{"id":1609,"date":"2016-09-15T09:00:21","date_gmt":"2016-09-15T14:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/2016.nashville.wordcamp.org\/?p=1609"},"modified":"2016-09-15T08:00:01","modified_gmt":"2016-09-15T13:00:01","slug":"carel-bekker-owner-of-clickhost-on-wordpress-hosting-in-the-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/carel-bekker-owner-of-clickhost-on-wordpress-hosting-in-the-south\/","title":{"rendered":"Carel Bekker, Owner of ClickHOST on WordPress hosting in the South"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Q&A with Carel Bekker, the owner of\u00a0ClickHOST.com<\/a>, a Bronze Sponsor of \u00a0Nashville WordCamp 2016.<\/i><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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We’ve seen ClickHOST sponsor many WordPress events in the south. Is there something special about the\u00a0southern WordPress community you interact with at WordCamps and at the office?<\/b><\/p>\n

Yes! We’ve sponsored WordCamp in Atlanta since 2011 and we also sponsor a number of Meetups in the Atlanta\u00a0metro area. When the WordCamp Nashville organizers asked us to sponsor WC Nashville, we jumped to take\u00a0advantage of the opportunity to sponsor another WordPress event in the South.\u00a0We love\u00a0being\u00a0involved in the local\u00a0community, especially in the South. WordPress people in the South are very friendly, caring and love to help each\u00a0other. We host thousands of WordPress websites and this is our way of giving back to the community.<\/p>\n

You’ve lived in the “South” most of your life, right? What is your connection with Nashville and why did you decide\u00a0to sponsor WordCamp Nashville?<\/b><\/p>\n

Eh, yes :). I was born on South Africa (the deep South), and moved to Atlanta in 1998 to start the US operations of a\u00a0South African IT company. It’s now over 18 years later and we still live in the Atlanta area. Beautiful part of the\u00a0country. My family and I are now US citizens and we plan to stay.<\/p>\n

Fast forward a few years and in 2010 I bought\u00a0ClickHOST.com<\/a>. I quickly focused the company on WordPress services\u00a0and hosting. \u00a0ClickHOST.com<\/a>\u00a0obviously runs WordPress. My connection with Nashville? Before ClickHOST, I spent\u00a0many years working with companies in Nashville. I know a number of people in Nashville and enjoy visiting from\u00a0time to time.<\/p>\n

What’s the biggest challenge for WordPress in the coming years? And for the WordPress community? Will it\u00a0continue to grow?<\/b><\/p>\n

It will continue to grow. I believe we have two major challenges with WordPress.<\/p>\n

1. Security<\/p>\n

2. Complexity.<\/p>\n

Security remains one of the major challenges. The WordPress community has done a tremendous amount of work to\u00a0make WordPress a safe choice. However it is such a high profile CMS and so many people still neglect security that it\u00a0remains an easy target for hackers. We offer a number of free and inexpensive services to make WordPress as safe as\u00a0possible.<\/p>\n

The second challenge is complexity. My personal passion is simplicity. It is very easy to make things complex. It is\u00a0not so easy to make complex things, simple and easy to use. WordPress is a very complex system. I think it is time to\u00a0rethink how WordPress is developed, delivered and managed.<\/p>\n

Are you planning any race car driving events or Super Bowl commercials… if you know what I mean?
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\nLike GoDaddy? Heck yea! We have a local dirt track in Woodstock. I think I’ll slap a few ClickHOST stickers on some of the cars.\u00a0OK, no. We would rather spend our money on making our services easy-to-use (simple), and secure.<\/p>\n

Rumor has it that you leverage technology beyond servers and datacenters… Is it true that you use a standing\u00a0station?
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\nI do! And I love it. I invested in a standing desk for my home office about a year ago. I enjoy the flexibility it\u00a0provides. My next more is to invest in a tread mill desk to feed my\u00a05K race addiction.<\/p>\n

Carel Bekker is the owner and passionate president of\u00a0ClickHOST.com<\/a>. ClickHOST is based in Kennesaw, GA, and\u00a0provides simple, honest, and safe WordPress hosting services. Follow us @ClickHOST and Carel Bekker,\u00a0@carelbekker.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Use WordCamp Nashville’s special code CH-WCN16-20 to get 20%<\/b> off\u00a0ClickHOST’s BASIC & BETTER hosting plans. Limited offer.\u00a0http:\/\/www.clickhost.com\/web-hosting\/hosting-packages\/<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Q&A with Carel Bekker, the owner of\u00a0ClickHOST.com, a Bronze Sponsor of \u00a0Nashville WordCamp 2016. We’ve seen ClickHOST sponsor many WordPress events in the south. Is there something special about the\u00a0southern WordPress community you interact with at WordCamps and at the office? Yes! We’ve sponsored WordCamp in Atlanta since 2011 and we also sponsor a … Continue reading Carel Bekker, Owner of ClickHOST on WordPress hosting in the South<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14997839,"featured_media":1617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22812],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wordcamp-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/files\/2016\/09\/CH-logo-high-res1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7bs22-pX","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14997839"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1609"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1614,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1609\/revisions\/1614"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nashville.wordcamp.org\/2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}