by Tom Sepper, November 30th, 2007 | 1 Comment
I am pleased to announce that the Site5 AffiliateRewards program just got better.. in fact, it’s now 325% better! Effective immediately, future commissions earned from affiliate sales/referrals are now worth an incredible $85 each! Full changes are listed below:
Payout Levels
- For your initial account referrals, you will receive $85.00 each.
- If you refer 20 or more accounts in a month, you will receive $100.00 for every referral (including your first 20).
- Your minimum payout amount is $85.00.
So let’s do a little deep-thinking for a bit..
With just one affiliate commission, you could do any of the following:
What are you waiting for? Add the updated banners located within Backstage to your sites today and start making some cash! If you’re not already an affiliate, c’mon and get with the program!
by Rod Armstrong, July 26th, 2007 | 3 Comments
What’s a DTO, exactly? Well (in this case) I’m not referring to a Drug Trafficking Organization, the U.S. Disruptive Technology Office or even a Diluted Tincture of Opium (thanks Wikipedia list of acronyms!) It’s an acronym I apparently just made up for our new Director of Technical Operations position which now belongs to the very wonderful and talented Vince Stratful.
Vince was promoted to the position this week and will now be overseeing a great portion of our day-to-day technical and service operations fleet-wide. This basically means he will be staying up all hours of the day and night to make sure our servers stay online and running smoothly. As you could imagine, this will be quite a task - but Vince is very excited to take it on and we can’t be more excited about having him in the position. In addition to having one of the cooler-sounding names on the team, Vince is our most senior employee, having been with the company almost as long as the founders (myself and Mr. Matt Lightner.) He was previously serving as our most senior Level 3 Administrator.
Besides maintaining obsessive levels of fleet upkeep, Vince is enthusiastic about continuing to help keep our service platform on the cutting edge by taking the lead on some updates to our control panel back-end, server configurations and feature upgrades, among other things - so make sure to look for some big improvements in the future.
On behalf of the founders, we congratulate and welcome him to the new position. If you have any suggestions, wanted to congratulate him or just wanted to say hello, feel free to drop him a line at vstratful (at) site5 dot com.
by Matt Lightner, June 2nd, 2007 | 2 Comments
Do you live and breathe systems administration… both literally and metaphorically? If so, we have some great news: you could be the next Senior Systems Engineer at Site5. No, really. You could–the job can be done from anywhere, so long as you have a computer and reliable Internet.
What, specifically, does the world-renowned and highly-respected Site5 Senior Systems Engineer do? It’s hard to nail down specifically, because all SSEs wear many hats. All of the hats, however, involve 31337 technology stuff. Here are examples of things a Senior Systems Engineer might find themselves doing:
- Recompiling kernels
- Building RPMs and deploying them across our fleet
- Tracking down and fixing bugs in our control panel software (only kidding, our software doesn’t have bugs… it just develops “unexpected features”)
- Providing support to our Systems Administration and Customer Service teams by handling issues needing higher-level attention
- Locating and fixing performance bottlenecks
- Automating various tasks and ensuring consistency across all servers in the fleet
- Planning and implementing system and network infrastructure upgrades
- Designing and evaluating new hardware configurations
That’s all a bit ambiguous, but the point is that you will no doubt be called on to handle any manner of high-level technical task. While you may not know the answer off the top of your head, you should have a strong enough systems administration and development background that you can figure it out relatively quickly.
Not sure if you’re the right candidate for the job? We’ve put together a list that might help you figure it out. Without further ado, you might be a Site5 Senior Systems Engineer if…
- You find yourself writing scripts to automate any tasks you have to repeat more than once.
- You routinely find yourself short on monitor space because you have a dozen or so terminals open at any given time.
- You have ever told someone that your first language isn’t English, but rather Bash, Perl, Ruby or some other language adored by sysadmins.
- You have found yourself wanting to pipe real-world conversations through grep to extract relevant content.
- You’ve been using vi since before you were potty-trained.
A Senior Systems Engineer is half super systems administrator and half developer. The job involves not only maintaining but improving upon our hosting platform, so a solid programming background is a must. You needn’t be a computer scientist or professional software developer, however you should be very comfortable using a higher-level language (preferably Ruby, but Perl is also acceptable) in a *systems administration* capacity (no, writing a website in PHP doesn’t count).
Ready to apply? Excellent. To get started, make an HTTP POST request to http://sseapp.site5.com/how-to-apply.cgi with your name as the “name” parameter and your email address in the “email” parameter. Further instructions await you there…
David Felstead, our Chief Software Architect, ran through the challenge in well under 10 minutes (which included helping me find a couple bugs in the system). How does your time compare? If you’re anywhere close, congratulate yourself–he’s one of the best developers around!
