SiteGround Blog

The leading Bulgarian IT company SiteGround received a silver award in the ranking “Top 100 of the best employers in Bulgaria 2022”. The company is ranked second among the 100 leading Bulgarian employers according to the criteria of the Career Show Index. The ranking is based on Bulgarian and international awards won in the last three years. SiteGround is in the top for the second year in a row, leading the rankings in 2021.

“SiteGround is a preferred employer and occupies the leading position among the best companies in the country in a number of criteria, thanks to the fact that it provides the best conditions and opportunities for its team and customers every day. Technology and innovation in the service of society are the core of our philosophy not only in terms of our business, but also as human resource management. The leading priority is the care for our employees and the investment in their development”, shares Victor Fachev, Human Resources Director at the company.

“We congratulate SiteGround for the silver award in the Top 100 of the best employers in Bulgaria in the Career Show index. The company’s many recognitions in various fields, contributing to the development of the employer brand and human capital, prove its comprehensive approach to growth and development both in business and as human capital. By investing in a favorable and promising work environment, SiteGround contributes to the transformation of our country into a preferred destination for career development. We are happy that we can contribute to the popularization of the good practices in this direction”, shares Simona Harizanova, co-founder of Career Show.

SiteGround has three offices in Sofia, Plovdiv and Stara Zagora. More than 500 employees are working there, and the company is constantly investing in the development of their expert skills and professional competencies.

SiteGround also offers many benefits, including part-time work on Fridays, its own restaurant and barista, its own gym, additional health insurance, annual medical examinations, psychologist, massages, sports cards, unique office environment, various traditional initiatives in support of physical, emotional, personal and professional development of its employees.

The leading Bulgarian IT company SiteGround won the award in the SEE CSR Initiative of the Year category from the INNOVATION, TECHNOLOGY AND SOURCING AWARDS. 48 projects of different companies from the country and the region competed in 10 categories. The organizers of the Association for Innovation, Business Services and Technologies (AIBEST) and the Bulgarian Startup Association (BESCO) rewarded SiteGround’s efforts in the field of social responsibility. The company supports long-term projects and initiatives that help society in the field of health, sports and education.

For the last two years SiteGround and its owners have invested in hospitals, non-governmental organizations and other institutions of public importance in the country. Thanks to its large-scale commitment and investment, for 2020 and 2021 SiteGround has won over 20 awards as an employer and socially responsible company in Bulgaria.

“I thank the organizers for this recognition. As a leader in the IT field, social responsibility is of special importance to us. For years we have been investing sustainably in support of projects and causes related to medicine, education and sports, thus aiming to improve the quality of life and to influence the development of the whole society. I take this opportunity to congratulate all the other companies from the ecosystem that are here. I believe that our joint efforts take us in the right direction of development”, said Victor Fachev, Human Resources Director at SiteGround.

In order to scale its efforts in support of the society, the management team of SiteGround – Ivo Tzenov and Tenko Nikolov, are about to create their own foundation. Its main mission will be to seek and implement social projects in the field of health, education and sports.

The Association for Innovation, Business Services and Technologies (AIBEST) and the Bulgarian Startup Association (BESCO) are conducting the awards for innovation, technology and sourcing for the sixth consecutive year. Within 10 different categories, the Innovation, Technology and Sourcing 2022 Awards aim to recognize and encourage the efforts of companies in the sector in Southeast Europe, investors and local authorities for good practices, business achievements and creating a favorable business environment for supply growth and the technology industry. 

With the weather getting nicer and nicer and being able to finally attend in-person events after a two-year break, May has been a great month for team buildings and conferences across Europe. Here’s what happened at SiteGround:

• A favorite SiteGround tradition is the 3.00 PM employee celebrations in the office. One of our May-borns brought the party to our Headquarters in Sofia with strawberry chocolate fountains and (a little) prosecco.
• We were so happy to host the PHP User Group MeetUp in our office for beers, wurst, and some best practice sharing on Front-end & back-end symbiosis.
• For World Bee Day we visited our adopted SiteGround beehive.
• Our SiteGround football team showed some great skills in a tournament organized for the Plovdiv business.
• We visited high schools in Stara Zagora to explain what it is to work in IT and motivate students to pursue degrees and careers in this exciting field.
• Once again we supported women in tech by sponsoring and speaking at Rails Girls Sofia.
• As open-source contributors, we sponsored and attended the PlodivConf.
• We had a big delegation to one of the biggest Linux events KubeCon + CloudNativeCon in Valencia, Spain where they learned great new things and shared them with the team.
• We started our traditional mini-teambuilding events: each team at SiteGround gets a solid budget for bonding and collaboration events.
• We organized forestation in Vitosha mountain and planted 170 saplings.
• We had a new group start in our Customer Care team – it was great to staрt the journey for 14 SiteGround Newbies.
• Our AI team attended the Meeting of the Association of Computational Linguistics in Dublin, Ireland.
• Knowing how important it is to support great local events, we supported Plovdiv Dance Week.

