To start things off, heres a video for all you hackers….we hate you so much! Have a nice day.

So, as Rodney already annouced, this is our new blog, titled “Backstage”. Exciting? We’d like to think so.We actually just concieved this whole plot (of creating a blog) yesterday, are we behind on the times or what? Actually, we have been wanting to create a blog for a long time now, but there has just been a hundred million things that need to be done on a day to day basis, and unfortunately, the fun stuff like blog creation tend to drift towards the bottom of that list of things to do. I’m sure we can all relate to that huh?I think my next order of business should be to go buy a little Webster’s handbook from the grocery store so I can impress ALL OF YOU BLOG READERS, and i know you’re out there…with my incorrectly, and over-used used dictionary words. Isn’t this blog just exquisite? Geez, how lame…I haven’t written about anything in almost 10 years, ever since my Mom bought me a journal for christmas one year and I popped it open on Christmas day to write about all the great toys that I got, and then put it down on the shelf, picked up my new Nintendo controller, and haven’t turned back since. Sadly enough, that was the only page I ever blogged before lately. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, I said we were behind the times on the blogging thing, but I was actually way ahead of this “web logging” trend…I was freaking 12 or whatever. Yeah, so pretty much, I’m just pulling an Al Gore attempt here, and a poor one at that by trying to prove that I was the one who invented blogging. Man, I need to freshen up on my persuasive writing, what a load of crap that was.Anyways, enough rambling and use chit chat….onto what I’m sure you’ve all been waiting for…VIP screen shots. As you might have read in Rodney’s last post, we have been slaving away, night and day, morning and afternoon, evening and brunch, in an attempt to1. Conquer the world and everything in between2. Increase sales enough to finally be able to put that go cart track in my backyard (I have to get a backyeard first) that I’ve always dreamed about3. THE REAL REASON APART FROM #2: To make our customer’s experience, well, an actual experience instead of the “thing” they have now.Our customers have been really freaking awesome to us, and they have been so passionate and so PATIENT. We got this business up and running about 2 years ago, and to be honest, we didnt really have a clue where we were going with this thing. We just did it, and we have been working hard ever since. But about 6 months ago, we really stood back from the whole thing, and started questioning what we were doing, and how we could do it better. And then we encountered another momment, where we had to be honest with ourselves…we didn’t know where to go again, and so we decided we should let our customer decide that, not us. So, we thought long and hard about the feedback we have got from our customers and what they expected from their faithful hosting company. One of the biggest requests we got was “DOMAIN MANAGEMENT”. Yes, this is a seemingly simple request, as it should be. But it was a lot harder to just get there with the current software infastructure we had. We were stuck, and the longer we were stuck, the longer we waited and researched other softwares that could accomplish what we needed…so we researched, and waited…and waited….and waited….until finally, one day, it dawned on us, that what we needed was a custom solution. A software so flexible, we could do anything we wanted, and do anything our customers asked for. So, we looked at all the solutions out there, and none was custom enough. How can software be custom if its made for the masses? It cant! If you want something custom, you have to build it!So, at that point, we decided to go down the long and dirty road of actually building software! And last time I checked, neither Rodney nor I went to school for software development. But, low and behold, other people did! And other people wrote about their learnings, and then they decided to sell their learnings in paper back form at Barnes and Noble. So, we began learning, and learning. Insert long slow sequence of images of Travis and Rodney looking very scholarly and reading big books. We learned so much and so fast, that we actually felt like building our own software wasn’t going to be as impossible as it might sound. Thank God for the internet, and the wonderful community of friends and developers that have really supported us in our task to create what we are calling “ACT II”. Its a new day here at eleven2, and this is really our second coming. Our next big attempt at WORLD DOMINATION. Using this terminology and looking back, ACT I (previous life of eleven2) was seemingly all about learning about the business of hosting, and answering questions that we hadn’t thought of yet. What do we do if this happens? How do we prevent this from happening? Etc. There was finances, there was marketing, there was support, there were all these categories of questions, and no answers? Why? Because we were still learning about who we were as a company. There were times when we wanted to quit, there were times where we felt like failures, and all in all, we went through almost every hurdle and emotion possible in the scope of human feelings and problems. So, through this growing process, we have learned alot about our company, our clients, and most importantly, ourselves. Yes, you may be wondering, why is Travis blathering on and on about all this crap? Well, its simple, all of this has gone into what our company is and is becoming. To all you faithful customers, we have heard your crys in the night (literally, on eleven2support at 4 am) and we want you to know that the company you have chose to host your dreams is standing tall, and is answering those crys. (insert really uplifting hopeful movie music) Yes, thats right, we are introducing for the first time ever, a new customer experience.Now, its starting small, and these screenshots will only show you the beginning, the basics, the foundation, of what we are doing and where we are going with this whole thing. We are aiming to redefine the web frontier. We are aiming to provide a product that nobody else can! Seriously! The plans we have are so big and so different, that even showing these screenshots will not in any way, cast the vision of where eleven2 is headed, but nevertheless, we thought it would be neat and cool to just get some “teaser” pictures out there, and to actually show you customers what we have been up to.So, without further ado….the screenshots…Little NOTE: The person listed in the screen shots is a friend of mine that I wanted to give some sort of shout out to…check him out Taylor Game, http://www.taylorgame.com , and to all you haters out there, dont worry we didnt post his personal info, and we would never post anyone’s personal info on the web…unless of course, you guys wanted me to post Rodney’s cell phone number, so you could prank call him. :)Now these screenshots are of the new customer log in area, but take note of it….there are some differences and some areas th
at I want to highlight, first and foremost, YES, YOU CAN REGISTER AND MANAGE YOUR OWN DOMAINS! Hold the applause please…But second, I want to focus on the services tab, notice it doesn’t say, “HOSTING ACCOUNTS”, or “YOUR PACKAGES”…its broader than that! Why? Well, because we think our new lineup of products is much larger than HOSTING persay, we think, what we are about to unleash is more than HOSTING, its more than PACKAGES, its more…now, I haven’t put up the pictures of the SERVICES section because, I want to leave a little to be desired….as we get closer to these “SERVICES” being released, we might begin to talk about them on the blog, so stay tuned.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 29th, 2006 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Design & Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.