider:

*WPNashville, our monthly meetup, has grown 66 percent.
*11 User MeetUps covered everything from plugins to socials, SEO, categories and tags, the new WordPress media manager and Nashville-based plugin development.
*5 developer MeetUps drew an average of 25 people for breakfast and coder talk.
*4 local developers answered questions and offered advice on a panel at BarCamp Panel in late 2012.
*WordCamp itself moved to a larger venue, added more presentations and lunch while keeping the ticket price the same.

From developers to businesses and users, folks across Middle Tennessee are using WordPress and collaborating more and more. Each year the community grows, and Saturday at WordCamp we even started an unplanned mini-track halfway through the morning to accommodate new users.

THANK YOU sponsors, volunteers, presenters and attendees for an AWESOME WordCamp Nashville 2013.

We had a blast and hope you did, too. Stay tuned for information on how to keep the momentum going.

It’s almost here!

Nashville WordCamp 2013 is hours away and we wanted to check in with some final details to make your experience even more awesome.

But why wait until Saturday? Join us tonight for the pre-party.

Pre-party: 7 p.m. Friday night 4/19
Patrick’s Bistreaux
2821 Bransford Avenue, Nashville TN
MAP of LOCATION

Yes, thank you. WORDCAMP NASHVILLE 2013 is hours away.

WordCamp Nashville 2013 4/20
8 a.m. Registration opens
9 a.m. First session starts
Nashville School of Law
4013 Armory Oaks Drive, Nashville TN 37204
MAP of LOCATION

After Party 4 p.m. and on, Saturday evening 4/20
M L Rose Craft Beer, Burgers & More
2535 Franklin Pike Nashville, TN 37204
(Franklin Pike is the same as 8th Avenue South in this part of Nashville)
MAP of LOCATION

Make sure you head to the M L Rose on 8th/Franklin Pike and NOT the M L Rose on Charlotte Avenue. The 8th Avenue South location is a short drive from the WordCamp venue. The Charlotte Avenue location is on the other side of town.

REMEMBER: Attendees are not locked into any one track. Float from room to room. Mingle. Create the WordCamp that works for you.

Tickets are still available, and we do expect to have some at the door should your friends and associates decide to join us, so it is not too late to spread the word. Cash will make such transactions easier but we want to accommodate as many WordPressers as we can.

See you soon.

A WordCamp without an after-party is sad. Because our goal is to make you happy, we’ve picked a spot not far from Nashville School of Law, where WordCamp Nashville 2013 will unfold.

By not far we mean it is a short drive but not a walkable route.

Did someone say beer?

Campers, speakers, organizers and volunteers can head for M.L. Rose after the last session. M.L. Rose is a craft beer and burger joint on Franklin Pike. The pub has two locations in Nashville. If you head to the spot on Charlotte Pike, you have picked the wrong one.

The specs:
WordCamp Nashville 2013 After Party
Start Time: 5 p.m.
Ends: Whenever
Location: M.L. Rose Craft Beer and Burgers
2535 Franklin Pike
Nashville, TN 37204
Info: Immediately following the last session attendees can make their way to the after party.
Site: M.L. Rose

Alley Interactive is on a mission to prove no website is too big or too complicated to be built on WordPress.

As developers, the folks at Alley Interactive go big. The agency’s experience with WordPress began in early 2011 with the migration of The New York Observer’s flagship site from Drupal to WordPress. Now, Alley Interactive, based in New York City’s Flatiron District, is working with design shop Hard Candy Shell to overhaul the New York’s Post’s site, a project that involves migrating hundreds of thousands of articles and images to WordPress.

It is one of nine WordPress.com VIP service partners. And at WordCamp Nashville Alley will showcase a new, sophisticated “field manager” it built to manage metadata for posts.

A site overhaul for the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation led Alley to write a custom plugin with a field type that allows users to manage data like an Excel spreadsheet on the front end without creating a custom database table on the back end, says Austin Smith, a managing partner and co-founder of Alley Interactive.

“We have had to do some brand new stuff with WordPress,” he says.

Alley will make much of Field Manager as an open-source plugin, and WordCamp Nashville will be its public rollout. Austin is a presenter in the developer track on April 20, the first of what he hopes will be a “long string of appearances” at other WordCamps on the road to making Field Manager part of the WordPress ecosystem.

Most of Alley’s clients are media companies or content producers that want help building and maintaining Drupal, WordPress, and Django sites. Again with Hard Candy Shell, it launched a new site and full rebranding for The New Republic magazine earlier this year. That site is on Drupal 7.

Yet for many projects WordPress is a compelling platform because new versions don’t require expensive upgrades to custom work, Austin says. The new Field Manager, which required hundreds of developer hours, embraces the same philosophy.

“It makes adding custom fields to WordPress posts incredibly easy,” he says.

Alley Interactive Website
Check out Alley’s WordPress projects.
Twitter @alleydev

Bluehost, a WordCamp Pillar-level sponsor, has been a recommended hosting provider on WordPress.org since 2005.

Shared hosting is the world’s most popular type of web hosting, and millions of sites use Bluehost for it. In 2013 the company is rolling out dedicated server hosting and VPS (virtual private server) for those wanting more power, resources, or control.

Features of VPS hosting include three simple configurations, resource customizations, bandwidth protection, root access and seconds to provision.

Bluehost launched dedicated hosting in beta in March 2013. The service includes a single sign-on for account management (server management, cPanel, everything) and a dedicated support line.

Regardless of the hosting plan, Bluehost uses the latest in server and server room technology to insure customers’ uptime and website speeds aren’t compromised.

