WordCamp Toronto 2014 wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of our sponsors. A great big thank you to every single organization and individual below.
Venue Partner
Humber College
The School of Media Studies & Information Technology offers the largest college-level combination of media-sector programs in Canada. From foundational offerings to highly specialized programs, our faculty, staff, administrators and industry advisors work together with our students to develop job-ready professionals equipped to succeed in their chosen field.
Humber College’s School of Media Studies & Information Technology has been kind enough to host WordCamp Toronto for two years in a row.
Their Lakeshore Campus venue in Toronto’s west-end is wheelchair accessible, close to public transit, surrounding by ample parking, and outfitted with the latest in modern classroom technology.
A great big THANK YOU to the folks at Humber for making us feel welcome!
WordCamp Pillar
Bluehost
Bluehost has been a WordPress partner since 2005 and powers over one million WordPress sites. Their goal is to provide outstanding hosting services and customer support for the best possible price. Bluehost is also constantly innovating and upgrading their services and infrastructure at no additional cost to their customers. Join the millions of other website owners that have already chosen Bluehost and see how they can help you with your site.
WiredTree
WiredTree provides Managed VPS and Managed Dedicated Servers to WordPress users worldwide from our Chicago-based data center and offices. Every WT server is backed by 24×7 telephone support, ticket support with 15 minute average response times, and is fully managed and monitored by WiredTree to maximize uptime and minimize frustration. All servers come ready-to-run with cPanel/WHM and are optimized and security hardened with firewall and anti-spam out of the box. With experience in SSD technology, MariaDB, Memcached, WordPress plugins, server optimization, and LiteSpeed Web server, WiredTree can take your site’s performance to the next level.
PlanetHoster
PlanetHoster offers premium hosting solutions to WordPress users worldwide. Whether it’s shared hosting, managed VPS, dedicated servers and much more, PlanetHoster’s customers report that these affordable, feature-packed hosting solutions exceed their expectations. Their certified engineers are very experienced with WordPress. They work hard to assure that your WordPress site will run very fast and will be hosted in a secure, 24/7 monitored environment.
If you want to offer the best latency to your visitors by being hosted whether in Europe or in North America, PlanetHoster might be right for you.
WordCamp Champion
Code Poet
If you use WordPress to build things for other people, Code Poet wants 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, Code Poet’s 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.
You’re part of a tribe of WordPress designers and developers over 10,000 strong, spanning the entire globe. codepoet.com aims to bring the working knowledge and real world strategies of those people into one place, for you to tap into.
DreamHost
DreamHost is a global Web hosting and cloud services provider with over 350,000 customers and 1.2 million blogs, websites and apps hosted.
The company offers a wide spectrum of Web hosting and cloud services including Shared Hosting, Virtual Private Servers (VPS), Dedicated Server Hosting, Domain Name Registration, the cloud storage service, DreamObjects, and the cloud computing service DreamCompute.
More information can be found at http://dreamhost.com.
WordCamp Accomplice
WPML
WPML turns WordPress websites multilingual. It works with caching, SEO and E-Commerce plugins, and allows the building of complete multilingual sites. WPML powers simple blogs as well as corporate and enterprise sites.
WPML allows users to translate everything in the site, including content, menus, widgets and even theme and plugin texts. WPML powers over 400,000 commercial websites from all over the world.
More information about going multilingual can be found at WPML.org
King Street
Carbon60 Networks
Carbon60 Networks’ enterprise WordPress platform delivers content faster and more reliably, making your site highly resilient to both welcome traffic spikes and unwelcome denial-of-service attacks.
To deliver your enterprise WordPress web property without fail, Carbon60 provides a white glove level of service to support the entire WordPress development and delivery life-cycle, hosted within our Tier 3 grade Canadian Cloud data centres.
Our WordPress sandbox allows design/programming teams to create new WordPress development environments on-demand while an integrated code management service provides a secure place to manage code changes. Sites are then staged for testing using Carbon60’s integrated security and performance testing tools.
Once optimized, site code and content are promoted to our production WordPress delivery platform. This platform combines the strengths of an enterprise cloud computing architecture – optimized to host WordPress source code, plug-ins and content – with a vastly scalable and robust global edge content delivery/security system which guarantees your site is secure and delivers high performance to your viewers.
