Four Kitchens is the newest Silver Agency Partner

Four Kitchens started as a “creative collective” in 2006 and has expanded to become a digital agency known for building BIG websites. In the last 14 years, Four Kitchens has helped their client partners launch some of the world’s largest websites, including Economist.com, NBC.com, and CNN.com, as well as countless websites and apps for universities, nonprofits, and enterprise corporations.

“We are thrilled and humbled to be named a WordPress VIP partner.”

—Todd Ross Nienkerk, CEO and co-founder

Four Kitchens’ client partnerships have gained international attention, winning more than 20 awards, including a Primetime Emmy for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon’s digital experience and multiple W3 Awards, AVA Digital Awards, Communicator Awards, International Business Awards, Davey Awards, and Best in Biz Awards.

“We are thrilled and humbled to be named a WordPress VIP partner,” said Four Kitchens CEO and co-founder Todd Ross Nienkerk. “As a lean team that loves solving complex problems, we take great pride in consistently exceeding our clients’ expectations. WordPress VIP will help us do that—and help us expand our unique approach to client service, which is rooted in innovation, compassion, and always delivering value.”

Learn about Featured Agency Partners

CemtrexLabs named a WordPress VIP Silver agency partner

Cemtrex, Inc. (CETX) is a diversified technology company that’s driving innovation in a wide range of sectors, including smart technology, virtual and augmented realities, digital technology solutions, industrial solutions, and intelligent security systems.

The CemtrexLabs team, made up of artists, designers, and engineers, has helped some of the world’s leading brands, such as Cartier, Live Nation, Essence, and W Magazine, create engaging experiences and elevate their presence in their industries. CemtrexLabs offers expertise in user experience and interface design, data migrations/replatforming and web, mobile, AR/VR development.

CemtrexLabs has built a reputation as an award-winning agency that has built products for global brands over the last decade. We look forward to joining the WordPress VIP community of partners to collaborate and help brands digitally transform their strategies and products.”

—Saagar Govil, CEO and Chairman

Learn About CemtrexLabs Partnership

WDG Named a Silver Agency Partner

WDG is a digital agency that builds solution-focused and user-centered websites for their clients, both locally in the epicenter of Washington, D.C. and globally. The core of WDG is a multi-disciplinary, multi-cultural team unified in a collective vision to deliver digital experiences with a human touch.

WDG partners with major clients to help fulfill key strategic initiatives. Recent work includes Treliant, National Association of Manufacturers, United States Institute of Peace, and American Red Cross.

Though a Silver Agency Partner, WDG is a golden example of a responsive and quality team that strives for well-informed, practical, and bold delivery in all aspects of the digital experience. At the helm of each client’s digital experience is a holistic strategy WDG continuously refines until it is right.

“In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven society, clients seek more—not just faster or bigger. They are looking to connect with creative agencies on a far deeper level. The agency world is no longer a transactional business but a partnership model.

This is not only true with our clients but with WordPress, and WordPress VIP. It’s a true partnership to successfully deliver flexible and scalable solutions to all our clients.”

—Ab Emam, CEO at WDG

Learn more about the WDG’s partnership

Umbrella IT Named a Silver Agency Partner

Umbrella IT is a global IT market player focused on the media, retail and fintech industries undergoing rapid digital transformation. Founded in 2009, UIT provides award-winning web and mobile development and IT consulting for clients in 18 countries.

UIT offers both consulting services and hands-on assistance selecting the best possible solutions to bring a client’s vision to life. For more than 10 years, clients have chosen UIT as a partner who can help cover IT product development functions within their industry.

A crucial part of UIT’s approach is to work extremely closely with every client, often augmenting client teams when necessary. In addition to the traditional crew of developers, QA professionals, and designers that guide each project through its various stages of development, UIT also bring in their technical and business supervisors to help clients quickly and efficiently develop their initial ideas into a final product.

“Today belongs to those who are the first. In IT’s race against time, It’s necessary to respond faster than competitors. That’s why Umbrella IT focuses on a high speed of business development based on a weekly number of thoroughly tested hypotheses.

Partnering with global leaders like WordPress VIP will increase our competitive edge and help us bring exceptional products to market for clients within every industry.”

