by Matt Lightner, April 29th, 2006 | 7 Comments
Due to popular demand, we’ve put together an autoinstaller for the popular Ruby on Rails based blog software Typo. The installer takes an application name (I.E. “myblog”) and a mySQL database password and does the rest for you, including setting up a mySQL database, installing the application files to your account and configuring the app to work with the new database. From there, all you need to do is create your new Typo admin user and start blogging right away!
If you want to install custom Typo themes or work with the application files, you can find them in the “rails_auto_apps” directory within your account’s top-level directory (outside of public_html).
For a more customized install, you can still install the program yourself or tweak a basic autoinstall instance.
The new installer is committed to our codebase and will be available in NetAdmin under “CGI and PHP Scripts” within the next 24 hours (we need to push out a new NetAdmin RPM to all the servers first).
Hope you enjoy this new feature–we’d love to hear your feedback on it!
by Matt Lightner, April 27th, 2006 | No Comments
In an effort to improve our current knowledgebase, we’ve introduced the Write4 Site5 program. It’s pretty simple: add to our current collection of Help Articles by writing something for a question/topic that is missing or you feel can be improved. Approved articles will receive $25 in cash or a $50 Site5.com service credit.
For the guidelines, tips and more information you can visit the official page here.
by Matt Lightner, April 24th, 2006 | No Comments
As has been hinted at by recent blog posts, we are beginning a crusade to make Site5 web hosting even more reliable, dependable and lightning-fast than ever. After our current Backstage development iteration comes to a close (which shouldn’t extend past the end of the week), Adam and the Engineering Team will turn their attention toward our core technical operations systems.
Although the work we have been doing on Backstage is phenomenal (and necessary), we recognize the importance of keeping our servers humming along at peak efficiency. A new intelligent system resource management system, automatic outage response and resolution and increased transparency of our systems administration goings-on are just a few of the projects that make up this initiative. Over the next few months, Site5 customers can expect to see noticeable enhancements in website performance—above and beyond the already industry-leading levels currently provided.
At the same time we will be bolstering our customer service and support teams to ensure that when you need assistance, you get it in record time—this has always been a cornerstone of our business philosophy.
I’d like to thank everyone for continuing to support and recommend Site5. The last several months have been the best in the company’s history, and this success is due in large part to word of mouth referrals from our loyal client base. Rest assured that as we continue to grow, our primary objective will, as always, be the further advancement of the Site5 service.
Making web hosting great is our business, and I’m excited to show you what we have in store for the future!
by Rod Armstrong, April 14th, 2006 | No Comments
Last evening I launched what is Phase II of my grand Site Realignment Plan. It would fall into too-obvious territory for me simply to point this out (if you’ve seen our previous version from the past six months or so, you probably notice the difference), so I’ll try to give you a little behind-the-scenes thinking of the methodology that went into this iteration.
Phase I consisted of redoing the top level of navigation so it was simpler and done in bulletproof CSS tabs. The response from this was so positive, I wanted to take the idea further with Phase II.
I had a main goal of introducing more white space into the design, freeing the pages, increasing readability, and making our layout easier on the eyes. I felt the previous Blue Design, while bright and colorful, made each page a little too claustrophobic. After much trial and error, I eventually happened upon a color scheme I liked enough (the dark gray/black with the primary colors) for the new header. It also took some visual experimenting to make sure it complemented a full screen of white space appropriately. So what you see there now is what turned out to work the best for those goals, in my opinion.
Some other changes of note aren’t purely visual. This design marks what I would say is a more “mature” departure from previous designs. I think we’ve matured as a web host a great deal over the past year or so, and I decided to the risk of attempting to show that through our website.
For instance, we no longer have an “ORDER NOW” smiling-stock-photo-person-graphic taking up the majority of our index. I’ve replaced it with a more subtle graphic that hopefully conveys the new tone we’re looking for. Now, I’m not going to immediately, self-righteously, knock this practice. For one, it actually seems to work in most contexts. It’s an older article of conventional internet wisdom that smiling humans can lead to more frequent orders, and we can’t exactly argue with that. It’s a tool that did always have some varying degree of success for us in encouraging orders.
The problem now is just that we are becoming more unique as a web host and as a company, and that’s what we wanted to show. It might sound cliché, but it often is really hard to follow your gut as a person or as a company and not try to emulate the trends and the status-quo that have proven historically successful. I want to cut down on possible sappiness and buzzword-acity (-aciousness?) here, so I think you get the idea.
Since there has not been a huge outcry (yet) regarding the removal of our smiling person on the index, our bright pastel blue aquarium of a background, our candy-coated accents, etc., I will assume that this move has at least not been a major misstep. It’s my feeling that easy-to-navigate, readable sites are really the first priority for most people. Having that down right (and I’m hard at work on more improvements) can probably say volumes more than a smiling homepage model can.
by Kevin Hazard, April 12th, 2006 | No Comments
It’s like you can hear a pin drop right now: It’s quiet, a little too quiet… It’s Raph, a little too Raph… (Along with the Holy Grail reference in the title, this serves as the obligatory esoteric reference for this post… it alludes to the Ninja Turtles Movie I watched about 200 times as a kid.)
To say things have been busy in the world of Site5 in the past week or two would be a huge understatement. We have a lot of fundamental service changes in the works which will improve our server performance, enhance our ability to monitor, and enable us to respond more quickly and directly to problems as they arise.
The Real Deal
Site5 is not the same small web host it was even 6-months ago, and that has good and bad connotations when you look at the company from an outside perspective.
Naturally, some people will be uncomfortable with the changes that they see, recalling “The Good Ol’ Days” of when they were the only customer on a dedicated server with Site5 in 1999… I bet back then, Matt and Rod gave out their home phone numbers to customers who had problems to ensure that each Site5 customer was having a stellar experience, but now, we have Stephens and Stevens and Davids and Vinces and Carlas and Brendans (completely random selection of names from our team… not trying to exclude anyone, just making a point) responding to questions and ensuring a great customer experience.
Unfortunately, when any problems do arise, the cynics in the crowd (and around the industry for that matter) will be quick to spurt that “Site5 is going downhill… They used to be good, but now they {are just after your money/ don’t care about their customers/ conspire to destroy the lives of every person to ever be put on one of their servers} (pick one).”
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled. - Richard Feynman
What Feynman was saying is true: Nothing anyone at Site5 could say could necessarily change those opinions or win back the customers that may have felt like we lost them, but it is our sincere hope that we can prove otherwise… That reality makes our case for us. High-quality customer service is an ongoing, fickle process with different situations getting immediate, yet polar-opposite responses: Small problems can get fixed often and immediately, and “Site5 is very helpful and responsive,” or a server can be running along fine for a year when a hard disk fails and a support representative takes 2 hours to resolve the issue, and “Site5 has horrible customer service… I have been waiting forever, and they aren’t doing anything.”
In spite of the claims that we are somehow less interested in providing a great customer experience, we continue to strive toward being the best web host: one that you essentially don’t have to deal with; everything works as it should, and, for good measure, you even get some innovative new tools and systems to make your site easier to manage. Because we are in the midst of a meta-planning stage for expediting changes to reach this end, we don’t have a timeline for when we will hit certain goals nor am I even able to comment specifically on what we will be doing to improve the core competencies at Site5, but I am able to at least inform our legions of fans that we are working hard to remain one of the best hosts in the business… As LL Cool J said in “Mama Said Knock You Out”:
Don’t call it a comeback
[We've] been here for years…
Feedback
We want your feedback as to how you would like Site5 to look or what we should improve, so please take the time to get in touch with us by emailing management(at)site5|dot|com.
