Ben Metcalfe is the definition of an Internet professional. With more than 11 years industry experience under his belt, Ben has previously spent time working on the development of MySpace and websites at the BBC.
He is the founder of two companies, Swordfish Corp and WP Engine. Having used the Internet since 1992, Ben is passionate about the Internet's ability to enrich, inform, educate and entertain our lives and connect us with others.
CloudFlare was lucky enough to catch up with Ben to hear the latest on his newest company, WP Engine.
"We are one of a new breed of webhosts, we are a managed WordPress hosted platform," said Ben. "What that means is we only support WordPress, we are not a traditional hosting account. You point a domain at our IP address, and we provide you an instant WordPress site that's running on our platform. We can immediately make sure that (your site) is set up in a way that is most optimum in way of speed, security, performance and scalability."
Having been around the Internet for some time, it's no surprise that Ben
is active in social media and encourages his company and staff to have a
social media presence.
"We use Twitter a lot at WP Engine," said Ben. "I think it's important that the business itself and my employees get their own following and reputation. It's a really tricky medium for support, but we use it to highlight and add value, encouraging customers through Twitter to use email support."
Ben's biggest mistake in social media? Not claiming @ben when he had the opportunity in 2006.
Listen in to hear the latest on WP Engine and what's next for the company.
At HostingCon 2012, CloudFlare co-founder Michelle Zatlyn sat down with 28 leading experts in the hosting industry. Their conversations were captured live and offer insight into the latest trends and news in hosting.