by Kevin Hazard, May 31st, 2006 | No Comments
Have you ever had a quote stick in your head that became so engrained in popular culture that you have no idea where you first heard it? I was simply going to make a quick blog post to announce the new hosting plans we made available, and “New Look. Same Great Taste.” seemed like a quotable title, so I searched for the term. Sadly, it would appear that many other people in the Blogosphere have proven that I am about as original as the guy who just ran up the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art humming the Rocky theme song.
After literally minutes of searching, I found the culprit and realized why: Do you remember this commercial?
…I’ll give you a second to watch it and return…
Yeah, that’s exactly why: Those can redesigns were phenomenal.
Back to the meat and potatoes of the post… err… staying on the soda train of thought, the sugar and water of the post: The New Plans! We have released a new set of plans to coincide with the major improvements we have going on behind the scenes. The addition of these plans also marks the beginning of a series of moves in which we will continue to provide quality hosting while proactively challenging the nature of web hosting beast.
Stay tuned for more updates and the life-changing news you have come to expect from Site5’s weblog.
by Kevin Hazard, May 26th, 2006 | No Comments
If I didn’t diatribe against music on websites and we weren’t concerned with what kind of copyright infringement we would be committing, you would hear Ice Ice Baby’s recognizable melody looping through your computer speakers right now. Yo VIP, Let’s kick it.
No, this post isn’t going to talk about “Rolling in my 5.0 with my rag-top down so my hair can blow,” but we are taking another line (very out of context) to heart: “Slice like a ninja, cut like a razorblade so fast…” We’re makin’ moves like we’re wearing parachute pants and sequin-encrusted jackets.
In a recent email to customers, Matt announced, “As part of our ongoing effort to provide a high performance hosting experience, we will be redistributing a large number of web hosting accounts to a fleet of new servers. More specifically, the number of accounts on many of our hosting servers will be cut in half.” In order to ensure that we are providing the best hosting experience across our entire fleet, we are “Spreading the love” to our customers by spreading accounts across a new installation of servers. What will it look like? I thought you’d never ask (I set myself up for another oddball reference)…
Yes… “We will call them Mini-Servers!” (not really, but that would be funny). The process of moving the accounts will run in the next few days, and all customers that will be moved will also be notified about the specifics of their account activity before the process begins.
Upon completion of the server moves, we will have a more balanced fleet of servers with even better uptime, load levels, and service quality. Enjoy, and “Beeehaaaaayve.”
by Kevin Hazard, May 25th, 2006 | 1 Comment
Yes, a Monty Python quote right off the bat as the title of the post… It must be a good one, huh? I was going between that title and “Now here’s something we hope you’ll really like,” straight from Rocky’s mouth (of Rocky and Bullwinkle fame, not the boxer of getting beat up for 80% of his movies fame).
Because I enjoy sneaking in the oddball references in my posts, I thought I’d share where a bulk of the random quotes are coming from (while tip-toeing the “this guy has no life” line). Check out the collection below, and let me know if you notice any movies in particular that I should add immediately (click photo for larger image).
This post doesn’t really have anything to do with web hosting, but it has everything to do with where I get the bulk of my random references. For your information, there will be a couple more pretty snazzy posts coming up with some great news… which is even web hosting related.
by Kevin Hazard, May 25th, 2006 | 4 Comments
I bet you didn’t hear a thing… We came; we sidled; we made a few changes; and we vanished like carbs from the Atkins diet. Yes my friends (by association due to the fact that you read this blog), the little timer on the bottom of your favorite Site5 control panel, hints to you nearly as cryptically as I am hinting to you right now, that we have made some slick updates which you will definitely notice.
You may ask, “What are the changes?” and I may then laugh mysteriously and say something to the effect of, “Wouldn’t you like to know?” before scampering away. If you haven’t had a chance, investigate the happenings in your very own account’s control panel and bask in the glory of the engineering team’s coolness. Don’t be intimidated by the task; there are two major changes that are about as hard to spot as Waldo is in the picture below…
Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?
by Matt Lightner, May 11th, 2006 | 3 Comments
For the past two weeks, Rod and I have been on a crusade to fix broken windows. No, we haven’t become glaziers. According to Rob May, a broken window is a metaphor for something about a business that’s in need of fixing. While these problems may seem trivial, they detract from a company’s overall image and can ultimately lead to larger and more serious problems down the road.
So what broken windows have we been fixing? Oh, anything and everything.
In particular, we’ve spent quite a bit of time tightening up the main Site5.com website. You may have noticed some of these changes:
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Our main index page has been redone and now has more information about our hosting, rather than the company in general. We tried to design a page that would quickly and easily inform visitors about our hosting and what makes it unique. We’d love to hear feedback on the new index!
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Our “about” section, formerly composed of six different sub-pages, has been condensed into a single brief page. Traffic analytics showed that less than 2% of visitors went to the “about” section. I guess fewer people than we thought are interested in hearing us self-glorify.
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The “contact us” page now has its own top level tab. I recently experienced some annoyance when trying to find an online merchant’s contact page, and I’d like to save Site5 customers (current and future) from the same hassle.
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Our neglected 404 error page is now up to date.
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The index pages for both our “web hosting” and “resellers” sections have been completely redesigned to better present what we feel to be the key points about our services.
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The “features” and “technology” pages, both of which were sub-pages of the “web hosting” category, have been merged into a single page. This page was re-styled to be easier on the eyes and content was removed in order to emphasize the most important bullet points about each feature.
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We created a page to talk specifically about Site5’s Ruby on Rails hosting capabilities. With the explosive growth Rails has seen, more and more people are coming to Site5 for Ruby on Rails hosting.
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We corrected several outstanding browser compatibility issues.
In addition to web site updates, we’ve also been making some behind the scenes fixes. Just because it’s not a street-facing window doesn’t mean it’s not important!
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We completely audited all of our email templates–from our welcome email to our billing invoices–for consistency, accuracy and, of course, grammar and spelling. First impressions count!
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Todd has been working with new Level III Systems Administrator Andrew Galloway on setting up several tools that will help us proactively address server performance issues. Further development of these systems will be a priority moving forward, and will eventually get the attention of the entire Engineering Team (cue ominous engineering theme song).
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Vince and Todd found that a new OS kernel provided an enormous performance boost. That kernel has now been deployed to all servers.
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Adam and I added functionality for managing past and current support tickets into Backstage. Many of our customers were sad to see it go when we made the transition from my.Site5 to Backstage.
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Kevin compiled a short survey that will be sent to new customers. The survey is aimed at helping us better understand who our customer base is and what they’re doing with their Site5 hosting account.
Over the coming days, Rod and I will be auditing, updating and expanding our knowledgebase in order to make it a more valuable resource, especially considering that nearly half the traffic to our site winds up there. If you have suggestions for ways we can improve this area of our site, please let us know.
That’s all for now. We’ll try to do a better job of keeping you in the loop henceforth. Much to my dismay, it’s been 12 days since our last blog post here (I guess that’s what happens when Kevin goes on a week-long Caribbean cruise). You have my word that the blog won’t go stale again… even if I have to make inane posts just to keep things fresh.
Cheers!
Matt