—Stanislav Meshkov, CEO of UIT

Learn about Featured Agency Partners

Blazing New Trails With Salesforce

Salesforce and WordPress VIP share many things in common. For one thing, we’re both market leaders in software technology that brings greater agility to enterprises the world over.

More importantly, though, we align on shared values. These values include equality, sustainability, the future of work, and the ethical use of technology.

Last year, Salesforce invested $300M in WordPress VIP’s parent company, Automattic—in large part because of our complementary vision and values. As Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic, explained at the time, “This investment represents a tremendous vote of confidence for Automattic and for the open web.”

We believe Salesforce and WordPress VIP have a unique opportunity to meet the deeper needs of enterprise leaders by combining our strengths (and our technologies) in powerful ways. Which is why we’re delighted to announce a project we’ve been developing together: the launch of the new season of the “Blazing Trails” podcast.

This 10-part series reboots the “Blazing Trails” podcast produced by Salesforce Studios. Each episode recaps and shares insights from some of the best conversations at Dreamforce 2019.

In case you’re unfamiliar, Dreamforce is the largest software conference in the world with more than 170,000 registered attendees. Its speakers include some of the smartest leaders in business, tech, sports, entertainment, healthcare, and other fields.

In this podcast, you will get key insights on how these trailblazers view leadership, prioritize trust, pursue innovation, and find balance in their lives.

Plus, in each episode, you’ll hear candid thoughts on topics like the future of work, digital transformation, and more.

A few of our favorite conversations so far include:

• Apple CEO Tim Cook on the importance of focusing not only on making the best products but on enriching people’s lives
• Thrive CEO Arianna Huffington on the micro-steps we can all take to find balance and mindfulness
• Bay Area chefs Samin Nosrat and Dominique Crenn on the inequalities in our food systems

Make sure you subscribe to the podcast to get the latest episode directly in your podcast player of choice. Get more details and find the link to subscribe on the WordPress VIP-powered site.

And stay tuned for future collaborations between Salesforce and WordPress VIP. We’re very excited about what’s in store.

10 can’t-miss moments of 2019 from WordPress VIP

As the WordPress VIP team closes out another calendar year, we’d like to reflect on how far our clients, partners, and the broader enterprise WordPress community have come in 2019. So here are 10 highlights to celebrate on the way to an even more fruitful 2020.

1. The crew grew. Our parent company, Automattic, acquired Tumblr!

2. Salesforce took notice. Automattic closed a new $300 million Series D, with Salesforce Ventures taking the entire round.

3. Gutenberg closed in on Phase 2. Since releasing the first phase of Gutenberg last year, over 50 million posts have been made in the new block editor. At WordCamp US, Automattic’s CEO Matt Mullenweg shared some of the latest and greatest features and blocks built in the Gutenberg framework and highlighted an example of inline newsletter creation built by VIP partner rtCamp for Mortgage Bankers Association.

4. Enterprises adopted custom blocks. As Gutenberg development work continued on the home front, WordPress VIP partners like Big Bite and clients like News Corp drove adoption of Gutenberg in the enterprise, building blocks that delight WordPress users and news consumers, too. See real-life examples of how custom blocks can accelerate content production in the Gutenberg for enterprises webinar recording.

5. We’re officially poised to disrupt. Did you know WordPress VIP competes in a $10B market? CEO Nick Gernert took the stage at WordCamp US to talk about why this open source software is ideal for enterprises. You can see the full recording of his talk, where he shows how clients like Capgemini, Hachette Book Group, and News Corp Australia take advantage of the agility, ownership, flexibility, and simplicity of WordPress at scale.

6. We put more power in your hands. Speaking of agility, client developers can now run core and custom WP-CLI commands on WordPress VIP hosted applications and environments, through the VIP-CLI tool. This is part of our effort to deliver tools that empower WordPress VIP clients to make quick and deliberate moves across their applications.

7. Clients experimented with conscious decoupling. In 2019, we’ve seen more enterprises shift to a “decoupled” or “headless” approach to WordPress, using React and other JavaScript frameworks for their front-end architecture. At BigWP NYC, product manager Rachael Trost demonstrated how Accuweather’s decoupled architecture delivers content via WordPress to APIs, local media partners, scrolling LED displays, and more.