WP Engine
WP Engine is a leading SaaS content management platform for websites and applications built on WordPress. The company powers thousands of websites and apps built on the WordPress platform delivering a fast, reliable and secure web experience.
All levels of users including bloggers, marketers, SMBs and large corporations rely on WP Engine’s platform to keep their websites up and running. The company’s exceptional customer service team specializes in quickly solving technical problems, and creating a world-class customer experience ensuring that each user’s WordPress site continues to perform at its full potential.
Founded in 2010, WP Engine is headquartered in Austin, Texas and has offices in San Francisco, California.
Queen Street
Lingotek
Lingotek | The Translation Network enables the creation and management of multilingual content inside your enterprise applications. The Lingotek solution leverages People, Process and Technology.
“We have unparalleled expertise in web content, documentation, and software localization. We employ a proven translation and localization process. This, combined with our cloud-based translation management system, empowers enterprises to engage customers globally.”
SIDEKICK
“SIDEKICK is a Toronto-based company providing guided and interactive Walkthroughs for the WordPress Dashboard through the SIDEKICK for WordPress plugin.
With over 125 Walkthroughs in our library, our mission is to be the fastest and easiest way to learn WordPress while providing our customers with faster on-boarding, lower support costs and happier customers of their own.
Check out http://sidekick.pro/plans for more information.”
Flywheel
“Flywheel is a managed WordPress hosting platform built specifically for designers and creative agencies.
Flywheel makes it simple to build, launch, and manage client sites with its easy-to-use dashboard built from the ground up for the modern web designer.
With nightly backups, blazing-fast load times, WordPress-specific security, and an awesome support team full of WordPress developers, Flywheel helps thousands of designers across the world launch projects every day.”
Yonge Street
Muut
Muut is a modern, beautiful, and responsive commenting and forum system that you can embed on your own site and style to your liking. The Muut guys set out to bring commenting and forums out of the UX stone age and make them cool again. Any site will benefit from an active community, and starting one with Muut takes just seconds.
WP Rocket
The Genius Web Media Inc.
The Genius Web Media has been in operation for over 5 years and is located in the heart of Toronto, Canada. Our Genius team is compiled of intelligent, skilled, and ambitious individuals who are all dedicated to delivering powerful and trendy media.
We currently specialize in SIMPLE to COMPLEX Web Development for ALL Online Media purposes. We have the capabilities to develop small to large scaled projects, as well as the capacity to supply new and fresh ideas.
Our specialties are focused on: Current frameworks, Usability, “Responsive” technologies for mobile optimization, and Web Accessibility that complies with AODA and WCAG 2.0.
Our goal is to leverage high quality, effective, and efficient Web Development to assist businesses by improving their online identity, by enhancing online exposure, and by increasing lead generation and sales.
Trew Knowledge
Trew Knowledge is a Toronto based branding, marketing, design and development agency striving to create great marketing communications for the world around us.
We specialize in creating responsive WordPress themes for small and medium-sized businesses all the way up to large enterprises. As vetted WordPress VIP developers, we understand the importance of speed, stability and security for all projects we deliver.
WooThemes
From the WooThemes team:
What started in 2008 as 3 WordPress enthusiasts who met online, from 3 different countries, is now an international team of designers, developers and support ninjas catering for a passionate community of hundreds of thousands of users.
From our humble beginnings selling a handful of commercial WordPress themes we now offer a huge catalog of feature rich themes, and a suite of plugins that extend your WordPress experience. Proudly bootstrapped and built around our team’s diverse lifestyles we have big ambitions to become the ultimate WordPress platform provider.
Our flagship product, WooCommerce, is now the world’s most popular eCommerce platform. Powered by WordPress and built by WooThemes, the goal of WooCommerce is to allow you to sell anything online – beautifully. You can integrate with payment processors, easily manage shipping methods and inventory, set up flexible tax rules, and view detailed store reports all from your WordPress dashboard.
lynda.com
lynda.com helps you learn the skills you need to achieve your full potential. We’re a leading online learning service that helps anyone learn technology, business, software, and creative skills to achieve their personal and professional goals.
easyPress
easyPress is a Canadian company specializing in WordPress hosting. A fast, reliable and secure web host is super important when you value your website and its message. Focus your time and energy on your content and let easyPress relieve you of managing the tech that makes WordPress load quickly and consistently. All of our service plans include DNS and email hosting provided by easyDNS. Check out our very affordable offerings at http://easypress.ca/plans/.
