Liquid Web was started by a 17 year old in Lansing Michigan, from his garage. No joke! He built it on customer service, that is why we are the company we are today. We took his vision and how they put customers in the forefront of everyone’s mind and we still live like that today. Customer loyalty and service is what we are known for and we take great pride in that fact.

WordCamp DFW is one of the can’t miss WordCamps for the Miller Family, as we are from Oklahoma it is just a quick hop over to DFW. I might have to do the math, but we have been to…well…a lot of them. Cory has spoken and keynoted several times and I was the keynote on Sunday last year. Our son is going to take part in kids camp this year, his first one! Liquid Web always has a strong presence at DFW. Chris Lema attends and has spoken several times as well as AJ Morris, Ani King and others.

We stepped up our swag game a little this year. We will have our branded towels, stainless steel straws, camera covers and of course pens and stickers.

WordPress is one of the few communities I have personally been a part of that everyone is so thoughtful and inclusive. There is chatter online and at events of all the activities that organizers, volunteers and attendees can do to make everyone feel welcome and supported. Even when I go to a WordCamp and do not know many people there is always a group that makes sure I feel comfortable and welcome. Fast friends are keywords when you go to a WordPress event and that just can’t be beat.

Joining us this year, we have Kinsta as a WordCamp DFW Sponsor! Yay!

The WordPress community is awesome and we love interacting and meeting our clients face-to-face. Without the community, our company wouldn’t exist.

We always try and connect with the growing community as much as possible. Throughout 2019, Kinsta will have sponsored 25+ WordCamps along with a multitude of local WordPress Meetups happening around the globe. Our team attends these events every chance we get and as we continue to grow it’s something we plan to get even more involved with.

Kinsta had its start half-way across the world from our Texan community. They’ve come a long way!

Kinsta was started in 2013 by Mark Gavalda and three other individuals in a tiny apartment in Budapest, Hungary. Previously the founders were involved in website development and design work for clients on a contractual basis. Many of the websites were already built with WordPress, so learning the CMS came out of necessity. It was also easy to use and develop.

While working with clients the team discovered they couldn’t confidently recommend or find any high-quality WordPress hosting. Building an awesome website is pointless if it doesn’t load fast and provide a good user experience. Remember, this was over six years ago, and the industry was very different back then. 

Because of this, and the attraction off moving into a SaaS business model, they decided to start Kinsta. Their focus from the beginning was the desire to provide fast support from actual WordPress developers paired with lightning-fast speeds. Fast forward six years, Kinsta is now a US company with a team of 80+, and one of the fastest-growing managed WordPress hosts in the industry!

They also have strong values and ethics when it comes to hosting.

Kinsta was created with a desire to create the best WordPress hosting platform in the world. We are veteran WordPress developers who realized that reliable WordPress hosting built on cutting-edge technology with a focus on speed, security, and stability was not the industry standard. We decided to change that.

We have never been a follower and beating the competition or convincing users to switch over was never our goal. We simply focus on what we believe in and this has resulted in attracting like-minded clients who were looking for a better hosting solution.   

This focus involves the following three objectives: 

• Customer-centric: No matter the task at hand the team at Kinsta always puts the client first. We’re proud to build lasting relationships with our customers while actively listening. Their feedback, in turn, fuels our innovation for developing the best-in-class hosting solution.

• Quality driven: We don’t do anything subpar and believe clients deserve the best! That’s why we take a hands-on approach at Kinsta and create all of our systems in-house. Our development, marketing, sales, and support teams all work closely together, while contributing and sharing ideas, so that nothing is left to chance.

• Community focus: WordPress isn’t just a job for us, it’s a passion. From contributing to WordPress core, to sponsoring and attending WordCamps like WCDFW, the Kinsta team tries to give back whenever we can. We want to be a part of taking WordPress to that 50% market share.

Kinsta has an abundance of resources to find out what type of hosting is just right for you! Talk to them at their booth for more information.

Kinsta provides managed WordPress hosting (powered by Google Cloud Platform), with a focus on speed, security, and high-quality support. We host all types of sites, from small blogs up to Fortune 500 customers. We’ve worked some of the biggest names in the industry, such as GE, Intuit, Drift, Freshbooks, and Buffer.

Our auto-scaling and container technology allow for complete isolation of resources, ensuring your business stays online during traffic surges and is secured like Fort Knox. We provide 24/7 support 365 days a year from our team of expert WordPress engineers. 

We are developers ourselves and therefore are happy to offer support for complex installations such as Bedrock, reverse-proxy configurations, with access to tools such as SSH and WP-CLI on all plans.

One achievement our entire team is really proud of is the fact that we bootstrapped Kinsta from $0 to a 7-figure business. This has come with its own set of struggles and unique challenges, but it has also given us the flexibility to build the platform we envisioned from day one. Most of the features we add today come directly from user feedback, not solely because it impacts the bottom line.