8. We landed exciting opportunities. Demand for enterprise WordPress continued to grow, and we saw exciting launches with clients like Samsung, Hilton, NBC, Time, Telefonica, Alaska Airlines, Knight Foundation, Merck, and many more.

9. The partner network grew. To keep pace with this significant demand, we welcomed 21 additional agency partners, growing our presence in expanding verticals (like sports, healthcare, and ecommerce) and regions (like Turkey, Australia, France, and the Netherlands).

10. We gave back to the community that started it all. There’s now a dedicated landing page for Five for the Future, which highlights people and organizations devoting 5% of their resources to WordPress development. You may notice some familiar faces, including Automattic and our agency partners 10up, rtCamp, and Multidots.

We’ve got big plans for the coming year, and we bet you do, too. If you want to learn more about any of the above, let us know. We’re always pleased to hear from you. In the meantime, Happy New Year from all of us at WordPress VIP!

WordPress VIP welcomes Box UK as a Silver Agency Partner

VIP is pleased to share the latest addition to our growing Featured Partner Agency program: Box UK!

Founded in 1998, Box UK is a specialist in complex multilingual and multisite WordPress installations. Their team of developers, solution architects, UX consultants, systems engineers, and product owners provides deep expertise in delivering digital platforms used by millions of people.

In the over 20 years since Box UK’s launch, the company has gained extensive experience integrating WordPress with back-office components such as ERP, tax engines, trade compliance, and third-party logistics. Their industry expertise spans the private and public sector. Clients include financial institutions like Investec and TBC Bank, alongside notable organizations like the BBC and the Welsh government. Box UK’s superpower is supporting end-to-end management of high-transaction, global e-commerce ecosystems.

Commenting on the announcement, Box UK’s Managing Director Benno Wasserstein said, “We’re delighted to join the WordPress VIP community as an agency partner, strengthening our industry-leading expertise with the capabilities of an enterprise WordPress offering.

This partnership underlines our continued commitment to delivering the best possible results for all our clients, and we look forward to working closely with the WordPress VIP team on innovative solutions that will enable us to do just that.”

To keep pace with our significant growth, VIP is welcoming additional agency partners with proven capacity to create digital transformation for the world’s largest brands. For more information about our partnership with Box UK, or if you believe your agency is a good fit for our growing program, please visit https://wpvip.com/partners/agency-partners/

What to expect at WordCamp for Publishers 2019

Alexis is one of the lead organizers of WordCamp for Publishers. VIP is proud to sponsor and participate annually in this great event.

Howdy! I’m a co-lead organizer for the third-ever WordCamp for Publishers taking place on August 7th to 9th in Columbus, Ohio. I’m incredibly honored to be leading one of my favorite WordCamps where we’re able to gather a talented group of folks together and dive into topics at the intersection of journalism, WordPress, and technology.

I’m happy to announce that we’ll also have 8 outstanding journalists and technologists joining us at the event thanks to our scholarship partnership with OpenNews.

WordCamp for Publishers is a community-organized event that brings together folks who use WordPress to manage publications, big or small.

Our goal is to empower participants by coaching them on best practices and encourage collaboration in building open source tools for publishers. Anyone who actively manages a publication with WordPress can benefit from attending our event.

Our schedule

The schedule is up now and includes speakers from national media organizations, smaller publications, and agencies that work with media companies. This year’s schedule features:

• A hands-on workshop on security training in newsrooms
• Two sessions on bringing Gutenberg to editorial teams
• An in-depth guide to creating robust newsletters
• Lightning presentations on Newspack, managing site networks, and paywalls

Not only do we have a fantastic set of speakers lined up this year, but we’ve placed an increased emphasis on mentorship. Our third and final day of the conference will be a Mentorship Day where we’ll group folks by topic and introduce speed mentorship rounds for attendees to connect with one another.

This is a great opportunity for attendees to lend their expertise and learn from other skilled folks attending the event. 

What you can expect

We’ll have a main track of talks and panels that are 45 minutes each as well as a separate track of 90 minute in-depth workshops centered around topics that aim to provide actionable takeaways for publishers to take home. There will also be openings for our popular unconference sessions which attendees can self-organize at the event based on interest.

