WordCamp Auckland 2014

Apertura Designs recently attended WordCamp Auckland 2014—a local event in the global series of conferences for WordPress customers, developers, and enthusiasts. We heard from a fantastic series of speakers covering a variety of WordPress-focused topics. Of particular interest were sessions with a small business focus, the highlights of which we're covering in this blog entry.

Journalist Bill Bennett hosted a useful session on adopting journalistic methods for bloggers, containing practical tips especially relevant for companies performing business blogging. A copy of Bill's presentation slides and topics covered can be found here.

Rebecca Caroe from Creative Agency Secrets shared how WordPress-powered websites can be used in a mutually beneficial arrangement with closed social networks (such as Facebook). Again, this was especially relevant to businesses wishing to exploit the many advantages of social networks while also retaining control over their data and customer interactions. Rebecca's slides and a full case study can be found here. (It's also worth reminding our readers that we have blogged on this topic before here.)

Ben May is an Australian-based expert at developing WordPress-powered websites for businesses. He gave a fantastic presentation highlighting the reasons for choosing WordPress above closed and proprietary web platforms—covering data ownership, flexibility, rapid development, and freedom from vendor lock-in (all of which we wholeheartedly agree with.)

From our perspective, we'll make two points, especially for those WordCamp 2014 attendees who are just getting started with WordPress. First, while the WordPress.com hosted service (see this post for more information) is indeed a fantastic way to get started, business owners should be aware that it's also home to some pretty serious customers. In other words, for many business website use cases, WordPress.com is an ideal permanent solution. You can check out the list of well-known brands hosted on WordPress.com here. The odds are that if WordPress.com is working for these prominent companies, it'll work great for your business too.

Second, WordPress is one of a number of open source CMS products. Alternatives such as Drupal or Joomla—while offering different features sets and functionality compared with WordPress—may be a better fit for some use cases and requirements, or even just personal preference. All are free and open source, and it costs nothing to use the software hands-on for evaluation and comparison.

All in all, it was a hugely worthwhile event—and we look forward to WordPress Auckland 2015.