ManageWP
“ManageWP is the world’s first and finest WordPress management service, designed for WordPress users by WordPress users, giving you full power and complete control in managing your WordPress site(s) with powerful monitoring, backup, deployment, publishing and security features.”
Kobayashi Online
Kobayashi Online is a Toronto-based digital marketing agency providing web solutions for businesses specializing in WordPress.
We help you connect with your customers by creating compelling and friendly customer experiences. “Online friendly” is not simply our brand promise and mission, it’s our green grass and pure oxygen for helping small businesses to fly.
Everything we design and develop – from websites to brochures to identities to interactive applications – is done for one purpose – to help your business grow.
Zeitguys
“Zeitguys inc. is a digital agency. We help businesses and organizations implement their marketing strategies. Whether that means branding, high-end print collateral, presentations and motion graphics, web or mobile solutions we have the talent and equipment in-house to execute.”
“Our web platform of choice is WordPress and our expertise with that platform goes very deep. Our development team contributes to the ongoing improvement of the open source WordPress software, and we are proud supporters of the local WordPress community.”
Why WordPress?
“WordPress, when viewed as a framework rather than a blogging platform, provides a ton of intelligence around security, queries, optimization and syndication that saves a lot of development time while ensuring best practices. It enables us to focus on front- and back-end customizations to improve the end-user and administrative user experiences.”
Do you have an interesting WordPress story?
“My first WordPress website, looking back, was a complete disaster on the inside! Coming from a strong Perl background, I used my programming knowledge like a blunt object, smashing at bits and pieces of WordPress with abandon. Plugins were forked. Themes were modified without child themes. WordPress hooks and utility functions were blithely ignored, and Perl code was ported wholesale to PHP and jammed into WordPress.
Interestingly, the site (which shall remain nameless to protect my shame and their outrage) remains highly trafficked today and continues to be a flagship in our portfolio. This is a testament to how robust WordPress really is.”
How has WordPress affected your business?
“By choosing to adopt WordPress as our platform of choice, it has allowed us to focus on a specific workflow and toolset. This allows us to refine and reuse, rather than reinvent the wheel every time a new project is commenced.
Personally, diving deep into WordPress has opened my eyes to the Open Source movement, and shown me how powerful it is when you let go of the closed source, proprietary attitude and embrace the community. You get to let go of some of the responsibility, and contribute in areas where you have expertise, relying on other experts elsewhere (sometimes on the other side of the globe!) to do their thing.”
Any advice for WordCamp attendees?
“Follow a 70-30 rule when selecting sessions. 70% of the sessions you attend should be in your “comfort zone”, or area of expertise or specification. 30% of the sessions should challenge you – whether it’s coding, business or content.
Also, don’t forget the Happiness Bar. Back-to-back sessions can be exhausting. At the Happiness Bar, while you recharge, you can chat with WordPress experts who are there to answer your casual questions, or even work with you to solve harder problems that you might be currently experiencing with WordPress.”
What’s your one question for everyone attending WordCamp Toronto?
“Do you have any upcoming web related projects, and what is their approximate budget?”
Accessibility Directorate of Ontario
The Accessibility Directorate of Ontario supports people of all abilities in having the opportunity to participate fully in everyday life. They develop and enforce province wide mandatory standards to support making Ontario accessible for people with disabilities by 2025.
The Directorate educates and guides organizations to help them meet their requirements by providing free tools and resources available at Ontario.ca/AccessON.
Annex
3.7 DESIGNS
3.7 DESIGNS is a boutique design agency that’s passionate about WordPress. We can clients reach their goals through thoughtfully designed websites, great user experience and engaging functionality with the WordPress platform.
Project Panorama
Project Panorama is a simple, easy to use WordPress project management plugin designed to keep clients and team members informed of project progress. Keep your clients and team happy with a clear, visual indication of active projects.
Enterprise Intelligence Inc.
Enterprise Intelligence provides managed WordPress services to small business. We’ll handle the technology so that you can focus on building your business.
artifakt Digital Inc.
We’re a team of people that care about Internet trends and respect all the hard work involved in taking a business from zero exposure to complete coverage all over the web. We love the Internet, and we love building websites and digital solutions that help contribute to its overall usefulness.
