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If you happen to be one of those SiteGround-true fans who have the SiteGround.com as their browser homepage, you can’t have missed it: We’ve had a redesign.

We’ve introduced the new design of SiteGround.com to bring it more in line with the company’s identity today and, generally make it cleaner and easier to get around. We’ve been meaning to do this for a long time now, but finally found the time to do it right.

There are structural as well as aesthetic differences to the website. Structurally, we have tried to make things simpler and clearer, with better labelling and easier navigation. We’ve also added some new sections to the website as well as re-arranged and expanded some of the old ones. Here are some of the major changes in short:

The SiteGround Homepage: So, whereas in the past, you would find general information about our company and services scattered on several different pages all over the website, it now all goes into one place: the slides on our index page. This is an uninterrupted, 5-slide run of the most important things to know about SiteGround web hosting services.

About Us section: We’ve also expanded the About Us section of our website. The idea here is for our pages to reflect the company culture at SiteGround. We are an ever-developing organism. Behind the SiteGround brand stand people with their ideas, knowledge, skills and hopes. What we aim to provide are details of the few that, in our opinion, you will really find interesting. It’s also an attempt to give readers some short, sneak peaks of what’s cooking in the SiteGround kitchen and shed some light on what makes us who we are.

Resources section: We’ve gone out of our way to compile valuable and comprehensive information and make it easily accessible to both our clients and our website visitors. So far we have created and compiled thousands of free website templates to download, hundreds of tutorials to read, videos to watch, Knowledge Base questions to look up. The idea of our new Resources section is to act as a portal. It’s an attempt to give readers some short, easily-digestible snacks of information of where to find what.

The new Siteground.com is already live. And we’d love to hear what you think about it! That is why we decided to ask you to vote on how you like the new website design. To show your support or simply to congratulate us on our new look, please vote in the voting poll below. All other comments are welcome as well, so do drop us a line in the comments section.

By SiteGround Web
Hosting

I guess that most of you probably already use, have tried or at least have heard of Google Apps. Yes, Google’s online office suite – a set of web applications through which you can organize your emails, documents, presentations, calendar events, etc.

The main advantage of Google Apps is obvious – your documents are always available online. Thus you don’t need to install any additional software on your computer- all you need is an Internet connection and a standard web browser.

We know that many people would love to use Google Apps, but they find it difficult to configure their own domains for services such as Google Docs for example. After all, some users do not understand how DNS works, what CNAME and MX records are and how to create and manage them.

And in fact, it is not necessary to know much about DNS, CNAME and MX records – we decided to save you the hassle and make the process easy and straightforward with the new tool we created – Google Apps Manager. It is free and as the name suggests, it will give you the opportunity to quickly and easily set up your own domain hosted with us for Google Apps.

To say that using our Google Apps Manager is easy would be an understatement. All you have to do to set up your domain(s) is to choose the domain and the Google Apps service you want to use with it, and then click Continue. You don’t want to use a certain Google Apps service anymore? Just delete it from the Google Apps Manager. The tool is available for all shared hosting accounts (will be included for resellers soon as well ) in the SiteGround Customer Area > My Account > Manage > Manage Google Apps. It is also linked in the Get Support Section. Check this tutorial for Google Apps detailed guidelines and how-tos.

If you have any recommendations and feedback, we’ll be glad to hear it! Enjoy!

Tina

Special thanks to Flickr user Mtyndall for making his image available under a Creative Commons license.

By SiteGround Web
Hosting

In a hurry? Read the short story then: I am happy to share that .TEL, .me, .mobi are the three new domain extensions we are offering to all of you as of today. I know that the fact about the 20% discount on the new domain registrations will make the news even more attractive. So, enjoy 20% discount on .TEL, .me, and .mobi domain registrations.

Got more than a minute? Then read the long story: The first quarter of 2009 showed nearly 183 million registered domain names across all of the top level domain names, which shows a three percent increase over the fourth quarter of 2008 and a 12 percent increase over the same quarter from last year. (VeriSign report). This served to alarm us that domain registration is attractive to a growing number of people and we had nothing else to do but respond to this demand. Yet, we wanted to offer new extensions that are not only attractive but also opening new online business opportunities for our customers. So, we have chosen .TEL, .me, and .mobi.

Why .TEL?

Two simple reasons: 1. .TEL domains provide a great opportunity to publish all your contact information online and thus get found within just a couple of clicks. 2. .TEL domains do not require hosting; your contact information is stored directly in the DNS and is universally accessible.  Thus you get a website for just the cost of registering the domain. See how it looks like. Oh, and by the way, you should check the promo video of .TEL domains.

Why .mobi?

One reason is enough:  with a .mobi domain name you can optimize your main website for mobile browsing. This will help you enlarge your target customers’ base by reaching millions of people browsing via their mobile phones. Needless to say that the trend is towards increased mobile browsing. Last but not least – an optimized for mobile browsing website will add value for your existing customers so you will be one step ahead of your competitors. Plenty of free resources about optimizing your website for mobile browsing here.

Why .me?

Straightforward:  .me is great for promoting both your personal and business online presence. You can use .me for your personal blogs, portfolio, online resume, or personal pages (yourname.me). .Me domains can also help as a catchy business marketing tools. For example, with a .me domain name you can target the younger visitors of your website by launching a .ME web site with your product name in it or for call to action programs. (votefor.me)

If you do not have any other reason to register a preferred .tel, .me, or .mobi domain name, then you can do it simply to protect your brand from competitors who might wish to take advantage of the brand awareness created by your .com/net/info website. Should I mention that for established brand names this is a requirement rather than a necessity?

Finally, let me mention that .TEL, .me, and .mobi will not be the only new domain extensions we will add to our domain portfolio. We plan to offer some new additions, but we will need your help with picking up the winners – so what are the domain extensions you would like to see available at SiteGround? Feel free to post your comments below.

Cheers!

Tina

By SiteGround Web
Hosting