I’m done with shared hosting. Buh-bye. Siteshine is now being hosted on a VPS (Virtual Private Server) I’ve set up, and I will be recommending my clients use a VPS rather than a shared hosting account for all but the most basic sites (like a WordPress install).

Too many performance glitches, support problems, and restrictions on what I can do!

I spent some time in the last few weeks researching and trying out various solutions for online invoicing, and I have settled on a popular one that has a fabulous interface. I’m quite pleased. I tried it out with a client after a recent project was finished, and it worked like a champ.

So now when you hire Siteshine for your next Web site project, you’ll be able to pay invoices online via PayPal (and thus via a number of funding sources including credit & debit cards). Just another way we want to make the design process as easy and straightforward as possible. Personally, I HATE checks and would prefer to use a debit card for all my transactions. Maybe you feel the same way!

Hey, this is a really fun milestone for us: we just posted a video interview that was recorded locally on the Windsor Town Green. I’ve been wanting to get video up on Siteshine since before we even launched, but it’s taken a while to get the concept and the time together. The background was a little bright but thankfully we got good quality audio. It’s always nice to be able to hear clearly!

There’s an important announcement about Siteshine in the video at the 2:30 mark and later some details on our goals and strategy, so please visit the Interview page and watch the video (or at least read the summary). Let me know what you think!

When a company blog isn’t updated for a while, it could be because of several different options:

(a) Everyone’s crazy busy around here. No news is good news.
(b) The company is going out of business. Bye-bye.
(c) Nobody has anything interesting to say. We’re boring.

I’m happy to say the second and third options have nothing to do with reality. We’re not boring, and Siteshine isn’t going anywhere. Anywhere but up, that is.

While I’m not proud to choose the first option, we really have been busy. Part of that busyness has been client projects. I’m doing some really interesting work for a book publisher right now which should be seeing the light of day sometime next month. I also recently completed my wife’s site for her massage business Healing Hands Massage which I’ll be posting on our company portfolio shortly.

There’s been more going on as well internally and right now I’m preparing some updates to our site and a video which will shed some light on recent changes and my vision for the future of Siteshine. I know that sounds vague, but all will be revealed later this week.

One of my goals is providing more transparency with how I conduct business and what I do in my capacity as Web Designer, so I will be putting more emphasis on that on our site and this blog as time goes on.

I want you to know I’ve never been more pumped about designing. My passion is to make things that have integrity and intrinsic value, and everything I do at Siteshine is engineered with that goal in mind.

I leave you with this inspiring quote:

“It is only by doing things others have not that one can advance.”
- General George S. Patton, Jr

Yes, it’s true. Our “new new” Web site is now online! We’re very, very happy with the look and the detailed information about our services. But it appears we have some explainin’ to do.

When the first version of Siteshine went live last month, it was the result of a design that has been in the works from before the Siteshine brand was introduced. Though our team has been working together for several years, Siteshine is a new identity for us. We knew after launching the site on short notice that we wanted to take a step back and revisit the style and feeling we wanted to convey from the design of our site based on a better understanding of our mission and core values.

After an invigorating collaborative fast track, the redesign came into focus easily. We really like it and hope you do too. Let us know if you have any questions or ideas. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, this is it. We don’t plan to redesign our site again any time soon. Version 2 will be around a while.

Our team has had a long-standing business relationship with the founder and community manager of The Flute Portal, Geoffrey Ellis, and we’re excited to announce we’ve launched a brand new version of the site. It features a completely redesigned music section featuring an interactive audio player we built, along with new controls for artists to create profiles and upload tracks. The updated navigation is preserved throughout the rest of the Portal sites such as the pre-existing blogs and forums.

Take a look around and let us know what you think. We’ve done a lot of testing up to this point, but if you find any bugs we definitely want to know about them.

I just added a listing over at 37signals’s cool new Web designers directory, Haystack. It’s been illuminating browsing through the other companies featured there, and it sure feels good to add our listing to the mix. We’re the first company to be featured on Haystack from the Sonoma County region. Not a bad feather to stick in one’s cap.

So check it out. I hope you like the ad we put up — had a blast working on it.

We’re very excited that Siteshine’s brand new, never before seen, Web site is now available. It’s well known in the design industry that working on your own branding and portfolio can be the hardest project of all, and so it’s a real treat to see the fruit of our labor go live.

Check it out @ www.siteshine.com and let us know what you think. There are still some surprises in the works, so bear in mind this is our 1.0 effort. But that’s what’s fun about the Web. Everything is always changing. Incremental improvements make for a cleaner, more essential product.