If you’ve frequented Site5’s home page over the last few years, you are well aware that our main area of consistency is in our impressive lack of consistency. If you have joined the game late, you can use an internet archiver like the Wayback Machine to get a blast from the past and see how our site has changed over time. Click the thumbnails for a larger screenshot.
Rod already wrote a great post to break down the hosting industry’s aversion to change, so I will share a bit of our experience in having a dynamic site. Recently, I was surfing Technorati, and I saw that CSS Mania added a page to rank Site5’s design, so I decided to take a walk down memory lane to see how far the site has come in the past eight years.
I didn’t include screenshots of the infamous “bright pink” design, the “orange is the new pink” design, the “baby blue” design, nor the “neon green isn’t used enough” design, but the first few iterations of Site5’s homepage do well to show how the site (and the company) has evolved to the current state.
There is a huge learning curve in site design. Because Matt and Rod built our site from the ground up as their earliest html/php projects, the first designs were probably as much limited by ability as they were designed with intent. I posted a list of pet peeves which these old pages vehemently violated, but we have learned a great deal about effective web design from these prior versions. Effective site design should be seen as a continual process, not a goal to reach and forget about.
In my extremely biased opinion, Site5’s homepage layout has come to be one of the best in the industry in its usability and aesthetics, and I would attribute a significant amount our order growth to its dynamic nature and all of the personal touches. Either that, or Matt and Rod are the type of people who are wont to change things up every now and again. After all, they’ve been co-authoring the Site5.com website for over eight years now. That’s a long time on the Internet.
The Value of Change
Static web pages are boring. The fact that a company is exciting does not automatically translate into that company’s web page, and with the expanse of the internet, you risk a significant amount of traffic when you ignore this important aspect. I know the arguments for establishing a “look and feel” for a company in a branding sense, but at some point that becomes a cop-out for not being creative enough to adapt to how your company is growing and changing. The best part about the value of a dynamic site is that it can be done without significant changes to the site’s design if you want to keep that “look and feel.” You can change images, mix up colors, or revamp content to make your site worth visiting again… If you never change anything and don’t offer any kind of residual value for future visits, you implicitly plant a “Been there, done that, got the t-shirt” mentality in your visitors.
We have learned from experience that dynamicism (still making up new words when applicable) does not necessarily entail going the way of every “nex-gen” fad, but often you can learn a lot about design from current popular opinion. Even if they only give you ideas for minor tweaks, you have avenues to make your site re-visitable in some capacity (letting visitors take something new from your site the next time they visit). If you are an anti-establishment, anti-majority, free spirit, you can get ideas of how to rid yourself of any potentially incriminating popular design ideas.
You may be underwhelmed with the concept or say “I’ve seen other web hosts with wikis…” Well, we have too, but this wiki is unlike any you have ever seen! While we can’t back that up with facts and figures, we truly believe it. As Matt mentioned in his forum announcement post, from the get-go of release, we have over 12,000 words explaining the ins and outs of various aspects of our services (that’s not to say you need to read a document that big to be able to use Site5 hosting ). The entire Site5 team has been slaving on making the wiki/Manual an invaluable resource to new Site5 customers as well as hosting veterans looking for a little information about the other features available to them as a Site5 customer.
Yes, it is true that we are usually on the cutting edge of in providing hosting technology resources, but sometimes, great things take a while to materialize (or even fall through the cracks). We have had several on-again-off-again attempts at compiling much of the commonly requested information about Site5’s services, but we spent many hours in “The Meadows” with “The Pentaviret” to set this one up and get it to the glorious release stage (where we hope all of our customers will chip in to fully flesh it out).
Don’t head over there expecting six million articles in various languages… that will probably take six years (if we can match Wikipedia’s pace). If you are a closet Site5 aficionado (or public aficionado for that matter), take a few minutes (read: hours) to relinquish all of your Site5 expertise to the tired, poor, and huddled masses of the interweb. If you have never heard of Site5, you can choose which of the masses you would like to represent and partake in the Site5 goodness at http://wiki.site5.com!
Now imagine that those pictures did not come from Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, but were actually graphical representations of what’s going on at Site5. Redefining definitions, refocusing foci, repurposing purposes, and reevaluating evaluations. As Ron Burgundy would tell you, “It’s boring, but it’s part of [our] life. [We're] just gonna grab this shirt if ya don’t mind. Watch out for the guns, they’ll getcha.”