For folks that prefer the hallway track, there will be plenty of opportunities to connect with people from top media organizations. Take a look at our sponsors and make sure to say hello and grab some swag!

Social activities

We always like to offer fun, low-key opportunities for socializing outside of the main conference day at WordCamp for Publishers. We’ve arranged several events this year, including an evening of fun and games at Two Dollar Radio Headquarters and an outing to a Columbus Clippers game. 

Get your ticket today!

We encourage everyone to check out the videos and participant recaps from the last WordCamp for Publishers in 2018 to get a sense of what’s to come. We hope to see you in Columbus in a few weeks, and if you haven’t gotten a ticket yet, you can still get one today!

Freedom to innovate: VIP at Change Forum 2019

VIP was proud to sponsor February’s Change Forum, where our friends at News UK brought together established media businesses and startups in London, to speak candidly about product design and development.

Speakers from the BBC, The Times, Netflix, Lego and here at WordPress.com shared lessons learned about audience engagement and growth whilst leading product teams.

The common thread across all the day’s presentations was an acknowledgement that a steady flow of new ideas and perspectives was essential to the continued success of a modern business. Teams at one startup were expected to carry out five experiments every single month.

David Kennedy, design director at Automattic

Data, experience and intuition were all of limited value in predicting which ideas would ultimately move the needle. Several speakers described lengthy or expensive processes which yielded little; whilst tweaks taking only a few hours could have a remarkable impact.

And sometimes, as our colleague David Kennedy explained, ideas expected to deliver one benefit could produce greater gains in another, unexpected way. David’s passion is accessibility in design. He cited the example of NPR, who began posting transcripts of their audio broadcasts to aid accessibility – and saw a significant increase in traffic and user engagement, through the text content’s greater search engine friendliness.

News UK’s Christina Scott chats with Jonas Huckestein of UK bank Monzo

Jonas Huckestein, co-founder of UK banking disruptor Monzo, confessed that the company’s success had been built on trying things, seeing which ones worked, and keeping on doing them. They spent months developing a peer-to-peer payment function, which was a total flop. But a simple ‘golden ticket’ function, to let friends of existing customers jump up the waiting list, drove steady weekly growth for many months.

Customers loved it when Netflix began sending out brand-new movies on the day of the DVD’s release; but it only reduced customer churn by a tiny amount, so they canned the initiative.

Conversely, when faced with the dilemma of whether to notify customers about the imminent expiry of their initial free trial, Netflix decided to do the ‘right thing’, and send out reminders. It naturally reduced conversion rates, costing the company tens of millions in revenue; but they decided it was good for the brand… and easy to reverse.

Gibson Biddle, former VP of Product at Netflix

How to decide if an innovation was successful? It depended on what you had hoped to achieve, the data you considered, and who was making the decision. Your CFO might take one view; your community of users, or readers, or consumers might take another. It’s for the culture of the company to decide whose view matters most.

With VIP’s roots deep in the WordPress open source community, these conclusions rang true to our own experience. We believe that the freedoms to innovate on top of WordPress, to share your ideas and efforts with the world, and to choose from many solutions already in circulation, are key factors in the continuing growth of WordPress.

Photos courtesy of Fluxx Studios: posted on Flickr, used under license.

10up on Securing Decoupled WordPress

At BigWP NYC in November, Phil Crumm, Director of Client Strategy at 10up, gave a presentation on how to keep WordPress secure when it’s running in a “decoupled” or “headless” state, with other frameworks providing the front-end, usually consuming the REST API.

10up’s recommendations for securing decoupled builds include separating the various layers of your application as much as possible. The API layer, WordPress admin, SSO tools, and front end templates can be split up to give you more control over security and stability at each step along the way.

When we build these platforms, our goal is to build something that’s fast, secure, and repeatable.

Watch Phil’s talk:

BigWP is our enterprise WordPress meetup series, that brings together developers, business leads, and product people who work with high-scale WordPress applications every day. To be the first to find out about the next enterprise WordPress event in New York, join the meetup group. You’ll find groups for other cities there as well.

Find all of the talks in the November’s BigWP playlist.