News from our team, events, and communities we support
SiteGround is a proud sponsor of two WordCamps that will take place during December 2011. As part of our sponsorship we had a few free tickets to give away and the following WordPress users, who host a website with SiteGround and have expressed interest in one of the events have won the tickets:
1. David Leith
2. Andrew Haughn
3. William Smith
Continue reading “WordCamps in December: we sponsor and give some free tickets away”
I don’t know if you have heard about it, but yesterday was the first hearing in the US Congress about the so called “Stop Online Piracy Act”. And it was a messy day. It was all over the Internet. People cried out about it in all social networks and as a matter of fact they still do. All day long today I’ve been monitoring the word “SOPA” on twitter, and frankly I did not even imagine so many people and companies cared… Continue reading “Stop the Stop Online Piracy Act”
I recently overheard my mother telling one of her neighbors that I work as a computer programmer. You can imagine my surprise, as I am a marketing person, and I have never written a single line of anything even remotely resembling a source code. But it was definitely not my mother’s fault, it was me, apparently not being able to explain to her what web hosting is and what I do in a web hosting company. The thought that the situation can be similar for many of my co-workers worried me a little, because as Albert Einstein says: “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.”
I know that each and everyone in SiteGround is a fine expert in his/her day-to-day activity, but what each of us tend to miss to some extent is the big-picture perspective. So here comes the first internal conference aiming to make all of us understand the underlying trends in our industry and the company business strategies better.
Hey, I am writing this blog post to let you know we’ve moved our Customer Service to a new, better, and significantly larger office! We are so excited about it, because we believe that it is important how people feel about their job and that the efficient, comfortable and cozy work environment influences positively the quality of our Customers Service.
Here’s the short story of our Customer Service offices: The first customer service office we established apart from our head office was in the romantic initial years of SiteGround, when we, less than 10 founders and enthusiasts who started the company, were doing everything ourselves. I remember with some nostalgia those times when we spent weeks doing job interviews all day long and wiring PCs and switches in the evening.
Now 7 years and 250,000 domains later we have gone through several office changes. However, as the number of people working for SiteGround grew beyond 70, we once again needed to move. So we found a luxurious 7,000 sq. foot office for our customer service (this is nearly 10 times larger than our first one!) 🙂 This time it was not me wiring the place and making the interviews, but the new office still required a lot of my and other higher management people’s involvement in all sorts of details in order to create the perfect office:
Continue reading “The new “home” of SiteGround customer service”Essential part of the hosting service is the communication with clients. It allows us to meet interesting people, to discuss and solve problems together. That is how we become closer with some of the people and they join our large community – facebook group, twitter followers…
In this article we introduce to you one of the most active and helpful members of our community – Alin. He is extraordinary in many ways – smart, helpful, good-natured, honest and always eager to reach the bottom of the problem. You should know his life has not been easy, the least said. He is diagnosed with Quadriplegic Spastic Cerebral Palsy and has gone through the worst in life: read Alin’s story here. He has been kind enough to answer a few questions for our blog:
SiteGround: Please, introduce yourself and tell us something about you.
Alin: Hi Siteground customers and Siteground prospectives. My name is Alin S, I run http://alinssite.info and http://disabledplanet.net one is a WordPress-based blog and the other is a phpBB3 forum for people with disabilities. I use the blog to help people learn more about me and stay in the loop. I also get donations to help me pay for medical equipment and people also buy DVDs of my speeches.
SG: What is Internet for you and what do you want to accomplish with your site?
A: The internet for me is one of my very few only connections to the outside world and Siteground helps me get myself out there so I am not forced to go find people to connect with, people find my site and or my forum and connect and start talking to me and my friends and other members. It’s great because with how limited my mobility is and how bad my pain is i only go out when its necessary. Most of my “fun” takes place online or at home with people visiting.
SG: Which is your favorite Content Management System?
A: My favorite CMS (Content Management System) is WordPress since it features SO many plugins and can be used for ANYTHING. When you say WordPress you think blogs, newspapers, and other “press” related things. NOT AT ALL! WordPress can become a full fledged E-Commerce system, It can be a photo gallery system, pretty much just about anything that its 50,000+ Plugins allow it to do! And best of all if you know code, it’s all open source so feel free to dig in! (But make sure to back it up first, I’ve broken my installation doing things like that!)
SG: What are you looking for in a web hosting company?
A: When I think web hosting I look for a clean cut leader of companies, not some company that offers the cheapest hosting package on a bunch of cloud servers, no I want a company that knows their servers, has data center technicians always ready, has 24 hour support that turns around with an answer within 10 minutes or less! I also expect a company to be generous to its customers and not cold and stingy and that is exactly what Siteground is.
SG: You are an active member in our forum and communicate often with our support. Would you like to share your experience.