The Utah-based company has its own data center, builds its own servers, has its own nationwide fiber network, and builds its own custom linux kernel.

Support and customer service are paramount. With hold times that average less than 30 seconds and 100% in-house onsite staff in Utah, Bluehost aims to make customers happy. And provide outstanding services for the lowest possible price.

Bluehost is indeed a pillar of the WordPress community; we’re honored by the company’s Pillar-level sponsorship of WordCamp Nashville 2013.

Bluehost website

Bluehost private servers

Think of Code Poet as a coffee shop or taproom where everyone is talking about WordPress. Everyone.

In Code Poet’s own words:

If you use WordPress to build things for other people, we want to make your life easier. No matter whether you freelance on a solo basis, lead a small web shop, make plugins in a dark closet, or crack the whip at a large design firm, our aim is to become your go-to source of information and resources to help you expand your WordPress skills and know-how. To make you better at what you do. To make it easier to make your living and look great doing it.

And we thank them.

Code Poet is a resource for WordPress developers and designers that aims to make the working knowledge and real world strategies of WordPress tribe members accessible. The site features interviews with real Code Poets, articles, WordPress news compiled from around the Interwebs, free e-books and other handy stuff. E-books available include “Getting Pricing Right,” “Locking Down WordPress,” and “WordPress, Meet Responsive Design.” In the latter, three WP pros share how they use media queries and fluid images and grids to create responsive WordPress sites.

Code Poet, like WordPress.com, Polldaddy, Akismet, VaultPress, Gravatar, and some other favorites, is a production of Auttomatic, the company behind the people behind the WordPress that we all know, love and use the $#&* out of.

Contact: Andrea Middleton
Website: http://codepoet.com
Twitter: @wpcodepoet

WordCamp Nashville 2013, a one-day event on April 20 at Nashville School of Law, will introduce new users to WordPress and offer full tracks for intermediate users and developers.

One in six websites across the globe run on WordPress, including those of major brands, country music stars and news organizations. WordPress is open-source software, meaning it is free, and users don’t need to write code to work with it.

The future of WordPress in Nashville is awesome. WordCamp Nashville 2012 photo by Patricia Melton.

WordCamp Nashville is one of a series of WordCamps held by users of the software throughout the world. WordCamp Nashville 2012 drew participants from Georgia, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Missouri in addition to Tennessee. Organizers expanded the program this year to three tracks and added lunch with the $20 admission.

Most of the speakers are local WordPress users, developers and experts. The event adds to the growing collaboration within the Nashville tech scene, entrepreneurs and small businesses.

“We really want to showcase the breadth and diversity of our own technical talent here in Middle Tennessee,” says John Housholder, a lead WordCamp Nashville organizer. “The sessions are organized to give participants great information and tools they can use right away.”

The track for new users, for example, includes sessions on getting started with WordPress, organizing content and working with images. Other sessions include WordPress SEO, building custom themes, and developer tools to customize the platform.

The event, at Nashville School of Law, is organized by a team of volunteers in partnership with local businesses and the WordPress Foundation.

Attendance is limited to 280. Admission also includes a t-shirt and some swag.

How’s that for official-sounding?

Register for WordCamp Nashville.

The only thing better than a WordCamp near you is a WordCamp near you that includes lunch.

Lunch is included with your $20 WordCamp ticket. So is a WordCamp Nashville 2013 t-shirt, destined to become an instant classic.

But back to the food. We think we’ve got something for everybody.

Club Sandwich
Turkey, ham, bacon, cheddar cheese with lettuce and tomato
Pork BBQ Sandwich
Pork served with BBQ sauce and topped with coleslaw
BBQ Turkey Sandwich
Turkey served with lettuce, tomato, and Great White BBQ sauce
California Veggie Wrap
Avocado, goat cheese, cucumber, red onion, shredded carrots, radishes, sprouts, light vinaigrette- on homemade focaccia
Vegetarian Wrap
Artichoke Hearts, fresh red peppers, baby spinach, sprouts, and provolone cheese in honey whole wheat wrap
Vegan Wrap
Roasted portabella, zucchini, eggplant, and hummus in a vegan spinach wrap

A hearty thanks to the folks at South Street and Big Guns Catering for putting together such a great menu. There will be chips, water and soda available as well.

Get your ticket and make your choice.

Last year WordCamp Nashville shared the stage with WordCamp New Zealand – held same day, separated by continents and cultures but united in appreciation of WordPress.

In 2013 the stage is split three ways. On April 20, Nashville, Seoul (Korea) and Slovakia all host WordCamps.

Several WordCamp Nashville organizers just returned from WordCamp Atlanta. So far this year newbies, experienced users, designers and developers have organized and attended WordCamps in Copenhagen, Pune (India), Jerusalem, Baroda (India) Phoenix, Paris, Mexico.

WordCamps grab hold across the globe.

Miami; San Diego; Minneapolis; Melbourne (Australia); Ottawa; North Canton, Ohio; Reno; Nicaragua and Transylvania host their WordCamps later this spring.

Hundreds of events take place each year across the globe. A $20 ticket is about so much more than Nashville WordCamp 2013, though we’re thrilled to host you. The international WordPress community is generous, inclusive and growing. With input from local organizers, WordCamp.org sets standards and guidelines to keep these grassroots events about WordPress, learning and sharing best practices and new tricks with the world’s best open-source content management system.

The events are hugely popular. Many sell out.

To get an idea of the types of sessions typically seen at WordCamps, check out the WordCamp channel at WordPress.tv

And grab your ticket to WordCamp Nashville while you can.