Want to skip the test? Completing the above challenge will let us know that you’re serious about this position. It should only take 10-20 minutes for the right kind of applicant, and it will give us some level of assurance that you’re up to the challenge that a Senior Systems Engineer will face. That being said, if you get stuck or simply don’t have time to complete the challenge, we still invite you to apply by sending your resume and cover letter to tests-are-not-my-bag@site5.com. Be sure to explain why you didn’t complete the test!
by Kevin Hazard, April 30th, 2007 | 1 Comment
According to my quick calculations, the Site5 weblog has been cranking web hosting entertainment to eleven for 444 days as of this post, and we owe a debt of gratitude to the die-hard audience tuning in to read what we have to say about… well… whatever comes to mind, I guess.
The blog has been coming on like gangbusters: we have seen a steady increase in traffic, alluded to more than a few former pop-culture phenomena, and we have even garnered a bit of worldwide attention in our outlandish and controversial claims to time machine supremacy. If you have been around since we introduced this zany medium, you probably have a favorite post out of the 70ish you have read, but you are equally likely to have been plagued by a mystery as old as time something that began on June 19th, 2006: What is this picture?
There’s no need to fear… you will not need to shell out the thousands of dollars you have spent on forced-amnesia medication, hypnotherapy, and smelling salts following this reminder of that age-old conundrum. I’ve got an answer for you: The work is called “Cigar Bar,” and it was originally an oil on canvas piece of a two-piece collection by Brent Lynch.
Whew! What a relief, huh? I’m sure that the pursuit of the title and artist of that painting has kept you awake at night; you may have been faithfully waiting for Spishak Industries to create a sleep-aid for you, but now you can sleep soundly, knowledgeably, and without any side-effects. If that isn’t an amazing “Thank You” to all of Site5’s blog readers, well then I don’t know what is. 
by Kevin Hazard, April 17th, 2007 | No Comments
Following a bit engineering sneakery and upside-down, underwater development, we’ve got yet another announcement for you… A brand new, smooth and silky, blinged-out affiliate system: Site5 Affiliate Rewards!
This news may not sound like much to those who have not had to endure the trials and tribulations we have seen in integrating a third-party affiliate system with our home-made Synco account manager and Backstage customer portal, but you can believe me when I tell you that this release is p-h-e-n-o-m-e-n-a-l. In addition to its amazing design integration, Rails base, and slick ajaxy goodness, the new system expands our affiliate team to our entire customer base (rather than being an entirely separate entity), adds the ability to quickly and easily transfer affiliate funds to pay for your Site5 hosting account(s), and provides detailed information about the people you refer to join the Site5 community.
What’s the best part about the new system? All Site5 customers already have access to start affiliating (which sounds a bit dirty, I apologize), and all of our affiliates from the previous system can log into the new system with their old username and password to find all of their information (and referrals) smiling back at them along with a (probably more important) brand new tiered affiliate payout scheme:
- If you refer up to 9 new customers in one month, you get $20 per referral.
- If you refer 10-19 new customers in one month, you get $30 per referral.
- If you refer more than 20 new customers in one month, you get $40 per referral!
If you want the run-down, the skinny, or the basics of the affiliate process, pay attention to this paragraph because I will attempt to provide all three at the same time. As a Site5 affiliate, you will get your very own personal referral URL and a selection of Site5 banners (in case you are looking to spice up the graphics on your website). By adding our link and/or banner to your website, you will be sending your friends, acquaintances, readers, and serial-clickers to Site5’s page via your affiliate portal. If that visitor chooses to order a Site5 plan (which they are very likely to do since Site5 has one of the highest conversion rates in the industry) and remains a customer for 60 days (the length of our money-back guarantee), you get at least $20. Boom. What can you do with the money you receive (via PayPal payout, check, or Site5 hosting credit)? If you are lucky, you may be able to buy 6.667 gallons of regular unleaded gas in California. Isn’t that exciting?
What are you doing still reading this well-written, entertaining, informative blog? If you are a Site5 customer, you can jump in and affiliate to your heart’s content. If you are not a Site5 customer, go order a hosting account to join in on the fun!
Note: You may not have known that “affiliate” is an active verb, but it is, and through the use of context clues, you infer that it is fun to do.
If you are not a Site5 customer and are a bit timid with regard to fun-having, you can click the image below to sign up for a stand-alone affiliate account if you want to get your feet wet and make a few extra bucks referring some of your friends to our community… we won’t hate, we’ll appreciate.