We’re artifakt Digital Inc: a Toronto-based digital strategy agency specializing in WordPress website design, development, planning, and migration, online presence, and complete digital strategy solutions. If your business needs to build Internet charisma and a positive online presence, we want to help you do it.
WPCore
WPCore is a web service that allows you to manage collections of WordPress plugins and then quickly install them on any WordPress site.
You can generate your collections at https://wpcore.com and then import them to your WordPress site via the unique collection key. You can mange multiple collections, browse community collections, export plugins from a WordPress site, receive notifications of plugin updates, and lots more.
The service is continuously being enhanced and we welcome all feedback.
Camp Tech
Camp Tech is a tech skills training hub. We provide half- and full-day in-person workshops for adults who want to learn web and digital skills. We create a welcoming environment for those who are hesitant around technology, and we emphasize skills that can be put into practice right away. At Camp Tech, we have a good time at our workshops…this isn’t stuffy corporate-style training!
Camp Tech was founded in August 2012. We offer approximately 75 workshops a year in Toronto, and have recently expanded into Ottawa, Hamilton, and Kitchener/Waterloo.
Read more about Camp Tech, and how we got started, in the Globe and Mail.
NYTO Group
NYTO Group wants your company to succeed on-line. We’re a full service premium web development company with offices in New York and Toronto. First, we work closely with you to better understand your specific needs and goals. Then, we create responsive websites that deliver ongoing value.
We specialize in:
- Custom WordPress web design, development, themes and plug-ins
- Ethical Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
- Hosting for small to medium businesses, large corporations, non-profit organizations and start-ups
Contact us today to maximize your Internet presence.
- Email: info@nytogroup.com
- Phone: (647) 995-2377
- Web: nytogroup.com
Lakaye
Lakaye offers expert support and hosting for merchants who use WordPress and the WooCommerce plugin to sell products and services online. Our generous hosting plans include everything that businesses need for ecommerce, from dedicated IP addresses to useful shipping plugins.
We’re delighted to be sponsoring WordCamp Toronto this year.
Bentley Hoke
Formed in 2000, Bentley Hoke is a web consultancy located in Syracuse, New York, USA.
We distinguish ourselves from similar agencies in three ways: a commitment to service and professionalism; a keen awareness of the unique needs of each project; and a results-oriented, forward-looking approach to the creation of websites, internet-based applications, and email campaigns.
The Net Now
“The Net Now provides web hosting and web design services and is based in London, Ontario. If you need any service related to your website, chances are we can provide a solution!”
“We love small businesses and since 1998 we have been helping many of them build a successful online presence. WordPress has become very popular with our clients in recent years and we’re thrilled to be attending WordCamp Toronto for our third year!”
Wealthsimple
Wealthsimple is for people who want a smarter way to invest their savings. We use cutting-edge technology to make investing smarter, easier and more transparent.
We are backed by renowned industry experts and veterans like Professor Eric Kirzner (Head of Value Investing, Rotman), Joe Canavan (former CEO, Assante Wealth Management), and Brent Belzberg (Board Member, CIBC).
We offer our investment management and financial advisory services at one of the lowest fees in Canada, just 0.35-0.5%.
MailPoet
“Join 100,000 others who send their newsletters straight from their WordPress thanks to our plugin.”
Why WordPress?
Everything!
What’s your one question for WordCamp attendees?
We’re hiring a support hero, maybe even in Toronto! Interested? Check out our job postings at mailpoet.com/jobs.
Community Partners
AndroidTO
AndroidTO is Canada’s largest Android developers conference. Since 2010, AndroidTO has been an annual gathering place for developers interested in the diverse Android ecosystem, including phones, tablets, wearables, auto, television and other mobile devices.
Accessibility Camp Toronto
Accessibility Camp Toronto is part of a series of sister events whose focus has been on digital accessibility and users with disabilities. Since 2009, these have taken place in: Washington D.C., Boston, Guelph, Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto, Tokyo, and Seattle. Los Angeles has its first unconference on October 20. Visit the Accessibility Camp website to learn more about the broader community that Accessibility camp Toronto is joining.
Interested in sponsoring WordCamp this year?
Our sponsorship information will be available soon!
In the meantime, if you’re interested in sponsoring, you can contact us.