Courtesy pinkcakebox.com and we have no idea who Baxter is.

First Birthdays Rule.

This August, page.ly is 1 years old. When we decided we were going to create a WordPress Hosting solution that would be easier to use and more secure then your average host; people looked at us like we were crazy. Who’s crazy now?

We have used this last year to refine, scale and expand our service.  Our customers tell us we are doing a great job, and enjoy that we add more value per subscription dollar every month. Every single line of code has been lovingly written by yours’ truly to make the system better, faster, and easier to use.

We are very appreciative of the welcome the WordPress community has shown us. We have given back what we can via cash sponsorship and participation at a few WordCamp‘s.  And of course a good idea does not go unnoticed.

Seems like the year has just flown by, lets look at some highlights; Roll the tape!

August

• Opened for business with our first customer on August 10th, 2009 at 2:44pm
• Hired the elves later that month.

September

• Announced the Reseller platform
• Sponsored our first WordCamp

October

• CenterNetworks said we’re Awesome. (Thanks Allen)
• TheNextWeb agreed (Thanks Alex)
• Helped Raise ~$2000 for Breast Cancer Research

November

• Added WooThemes as our first premium Theme vendor/PowerUp
• Added StudioPress a few days later
• Applied our first 0 day WordPress Upgrade system wide
• Launched our Affiliate program

December

• Launched the Reseller platform

January

• Sponsored WordCamp Boston

February

• Pushed the MultiEdit Plugin live
• Announced the StudioPress Support packages

March

• Released the one-of-a-kind Magic Whitescreen Eliminator in Early March [Support ticket volume dropped 95% overnight]
• Signed a deal with Firehost.com to manage our infrastructure [This was huge.. Every current and future customer gained this major security benefit]

April

• Announced our Real Estate Industry WordPress Hosting [In the works still]

May

• Sponsored WordCamp San Fransisco
• Stealth released our Enterprise service

June

• Announced and launched system wide Automatic Plugin upgrades [these run automatically in the background]

July

• Moved offices from Gangplank2 to Gangplank3.0 [We sit on the board of this 1-of-a-kind collaborative workspace]
• New flexible Payment methods
• Sponsored WordCampBoulder
• New Staging/Preview URLS
• Press75 premium themes added to the PowerUps
• Updated every site across all nodes to WP 3.0.1 in about 1 hour. [over 2.5 million files changed]

Business

Okay so now you are asking yourself well what about the business side and growth. Well I can say every single month has been our best month ever. We have grown anywhere from 20-50% a month, every month, with no end in site. You can peep a quick glance at a graph in this video. Page.ly is a very small company in terms of employees, family owned you could say. Page.ly is getting to be pretty good sized in terms of everything else. Automation FTW. We’re unfunded and bootstrapping this badboy for now. Pay-go-grow with profits.

• 28% of Pagely customers are repeat buyers
• 15% have more than 3 instances
• Most number of instances by a single customer: 16
• Over 100 Resellers
• Over 300 Affiliates

So What’s next?

We are working on some pretty cool stuff, mostly on the scaling side. Our provisioning system is pretty slick if you ask me. We can provision a site on any node in the system with ease, and bringing new nodes online is fairly painless. More visible improvements coming are a major upgrade to the Reseller system, the launch of agent.page.ly, and other niche verticals, and further improvements and additions to the basic feature set.

We are also really excited about our growing Enterprise WordPress Hosting services crowned by the aptly named el Pollo Diablo; A WordPress hosting setup so aggressively powered, secure, and scalable that your momma will tell you to change your underpants before visiting a website powered by it. [Not even kidding]

A Thank You

Huge Thank you’s to all of our customers and friends. We are pretty lucky to have a pretty solid core of advocates and customers that quickly turn evangelists. It’s cliche, but we really could not have done it without you.

A Birthday Gift for You

Follow us on Twitter and check back at this blog for special birthday discounts, promos, and giveaways all month long… like:

Starting with..

35% off this Weekend only (31st/1st) with promocode PAGELYIS1

And just for you reading this right now, it’s a funky lizard doing the birthday dance.

First let us say that we are very happy and proud to be a sponsor of WordcampSF(2010) which will surely be one for the books. We are very thankful to the WordPress community and to all our WordPress Hosting customers for helping our young company grow.