Over the course of the next month or two, Todd Mitchell will be transferring a bulk of the day-to-day management of the technical support side of Site5’s operations to Adam Greenfield. I could recap the explanation of the transition Todd sent to the rest of the Site5 team, but I’m too lazy to summarize, so I’ll give you the words straight from the horse’s mouth (which, because Todd is Canadian, would be a Royal Canadian Mounted Police horse):
“And perhaps the most significant change is in mine and Adam’s role at Site5. Adam is to be the point man for all technical issues–lucky guy. So, continue to post to the lists and get things done as you normally do. But if you have something that needs higher up technical attention, please ping Adam.
This doesn’t mean I’m going away–you guys aren’t that lucky. I’ll be spending a greater amount of time focusing on customer service, affiliates and more in-depth business related issues. In addition to this, I will still be involved with the technical side; simply in a reduced capacity. So if you aren’t able to reach Adam, you can certainly get in touch with me anytime.”
This change should not have any direct effect on the stellar support you receive from Site5’s team of superhuman system administrators, but we wanted to keep you, the Site5 enthusiast, apprised to what is going on behind the scenes. If you have any questions or good jokes about Canadians, please let us know.
I remember days when libraries had cards with each book typewritten and filed in “card catalogs.” I recall having to spend hours searching for the correct card only to realize that I was looking in the wrong section all along. I believe I even had to walk up to a stranger and ask them (in person, mind you) for help. In fact, I am still working through some of those experiences in therapy… they were quite traumatizing.
Gone are those days. I say “Good riddance to bad rubbish” (even though I can’t recall the last time I used the word “rubbish” in conversation). Libraries now have computer systems to find the books you are trying to find… At least that is what Wikipedia tells me.
Adam told me to make sure and include Antitrust in more posts (like this one), so I will paraphrase another great quote from the Skullbocks team:
“Human knowledge belongs to the world [wide web].” [Bracketed addition mine]
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying that libraries are murderous conspirators seeking to silence the uneducated masses… though you shouldn’t develop a false sense of security and immediately turn away the “Librarian Insurance” salesman…
I mean that it is important that we make information as available as possible, using every effective avenue. It may be true that our ticket queue is currently sitting almost empty with 9 tickets, and our sysadmins are fighting for the chance to answer every last one of your questions, but we are still developing informational resources for our current and prospective customers. When we release the initial version of this resource, it probably won’t blow you away, but you will certainly find it helpful.
Want a hint as to what the mystery resource will be? Well… I’m risking my job on this one (due to the Mutual Non-Disclosure Agreement I had to sign), but here goes in hidden ink (highlight with your mouse)…
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It doesn’t rhyme with iPhone. Your computer might now self destruct if you have a Sony battery.
Do you enjoy good stories? Well we have a doozy for you.
As Adam and Todd mentioned on their personal blogs, the three of us met in New Jersey and headed into New York City for the Times Square New Year’s Eve celebration.
In response to Adam’s announcement of the trip, one of our customers (who has chosen to remain nameless) shot us an email to meet up in the midst of the insanity. We are always open to meeting up with Site5 customers, so we made plans to meet up in the center of Times Square around 10 o’clock pm… We were looking for a quiet place without a million people within a few blocks; it turns out that Times Square was a bad choice of location for the meet-up.
Did we mention that the (still choosing to remain nameless) customer had all-access to anywhere in Times Square?
Navigating through the city on the 31st was absolutely insane. Adam decided to avoid the craziness and spent New Year’s Eve with his family, so Todd and I meandered the New York City knock-off peddlers and street performers while waiting for the Times Square festivities to begin.
If you haven’t made it to Times Square for New Year’s, the experience is incredible, but it is certainly a commitment: The NYPD locks down the streets surrounding the ball drop at around 4pm. As the afternoon/evening progresses, they close down cross-streets further and further from the 7th and Broadway “Bow tie.” By the end of the night, I think they had the East-West streets closed between 6th and 8th from Madison Square Garden to around 57th (where people were still filtering onto Broadway and/or 7th). People in the middle of the action had to have been in their place by 3pm to get any kind of view… Unless they had the most amazing hook-up from our now-favorite Site5 customer.
At around 10 p.m., we were escorted through at least 10 “Police Line, Do Not Cross” checkpoints with a simple “They are with me,” and we wound up with a pretty good vantage point of the end of the countdown:
For perspective, check out our view of the end of Times Square away from the ball drop (along with the ABC stage on the left):
It wouldn’t be a Site5 weblog post without being a bit cheesy, so for your mocking enjoyment: Happy New Year!
). The entire Site5 team has been slaving on making the wiki/Manual an invaluable resource to new Site5 customers as well as hosting veterans looking for a little information about the other features available to them as a Site5 customer.
So, continue to post to the lists and get things done as you normally do. But if you have something that needs higher up technical attention, please ping Adam. 