“We are not smarter than anyone else. Success really all depends on you and how much you want to succeed.” – Tom Zsomborgi, CFO at Kinsta

Another thing we are proud of is that we were the first managed WordPress host in the industry to exclusively use Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Now many of our competitors have followed suit. This reaffirms that we made the right move. It also means that our support and sysadmin teams have a wealth of knowledge when it comes to GCP infrastructure. 

Sponsoring WordCamp DFW was an obvious choice for Kinsta! They were thrilled to get involved and we are grateful to have them.

Being a distributed company, location and team availability are always two things we have to consider when choosing which WordCamps our team can attend. 

One reason that sponsoring WordCamp DFW was a no brainer for us is that our Chief Customer Officer, Tom Sepper is located in Dallas, and our Head of Support, Jeff Paul, is in Oklamaha. So it’s a pretty short trip and our team is excited to meet everyone.

They have some special treats prepared for our WordCamp DFW attendees this weekend!

We’ve written a 160+ page book titled “How to Speed Up Your WordPress Site.” In it, we share everything from beginner tips to advanced strategies on how to scale your WordPress sites (from blogs to dynamic ecommerce sites) and get better performance. We’ll be giving away free copies of the book along with other various goodies at our Kinsta swag table. Make sure to stop by and say hello! We’d love to meet you.

Brian Jackson is coming to represent Kinsta, and he can’t wait to meet everyone!

Fun fact about myself, or ironic rather. I’ve actually never been to a WordCamp! Many Kinsta team members are WordCamp veterans. But you’d be surprised how easy it is to get lost in the grind trying to scale a company and trying to push the boundaries of what is possible. But not to worry, I’ll be attending WordCamp US in the fall. And I’m sure it won’t be my last. 

Make sure to tag @kinsta and @brianleejackson when tweeting and give them a thankful shout out!

I have been involved with the WordPress Community since 2015 through meetups and WordCamps. I have spoken in some meetups and volunteered in several WordCamps in India and in US.

During college days, I used to build small applications for local clients using VisualBasic and .Net. At some point of time I had to build websites and using ASP.net was an overkill. One of my professor asked me to use a CMS like Drupal or WordPress. I was not a fan of open source technology and I was not in impression to use any open source tech in anyway, so I didn’t touched either of it until after an year I had to build a Groupon-like website and I planned to use DotNetNuke (.net CMS). I wasn’t able to make it on time and had to surrender myself on using WordPress. That project was a huge fail and it made an impact on me and for a developer who earned a university level first prize building a AI driven robotic arms that was obvious. But this made me learn on why to spend time on re-inventing things and why not to focus on building what is missing. I left .net and embedded system programming forever and continued my journey of building proprietary solutions using WordPress as core.

Our motive is not to be another Digital Marketing Agency or just Another Website Building company; Instead our motive is to use WordPress as an Operating System for Web that can power every nature of Web Application. The values of our brand is simple “Client Satisfaction” and no matter if we have to go an extra mile for that.

The funny thing is, we make Web Applications for other people, but our own agency’s website was under development for more than an year when started in 2013. Even now our website runs on WP V4.

We can offer a free initial discovery session with the ideas/tasks/challenges that attendees may have.

Our goal for the DFW KidsCamp is to promote a love of learning, mastering new skills, and to support the personal growth for every child attending. By learning how to blog, our Campers will practice their reading, writing, and critical thinking skills. It is our hope that KidsCamp will be the venue to encourage each child’s creative potential. This is great opportunity for kids to start developing their own voices, discover who they are, and understand how their “voice” might be different from their friends and classmates.

Blogging can be a personal journal of insights about unfolding events. Bloggers start forming and voicing opinions, and writing about things that interest them. Student bloggers build strong typing and spelling skills.  Blogging can also be a highly creative endeavor involving original art, or photography.  During KidsCamp we will show Campers how to access images for their Blogs from online sources. We will explain how the creative commons license allows them to use these photos by following the sharing rules of the owner.

Online Safety

The internet is omnipresent in our children’s lives. It provides encyclopedic information at the touch of a finger. One of the goals of KidsCamp is to introduce the basics of online safety. We encourage parents and guardians to work with their children in KidsCamp to review some best practices for their Campers. WordPress allows you to set access levels so nothing can get published without your approval. Parents can set-up comment preferences to review comments with their kids, offering an opportunity to discuss what might be an appropriate response and what might not be.

Blogging can be an entertaining, engaging and educational experience for kids and their parents. We look forward to seeing you at DFW KidsCamp. Please remember to bring a laptop and get ready for a fun, creative day with your Camper.