What is a WordCamp you ask?

WordCamp is a conference that focuses on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other. WordCamps are open to WordPress.com and WordPress.org users alike.

As of today, 348 people have registered to attend. I’m not sure what the cap is but I am sure it will sell out soon. Well… we have a few extra tickets just for you.

Announcing The *AMAZING! Page.ly digital essay contest!

Tell us why you love WP -> win stuff.

We love WordPress, she loves WordPress, he does too, and that guy, and her over there, even the kids love WordPress, but we want to know how much and why you love WordPress.

How do I participate?

Tweet, blog, youtube, tumblr, facebook, write a message in bottle, or etch into stone why you love WordPress and how it makes your job easier, makes your life cooler, made you grow hair on your chest (sorry if you are a girl), pwns the competition or whatever other reason you think the world needs to know why WordPress is the best.

We’re going to have to locate your manifesto’s somehow. So to make it easy just tweet the link to your entry with a short message if you like and include the official hashtag. The Officially official hashtag: #pagelywordcampsf

Examples of win worthy entries may include but not limited to:

• a heart felt and passionate blog post about how WordPress saved your job
• a youtube video of your best Matt Mullenwag impression
• a tweet haiku regarding hooks and plugins
• a WordPress logo treatment in obey-propaganda style
• a comic with WordPress as the super hero

You can start now!

What do I win?

3 winners will be chosen by our panel of judges using the official rules from the boy scout handbook 2nd edition (not really) and will be awarded:

• 1 ticket to WordCamp San Fransisco (just get yourself there and find a floor to sleep on if need be)
• 1 FREE-4-Life WordPress hosting account at Page.ly + 1yr domain reg
• 1 super comfy ultra fashion forward Page.ly T-shirt in your size
• Some sweet page.ly stickers
• An adult beverage on us at the after party (our lawyers say we can only buy you 1 cause if you pass out on the trolley tracks & get rice a roni’d we’ll be in trouble) or all the tap water you can drink.

When does the contest end and winners announced?

Contest ends Sunday April 18th at midnight.
Winners announced Tuesday April 20th. (Still time to get yo butt to San Fransisco)

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and tell the world why you love WordPress!  Just remember to tweet the link to your media with the hashtag #pagelywordcampsf.

Legal Stuff:

• Must be 21 to take advantage of adult beverage
• Does not include travel, food, airfare or earthquake insurance
• If a current page.ly customer, your account will be comped-4-eva for 1 domain
• Whatever else comes up we have to put here

Thanks and we look forward to seeing you at WordCamp.

On Saturday, January 23 a panel of WordPress experts will discuss business models in free, open, and GPL software at the WordCamp Boston event

(PRWEB) January 21, 2010 — On Saturday, January 23 a panel of WordPress experts will discuss possible business models in free, open, and GPL software at the WordCamp Boston event. The event takes place at the Microsoft New England Research and Development Center (NERD) from 8am to 7pm.

The panel titled “Monetization in a Free World” comprises of experts such as Joshua Strebel of Page.ly, Jane Wells of Automattic, Carl Hancock of Rocket Genius, and Brian Gardner of StudioPress. Jeff Chandler of WPTavern.com will moderate the panel.

The panel intends to inform attendees of possible ways to capitalize on WordPress and share their experiences. Brian Gardner of StudioPress offers premium WordPress themes. “StudioPress is very excited about attending WordCamp Boston and sharing our experiences in the WordPress marketplace with our theme development.” says Brian. “We hope that we can inform WordPress users of many ways that they can monetize their business with the platform.”

“WordPress monetization has become a hot topic as more people have been turned on to the potential of the WordPress platform.” states Carl Hancock, founding partner at rocketgenius, creators of the Gravity Forms plugin for WordPress.

“It is a wonderful platform whose monetization potential has yet to be fully realized. Things are only going to get bigger and better in 2010 as more companies such as Page.ly, and rocketgenius bring high quality products and services to the WordPress community”

Joshua Strebel’s company, Page.ly combines WordPress hosting, domain name, webmail, WordPress install, free/premium themes, and popular plugins in a 2 minute setup.

