Once again, the folks at Vortx, the makers of AspDotNetStorefront e-commerce software, will be holding conferences this year designed to help their user base make better use their software as well as learn to market themselves more successfully. Last year’s event, which was held in March, was a combination marketing and developer conference with both tracks running simultaneously. Since very often my job spans both areas I had to choose which seminars I would attend. Luckily, there was rarely a time when I wished I could be in both but I’m sure there were many in attendance that would have preferred separate conferences. Well, this year they got what they wished for. There will be two different conferences this time, and although I can’t make it to both I will be attending the developer conference in Oregon.
AspDotNetStorefront Interactive E-Commerce Workshop – August 14-16, 2013 – Denver, Colorado
Starting in August, there will be an Interactive E-Commerce Workshop, held in Denver, Colorado, that aims to educate users on new approaches to selling online. It looks to be a very hands-on experience and I’m sad that I won’t be able to attend due to another obligation. Especially since I’ve never been to Denver.
There will be one-on-one mentoring, networking opportunities, and lots of instruction on multi-channel selling. There will also be exhibitors and vendors on hand to talk about products that work with or compliment AspDotNetStorefront software.
AspDotNetStorefront Developer Conference – November 4-7, 2013 – Ashland, Oregon
The Developer Conference will be held in November in Ashland, Oregon, the hometown of the company’s US headquarters. If you’ve never been there, Ashland is a pretty little town with excellent restaurants, welcoming accommodations, and ridiculously friendly residents.
The agenda for this year’s conference includes topics such as:
- “A form inside a form”
- Storefront skins – using responsive design
- JQUERY and how to use it
- AspDotNetStorefront, Azure, and the Amazon cloud
- and other development topics.
There will also be one-on-one time for developers to talk with and get help from the actual programmers who write the software. I’m especially looking forward to this as I’ve made several customizations to the Q Source website, for example, that I’m sure could benefit from a little streamlining. I also have a list of questions about things I’m not entirely happy with in the software that I hope can get resolved in a future release.
The conference is still quite a ways off but I have to admit, I’m really looking forward to it. I had a great time in Ashland last year and I certainly came home better for the trip. I will post a follow up, perhaps while I’m at the conference, and I’ll be sure to be implementing the things that I learn for all of my clients on this platform.
I will be traveling for business the week of May 13th and will have limited access to phone and email. As always, please know that I’m not ignoring you should you need to reach me. I’ll be attending a conference in Nashville and the schedule may not allow me to return messages quickly. If you need to reach me for an emergency I will do my best to help out in the evenings. I will, of course, get back to everyone the following week. You all know how to reach me but I would say email is your best bet as I may be able to fire off a quick response.
You may not be aware, but there have been a rash of new attacks on sites running WordPress. Recently, several sites I manage ( including my own! 
) have been victims. Thankfully, nothing serious happened and no one lost any content or valuable information. In fact, I discovered the breaches and remedied the situation before anyone was aware there was even a problem. But it was a reminder for me about staying vigilant and looking for ways to further safeguard my clients’ websites. So, in addition to making some “under-the-hood” changes to all WordPress sites, I’ve also installed a special security plugin for all customers with a maintenance agreement called BulletProof Security.