I speak on behalf of all organizers, volunteers, and attendees when I say THANK YOU very, very much to our wonderful sponsors.

We could not put on WordCamp Birmingham without your support. We feel so privileged that you’ve chosen to invest in this WordPress community. We look forward to a great conference.

I’d like to brag a little bit more on some of the awesome companies that are so generous.

Bluehost

What can I say? Your commitment to WordPress and the local WordPress communities around the world is incredible. I love that you guys dedicate employee time and company resources to support WordPress and its events. Anyone looking for affordable, quality hosting that boasts an enormous customer base, do check out Bluehost. Thank you for being our Pillar sponsor!

Dreamhost

Similarly, your commitment to WordPress and the local WordPress communities around the world is remarkable. Team members from Dreamhost like Mika and Mike are such great contributors to our community’s overall health. I thank you for your commitment to supporting the WordPress platform, and WordCamps! Anyone looking for an affordable hosting option with a variety of scalable plans, do check out Dreamhost. Thank you for being our Champion sponsor!

Our Diamond sponsors

I’m so happy that Infomedia and SiteGround are supporting WordCamp Birmingham as our Diamond level sponsors.

• Read more about how SiteGround offers Managed WordPress hosting to scale with you.
• And learn about Infomedia’s diverse offering of service, and commitment to working with companies in Birmingham and beyond.

Our Platinum sponsors

• VeloMedia is an enterprise-level consulting agency distributed throughout the US and Europe. Learn more about VeloMedia and be sure to meet them while they’re here this weekend.
• Code Poet is a an incredible WordPress resource. Interviews, tips, e-books — they’ve got ’em! Learn more about Code Poet.

Thanks so much to VeloMedia and CodePoet for being our Platinum sponsors!

Our Gold sponsors

We are so excited about the generous support from all of our Gold sponsors! I’ve met these individuals and companies, and they are really great. Be sure to check out their websites, and our blog posts about each of them.

• Randall-Reilly connects you to your audience.
• Visual Form Builder Pro – Advanced form building, made in Alabama.
• Zeekee Interactive – Where marketing meets the web.
• Backup Buddy – Backups are just the beginning.
• Exchange – Simple eCommerce for WordPress.
• WooThemes – Themes and plugins for your niche.
• Yoast – WordPress SEO made easy for everyone.

In-Kind sponsor

Thank you Sticker Giant for your sticker awesomeness! Our laptops and stickable surfaces are greatly appreciative!

Our VIP Personal Sponsors!

Thank you to Kathy Drewien, Scot Self, David McMath, and Pippin Williamson for your Personal VIP Sponsorships!

We really appreciate your contributions to WP Y’all, and we think you owe yourselves a first class pat on the back! We look forward to hanging out together, and hope you enjoy the VIP perks and fancy swag. You rock!

Thank you so much, sponsors! To our attendees and speakers, please thank these fine people for their support, and check out their products and services!

SiteGround has over 9 years of experience in the hosting business, and they are as excited about the future of the web this year as they were their first.

Unshaken by the inherent challenges in the hosting industry, SiteGround is committed to providing first-class hosting technology, supported by some of the best customer service in the industry, finely tuned for WordPress — for a very affordable price.

How do they do it? They like to say it’s because of their dedicated staff of world-class developers and support personnel.

I met the SiteGround team in San Francisco, and I was quickly convinced of their dedication to providing great hosting, customer service, and optimizing it all for WordPress.

Their servers, available in 3 different data centers across the world, are optimized for speed and security and they provide many goodies for WordPress fans like us: automatic updates for WordPress Core and plugins, built in WordPress caching for great site speed, a staging tool for coders, and a unique WordPress auto-installer for starting users.

Whew. And it’s all crafted in-house by the SiteGround team.

And of course, if you need domain name registration, email service, and control panel access, they’ve got you covered.

Want to know something else awesome? In addition to being our wonderful Diamond sponsor, SiteGround is also giving away an entire year of free hosting to all WordCamp Birmingham attendees. That’s many times over the price of your ticket in value, all by itself. Is WordCamp feeling like a good decision yet? You’ll see how to get your free year at the event.

We’re incredibly thankful that SiteGround is our Diamond sponsor.

Infomedia has been working on the web since 1994. They are one of the most experienced web-focused agencies in the southeast. Infomedia looks to solve complex problems for both small and large organizations in Birmingham, the state of Alabama, and beyond.

Infomedia has experience across a wide variety of industries: from consulting non-profits to corporporate entities, to associations, to eCommerce. If you’re looking for a consultant for digital services that understands your industry, one of their team members has probably been there. They’ll work with you to do market research and a needs analysis to help guide you in the right direction to solve your business problems.

Dedicated to a future working with open source platforms, Infomedia is excited to invest employee time and resources supporting events like WordCamp Birmingham. In fact, two of this year’s organizers (me — Brian, and Andrew) are part of the Infomedia team.