“I’m honored to be on a panel with such a talented bunch of experts and I look forward to learning from their responses as well as contributing my knowledge for the greater good of the WordPress community.” – Strebel

Page.ly WordPress Websites is a unique offering the hosting space that combines the ease of use WordPress.com is known for plus the freedom and customization of a self installed WordPress.org platform. Page.ly recently launched a co-branded hosting product with Tech Blogger Chris Pirillo at lockergnome.net.

The panel’s moderator, Jeff Chandler manages the popular WordPress content driven community WPTavern.

“WordPress is the most popular open source publishing platform on the web today and it’s reached the point where viable businesses can be created on top of and around the software. Whether it’s extending the functionality provided by the software or running a service that takes the software to the next level, I hope to get those who have already been successful to provide insight into how they’ve been able to succeed on top of an open platform.” states Jeff.

Jane Wells of Automattic, the creators of WordPress.com, will also be speaking on the panel providing perspective.

This panel of experts have many years of combined experience working with WordPress as a revenue source and look forward to sharing their insights at the WordCamp Boston event. All panels will be recorded and available via video on WordPress.tv after the event.

Page.ly is a monetary sponsor of WordCamp Boston

Tech Blogger, Chris Pirillo and WordPress Host, Page.ly Team Up to Offer Complete Web Solutions

Chris Pirillo and Page.ly launch a pair of WordPress based solutions for blogging and complete website creation.

(PRWEB) January 12, 2010 — Top tech blogger Chris Pirillo has joined forces with Page.ly, a WordPress Hosting service (http://page.ly) that features a one-of-a-kind two-minute WordPress setup, to provide free and premium web solutions. The solutions include a free blog service and a premium WordPress website service. The pair of services are located at Lockergnome.net and were created by the staff at Page.ly.

Chris Pirillo (http://chris.pirillo.com/) strives to provide an easy way for all to enjoy a web presence with blogging and social media features. “People are publishing content to Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, etc. anyway – not thinking about how to archive it or cross it over into their own blog. We’re providing archival options with the widely-familiar, open source experience of WordPress,” states Chris Pirillo, who publishes tech content on blogs, YouTube and his annual Gnomedex conference held in Seattle, Washington. “Lockergnome.net free blogs (http://lockergnome.net) and premium WordPress websites enable users to take more control of their online content and social space. We are not trying to compete with WordPress.com, just offering a more social experience to Lockergnome fans and others looking for an easy way to consolidate their social media activity,” continues Chris Pirillo.

The free blog service is powered by WordPress MU, BuddyPress, and includes the Lifestream plugin by David Cramer. The plugin allows users to track and archive their social media activity on their blog.

Lockergnome.net’s premium websites are powered by Arizona based startup Page.ly and sets up WordPress hosting, domain name, webmail, unrestricted WordPress install, themes and popular plugins in two-minutes. The service also includes nightly backups and automatic updates of the WordPress core. “We are very excited to be working with Chris on these WordPress projects. Page.ly is a perfect solution for getting a WordPress site setup quickly and is a natural fit for the Lockergnome premium solution.” said Joshua Strebel, founder of Page.ly.

Joshua Strebel launched Page.ly in September 2009 to offer customers a no hassle method of setting up and maintaining a self hosted WordPress site. Joshua has spoken on various WordPress topics at WordCampPHX, PodcampAZ and will be appear on a panel at WordCampBOSTON January 23rd discussing monetization strategies of the GPL WordPress software.

Lockergnome.net’s free blog service and premium website service will launch January 2010.

Page.ly offers a website reseller platform complete with pricing, branding, upselling customizable options to web firms and internet marketers.

Page.ly, a white labeled website builder, now empowers web firms and internet marketers with a low cost option for clients unable to afford their services while maintaining the contact for future robust solutions.

“Prospective customers were seeking out our web services on a regular basis. Unfortunately we could not serve every client within their budget and remain profitable. We realized we were turning money away so we developed a solution to serve these clients operating on a limited budget” said Sally Strebel, Co-Founder of Page.ly.

“We knew the solution had to be easy to use, offer professional results, and maintain the resellers brand and client relationship.”

Page.ly websites are powered by the WordPress platform and the resellers manage their client and accounts via a custom WordPress plugin.

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