A: Siteground staff also partake in the Siteground forum which is a great place to chat with support professionals about non critical issues or things like “My wordpress does not look right how do I format X header to fit with this type of footer” or “What plugin would I use in Joomla to produce a cool effect of snow on my site?”. Tell them it’s verbatim from my head and that its their problem to edit it LOL!
We hope you have enjoyed Alin. You might want to check his Donations-Gifts page and show him your support for what he does.
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A lot has been said about global warming and “going green”. Our team has always been enthusiastic about reducing pollution, saving energy and water, but we always felt that’s not enough. So, we decided to try a more effective, down-to-earth, hands-on approach to doing something good for our planet. This weekend the SiteGround team planted over 400 trees and cleaned the surrounding area.
There were more than 50 of us – SiteGround employees, friends, kids and a dog. Our task was to plant willows along a riverbank. Willows help both the local eco balance and prevents collapsing of the riverbank. We also cleaned up the waste from the area. It was exhausting, it was cold and muddy, and it was great fun!
We trooped up in front of the entrance of a big cave and the local ranger briefed us how to use a shovel to dig a hole, how to plant a sapling, how to mold and water it. Then, we separated into groups and went to the spots where the actual work and fun began.
Some were lucky to be planting on nice and easy-to-dig earth and planted their saplings in no time. Others got spots where the riverbank was stony and the soil was very hard. One of the groups had to cross the river bare-footed to reach their sites.
The guys dug enthusiastically their first few holes, but then the passion started to fade and it was time to take the beer out of the trunks to keep us going! The girls did the planting and watered the newly-planted trees with water from the river. After lunch we regrouped and those who were done with their spots went to help those who picked up the short stick with the stony soil.
It was a hard day’s work that ended sooner than expected due to the pouring rain. Yet, we were quite proud with the result. We got home wet, exhausted, yet happy. And we immediately started planning when to do it again!
For us, that was just one small step for helping our planet. We are going to keep up with the green initiatives and think of ways of involving our customers and friends as well!
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SiteGround was a proud sponsor for a second consecutive year of the largest Conference for open-source software on the Balkans – the OpenFest. The event was held last weekend in Sofia, Bulgaria. This was the 7th consecutive annual gathering of open-source developers and fans from the region and it attracted more than 30 speakers and 700 participants.
Continue reading “SiteGround sponsors OpenFest conference”
As Halloween is getting near we went through the pictures from the last year SiteGround wild costume party and we remembered the great fun we had! Someone from the support team joked how great it would be if this year we can invite one of the funniest customers Mr. Jones, whose tickets have always been written with a great sense of humor, and see what costume he will choose. At first we laughed but after a while it stroke me that there is a place, where we can really invite all our friends and see how original they get. This place is our Facebook page, where we organized a Halloween Photo contest.
You can now show us how original you get and how much fun you can have. Upload your scary, funny and unique Halloween photos on our Facebook page. You can start today by showing us your favorite moments from past Halloween celebrations. Later you can also add your 2009 Halloween adventures.
Go to contest page and upload Halloween photos
Share your Halloween spirit with us and we will give you a great treat. The best pictures will get one of the big prizes and all participants, whose pictures capture the audience, will receive free hosting from SiteGround. Just upload your best Halloween moments and you will compete for one of the following great prizes:
The contest is open for anyone that has a Facebook account. You can invite your friends to participate in the contest themselves or vote for your pictures. Just remind them to click on the “become a fan” link on the SiteGround page.
Lilyana Yakimova
Marketing Manager
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As we already told you, SiteGround headed to HostingCon’09 in the middle of August. We had so many new things on our mind afterwards, so many talks to get back to and such good time, that we needed a good few weeks time to arrange it all. So, now that our impressions are all piled up, we’d love to share some of the highlights with you.
Some of you asked us to follow up on the tendencies in the web hosting industry. We hear you 🙂 Although we are a bit late delivering the news, the topics are still as hot as they were in August. The buzz words on this year’s event were hosting business acquisitions, products and services up-selling, affiliate programs, and of course – cloud computing and virtualization. Continue reading “What’s new in the web hosting industry: SiteGround HostingCon’09 recap”
This is just a quick update to let you all know that SiteGround is heading to HostingCon 2009! The conference is the worlds’ largest gathering of web hosting professionals and each year brings all important players from the hosting industry together.
This year the event takes place in Washington, D.C. from 10th to 12th August. SiteGround is excited to be attending for the third time now, especially since with a projected attendance of over 2,000 Internet professionals from over 30 countries, the 2009 event promises to be the best yet.
We’re looking forward to meeting all of you! So if you happen to be there, drop us a line or simply come and say hello. It will be a pleasure to talk to you in person.
To those of you who will unfortunately miss the event – don’t worry! You can be sure that we will surprise you with a detailed post on all things new in the hosting industry as soon as we get back.
So stay tuned and enjoy the Summer in the meantime!
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