If you are looking for a consulting agency that wants to help you solve your long term digital goals, and wants to help you get a good return on your investment from your digital properties, then Infomedia is a great place to start.

And if you’re thinking you want to work with WordPress on a day-to-day basis, or are interested in other aspects of Infomedia’s full time opportunities, they are always hiring.

We’re excited and very thankful for Infomedia’s support of WordCamp Birmingham as our Diamond sponsor.

VeloMedia delivers enterprise WordPress solutions via a network of distributed offices across the US and Europe. They work with small brands and big brands, but always solve big problems.

I’ve gotten to know Karim Marucchi, VeloMedia’s Founder and CEO, between WordCamp San Francisco and now WordCamp Birmingham, and it’s easy to tell that he and the team at VeloMedia in general have a passion for WordPress and solving real-world business problems.

Not to mention, Karim is coming to WordCamp Birmingham to share with us about setting client expectations in WordPress web development on Sunday. It will be a great opportunity for us to learn from him.

VeloMedia teams with advertising agencies, full-service PR firms and their clients, as well as internal marketing and IT departments to provide some of the web’s most dynamic WordPress solutions. They like integrating WordPress into more complex enterprise systems while getting to know not only their technical needs but their business objectives as well.

I’m excited and thankful that VeloMedia is supporting WordCamp Birmingham as our Platinum sponsor.

Code Poet is a WordPress resource site with interviews, tips, e-books and more to make your day to day life using WordPress, better.

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.

Ever since Code Poet launched, it’s been one of my favorite places to learn about people in the WordPress community and get great resources I can rely on. And their eBooks are really amazing.

Oh, you want to put your WordPress skills to the test? They’ve got a quiz for you to see how you match up.

We are super thankful for Code Poet investing in WordCamp Birmingham as our Platinum sponsor! Check them out today.

Have you heard of Visual Form Builder Pro? Well, if not, today is your lucky day.

Visual Form Builder Pro is an affordable WordPress form plugin that helps you build beautiful, fully functional forms in only a few minutes without writing any code. Starting as low as $15, Visual Form Builder Pro is more affordable than the competition, and gives you everything you need to get great forms, fast on your website.

Oh, did you say you’re a web developer? You’ll find plenty of filters and actions to customize the plugin to suit your needs, too. And there are add-ons that make Visual form Builder Pro way more powerful than your standard forms plugin.

Best of all? Visual Form Builder Pro is made right here in Alabama. So, when you’re looking for your next forms plugin, consider “buying local” and check out Visual Form Builder Pro. It’s pretty awesome.

We’re thankful to Visual Form Builder Pro for supporting WordCamp Birmingham as our Gold level sponsor.

Zeekee Interactive was founded in 2003 with the vision of creating an internet consulting firm dedicated to helping its customers understand the marketing power of the internet.

Ten years later, Zeekee boasts some of the region’s most popular brands, with expertise in a full variety of internet marketing services. Whether your business is looking for Website Design and Development, Website Maintenance, Internet Marketing Campaigns, Hosting, Email Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, E-commerce Solutions, Graphic Design, or Social Media Services — Zeekee has you covered.

Whether you need a complete internet marketing solution or a quick and easy website, Zeekee Interactive has the resources and talent to create the right solution for you.

We are thankful that Zeekee has invested back into the local WordPress community to sponsor WordCamp Birmingham as our Gold level sponsor. Check them out today.

Backup Buddy is a flagship product of iThemes. It’s been the go-to commercial backup solution for WordPress for years, and it keeps getting better.

With Backup Buddy, automating and simplifying your website backups is just the beginning. You can restore your website completely and automatically from a backup.

You can also restore specific files if you make a bunch of changes and then decide they weren’t right, so you don’t have to restore the entire website or manually revert all of your changes.

And their migration services in Backup Buddy are really good. You can move an entire website to a new domain or hosting provider, no problem.

Don’t lose all of your hard work because you didn’t have good backups in place. With Backup Buddy, it handles the hard work for you, and always “remembers”, even if you don’t.

We’re very thankful for Backup Buddy‘s Gold level sponsorship for WordCamp Birmingham.

Making something simple is often times harder than making it really complex. WordPress eCommerce is one of those things that can get really complex, really quickly. And Exchange by iThemes is looking to change that.

Exchange is an eCommerce platform that keeps things simple and modular, to make eCommerce with WordPress easier for users and developers alike.

I’ve beta tested Exchange, and it’s a promising platform that’s not near as intimating as other eCommerce options.

Exchange is trying to simplify things that other aspects of eCommerce try to force into being hard, like payment gateways. They’ve recently created a chart to help store owners figure out their options, and easy to implement gateways like Paypal and Stripe are available right out of the box.

Exchange launched with the ability to handle digital downloads and decided to let customers help guide future development. They’ve now got physical products and memberships under development and on the way.

We’re very thankful for Exchange’s support of WordCamp Birmingham as a Gold level sponsor.