Can’t wait to see what the summer months bring in! In the meantime, if you are interested in joining our team, check out our open positions.

The management team of the leading Bulgarian IT company – Ivo Tzenov and Tenko Nikolov, are establishing a foundation. Its main goal and mission will be the implementation of social projects in health, educational and sports 

The management team of the leading Bulgarian IT company and world leader in web hosting technologies SiteGround – Ivo Tzenov and Tenko Nikolov, are establishing  their own foundation. The main mission of the entity will be to seek and implement social projects in the field of health, education and sports.

For the last two years the leading Bulgarian technology company and its owners have invested millions in hospitals, non-governmental organizations and other institutions of public importance in the country. Thanks to its large-scale commitment and investment, for 2020 and 2021 SiteGround has won over 20 awards as an employer and socially responsible company in Bulgaria.

“SiteGround is a leader in its business field and this makes our public engagement a mission for us. For years we have been investing purposefully in support of projects and causes, in the field of medicine, education and sports, and this investment in society has a great impact on improving the quality of life, thanks to technology and the development of potential through educational innovations. The establishment of the foundation upgrades and brings them to a qualitatively new level, which gives potential to our projects for global response and contribution”, commented Tenko Nikolov, SiteGround CEO.

“Hiring an Executive Director of the Foundation will bring a lot of our ideas to the stage of realization and will help us channel the resources and projects we want to work on. Our main mission is to make human life longer and of better quality. We will rely on innovations and technological solutions that will allow us to realize our ambitious plans in this direction. We have a lot of work to do, but I feel confident in the success, because I know that behind us is the whole SiteGround team, which is involved in all social projects we have so far”, said Ivo Tzenov, co-founder of SiteGround.

The leading Bulgarian IT company gives scholarships to students and mentors from the “Ready for Success” program to enjoy the guest show “This is a dance!”

SiteGround is the official partner of the ONE DANCE WEEK contemporary dance festival. The leading Bulgarian IT company gives an opportunity to mentors and fellows – disadvantaged young people, to enjoy the show “This is a dance!”, which will take place on May 22 and 23 in Plovdiv. The fellows are some of the young people that SiteGround has already supported through the BCause Foundation’s “Ready for Success” program to continue and complete their education.

The show “This is a dance!” is the latest production of the Brazilian company Balé da Cidade de São Paulo and is a lavish demonstration of the infectiously captivating, casual and beautiful nature of Passinho – a dance style born in the explosive favelas of Rio de Janeiro.

“For the team of SiteGround Plovdiv brings special sentiment, because it is the first city outside Sofia, where in 2007 we decided to open our office and we were one of the first IT companies determined to expand the field of technology outside the capital. Later we added Stara Zagora, because we believe that talent in any field can be discovered and developed everywhere – the wider your horizons, the better for the environment as a whole.

Our support for events such as One Dance Week, which traditionally give the general public the opportunity to see some of the most innovative achievements in contemporary dance, expresses precisely our corporate value – to take care of improving the environment as a whole – work, community and cultural”, said Dima Peteva, Brand Marketing Director of SiteGround.

SiteGround is a leading Bulgarian technology company that has been supporting initiatives and projects in various public spheres for over 18 years, having a significant contribution to the development of the technology sector and IT communities in Bulgaria. ONE DANCE WEEK is a partner in the New European Bauhaus initiative, which aims to combine technology, art and culture to create a better living environment through inclusion, sustainability and aesthetics.

There is so much going on at SiteGround, that we decided to make a video diary for the month to give a recap of the great stuff that we organized.

April was a great month:

• We started with April Fool’s when each employee received a “good luck” note with their delicious office coffee.
• We boosted our new employee welcome gift and each new joiner gets now also an awesome water bottle with their onboarding package.
• Caring for the environment, we adopted a beehive and they already started sending us honey (yummy!).
• We sent employees to see a live football match in London.
• With more than $ 6 mln. for the next 5 years, SiteGround became the biggest sponsor of the Institute for Computer Science, Artificial Intelligence and Technology, and our CEO, Tenko Nikolov, was part of the launch event.
• For National Pet Day, our beloved hairy pals received SiteGround customized swag that also supported Ador Barador and Dare2CareAnimals – the foundations that produced them.
• We celebrated Earth Day by taking part in forestations near Sofia, Plovdiv, Stara Zagora and Madrid. Together, we planted more than 1300 trees!
• After a great winter season in Bulgaria, we wrapped our ski/snowboarding activities, with 15 SiteGrounders ski-touring/split-boarding to Cherni Vrah (2300 m) and riding down the fresh powder snow.
• 2022 has been a great year so far for internal career development at SiteGround and we have had in April alone 10 career moves. Their onboarding from our client support teams to Development has also been great fun!
• We received the Forbes Bulgaria Award for 2022 best IT company and our CEOs Tenko Nikolov and Nikolay Todorov made it to Top 100 IT professionals list (again).
• We kicked off our annual GetFit Challenge and the sport motivation is rocking (also the names of 36 teams like “Maradöner Kebab”, “Ketchup if you can”, and “Train with Pain”).
• After Easter, we had an epic egg battle in each office.

Eggcited 🙂 ? Find out more about SiteGround at careers.siteground.com and enjoy May.

Did you know that even your website makes an impact on the environment? To celebrate Earth Day, SiteGround launched an educational campaign that helps website owners calculate their site carbon footprint as well as offer optimization tips and tricks to help reduce CO2 emissions. 

However, our efforts did not stop there. It’s important to remember how all our individual everyday actions add up to a cleaner and healthier Earth. We invited our client, Michelle Li, to share her insights on how we can live a greener life. Hosted on SiteGround, she founded clevercarbon.io with a mission to build a carbon literate society and help people make clever carbon decisions for themselves and our planet.

Learn About Carbon Footprint in a Simple and Hip Way

In her quest to understand and reduce her carbon footprint, Michelle was unpleasantly surprised that most of the websites she visited were full of confusing technical data. How can someone understand their carbon footprint when it appears that the majority of educational websites are overly complicated?

That motivated her to start Clever Carbon, with the mission to educate people about their carbon footprint in a fun, hip, and relatable way. The Clever Carbon team manages to simplify the complexities of carbon footprint data so that everyone can understand the problem and implement solutions. At the heart of their work stands the carbon footprint quiz which helps people understand the things in their daily lives that generate carbon footprint.

3 Tips to Reduce Your Personal Footprint

A person’s highest individual carbon footprint comes from their home energy use, their diet and transportation choices. Together with Michelle, we prepared a few day-to-day actions that you can take to limit your impact on the environment.

First you can start by calculating your carbon footprint here.

Smart energy consumption at home

While electricity generation is shifting toward more renewable sources, home energy consumption still accounts for the majority of our emissions. Some simple actions you can take to reduce the consumption are:

• Unplug your phone charger, monitor or any other electrical device when it isn’t in use.
• Use energy-efficient light bulbs.
• Turn off lights when you’re not using them.
• Choose renewable sources when possible.

Plant-based Diet

Did you know that emissions are directly related to what we eat? When it comes to food, we must examine what happens during manufacturing as well as transportation. Here’s what you can do: 

• Fill your plate with vegetables, fruits, grains and beans. 
• For meat-lovers, swap a few meals per week to vegan or vegetarian. 
• Choose local and seasonal food.

Commuting

Carbon dioxide emissions from transportation are a well-known issue. There’s no need to get rid of your car just yet, but here are several things you can do better:

• Choose public transportation or even biking when possible. 
• Consider switching to an electric vehicle. 
• Carpool to work to split the emissions between the number of people in the car.

3 Tips to Reduce Your Website Footprint

It may surprise you, but on average, a website generates 1.76g of CO2  per visit due to all of the processing power required to load and deliver to users all over the world. Don’t worry, there are several things you can do to create a more sustainable website. The good news is that most of the actions are based on best website practices, so it’s a win-win situation for both the planet and your business.

Choose a Green Web Host

Start by choosing a host committed to minimizing data centers energy consumption and is running on renewable sources. On top of that it offers blazing-fast speed for your website success with top security measures in place, like SiteGround.

Optimize Your Website

From caching to media and front-end optimizations, your website will get lighter and page load faster, saving energy from the processing time. Here are some actions you can take: 

• Enable Full-page Caching: Caching is a sure way to speed up your website. Our powerful full-page (Dynamic) caching solution can make your website 5 times faster with no additional settings required.

• Optimize media and front-end: Your website is the face of your business and you want it to stand out. But media and front-end files can surely slow your website. With our easy SiteGround Optimizer plugin for WordPress, you can enjoy powerful website optimizations with a click.

• Use a CDN: The purpose of a CDN service is to reduce the distances between server and user. With SiteGround’s free CDN, you’ll be able to speed up your website for users who are browsing from all over the world.

Write Clear Web Content

On-point content and user-friendly experience will help your website get easily found. This way, you’ll save users time from surfing the internet all day and lower their energy consumption.

Make Better Decisions for Our Planet

“Starting our carbon literacy journey is an important way for each of us to make small, but better decisions for our planet.” It creates a pattern where each person can make smarter and healthier choices in our daily lives.

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