March 25th, 2008
Slicehost site redesigned
The original Slicehost site was a product of our elite design skills. Has everyone stopped laughing yet? We’re grateful that our customers focused more on the message and less on the look. Alas, it was time to retire the old site and bring in the professionals. Steve Smith of Ordered List, a long time Slicehoster, was up to the task. He created a great new design for the site that stays true to the original and does not look like it was made by a ten year old with a CSS book on christmas morning. Months later that still stings Michael :)
Everything, including old links, should be working. Just in case the blog is now at www.slicehost.com/blog and the feed is here. We hope you like the new style. Please let us know what you think!
March 25th, 2008 at 09:16 PM Jared
I love the new look.
March 25th, 2008 at 09:18 PM EpochWolf
Very spiffy. I love it. :D
March 25th, 2008 at 09:44 PM Bryan
Awesome job Steve. :D It’s super spiffy. SliceManager next please!
March 25th, 2008 at 10:01 PM Robert McGovern
Agreed Steve has done a wonderful job. The new version of the site captures the essence of what I liked about the old Slicehost site and makes it look great.
I love that the colours draw on the blue & green from the logo!
March 25th, 2008 at 10:07 PM Brendan
Looks great!
March 25th, 2008 at 10:30 PM Justin
Yeah looks great! Any chance we will see this kind of visual upgrade in the manage area?! corsses fingers
:D
March 25th, 2008 at 10:42 PM chrisfarms
nice and clean, good work…. don’t worry about prettying up manager…. once we have that API in place we can make our own managers! ;)
one-day….one…day x
March 25th, 2008 at 10:45 PM Steve Smith
Glad you like it guys! This was a really fun project, and I’m really happy with the way it turned out.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:18 PM Jason B
Nice work. Cheers.
March 25th, 2008 at 11:37 PM Hangya
The new design is really nice, but the Helvetica font is very ugly on Linux. Fortunately it can be replaced this way: http://bb.cactii.net/archives/000170.php
March 25th, 2008 at 11:48 PM Dane Carlson
Very nice redesign. I’ve also been meaning to tell you that SliceHost rocks. I, and my readers who don’t have to put up with downtime anymore, appreciate all you’ve done to make your hosting so fabulous.
Thanks!
March 25th, 2008 at 11:48 PM adrinux
Shiny!
Excellent job, really nice clean design. The only problem is the logo image looks a bit shabby now :)
March 26th, 2008 at 12:20 AM ceejayoz
Very nice! Ordered List has long been on my blogroll, and I’m very happy to see my awesome host getting one of his designs.
March 26th, 2008 at 01:25 AM scott
Please don’t “pretty up” the management interface!
I like the new site design, don’t get me wrong. It looks great and I hope it gets Slicehost a lot of new customers. But I love how fast, snappy, and simple the management interface is. It’s the #1 thing that keeps me at Slicehost. If you add a bunch of extra graphics and javascript and gradients and drop shadows to it, please at least provide a feature to turn it all off.
March 26th, 2008 at 01:32 AM zynaps
new site looks great but standard/boring. no true professional (geeks for geeks) feelings :)
March 26th, 2008 at 01:34 AM Ivan Kirigin
Awesome changes for a site that’s already better than the rest.
Excellent service you’re providing guys :)
March 26th, 2008 at 01:49 AM Nathan Youngman
Very web 2.0-esque, nice design. Might want to proof over the content once again. Just minor stuff: - (Our servers) “Our competitors? They have to buy expensive hardware” vs. (Why Slicehost) “the best hardware” do rub against each other when read in succession. - (Why Slicehost) “When you choose Slicehost, your servers become our servers.” I get the good intentions, but I think this particular wording could be misunderstood (e.g. do you own my data?). - :-) looks like you updated the RAID1 reference in the FAQ before I could report it. Keep up the good work guys. Awesome.
March 26th, 2008 at 03:21 AM steven romej
nice work, looks great
March 26th, 2008 at 03:42 AM John
Aww.. Now it looks are corporate…
March 26th, 2008 at 03:45 AM Michael
Steve did a terrific job on the redesign :) I absolutely love it. You guys are gonna stick it to (mt) for sure.
Keep up the awesome service, love it! I’m running 2 slices now!
March 26th, 2008 at 03:53 AM Michael
P.S. I would still love to take on the SliceManager job :) If Steve doesn’t mind!
March 26th, 2008 at 06:05 AM Ben Allen
Oww Purty… Just don’t add any stock photos…
March 26th, 2008 at 06:28 AM stubblechin
Pure hawtness. I love it! Professional, reassuring, beautiful, utilitarian. I was dreading this. Great work, Steve.
March 26th, 2008 at 06:41 AM Jeff
Nice update guys! Really does look loads better. The previous designs logo always looked ‘smudged’ up—I’m glad it got enlarged and smoothed out nicer.
Once piece of criticism though—I think you may have gone a bit overboard on the homepage checkmark spree ;D
March 26th, 2008 at 10:07 AM Brendon
It’s all awesome. Except for the blue stain. You know what I’m talking about. It has to go.
March 26th, 2008 at 10:19 AM João Sena Ribeiro
Nice work… The old design, although nice, was aging quickly.
Best wishes for slicehost…
March 26th, 2008 at 12:22 PM cbmeeks
Nice new layout. I actually liked the old one. But this one is nice too.
I would, however:
1) Remove the blue shadow image behind the logo
2) NEVER NEVER NEVER add stock photos of some moron posing in a data center. Or worse, the “big head” photos of people looking up at you. I hate that garbage. Keep it lean. That is why I am with SliceHost.
cbmeeks
March 26th, 2008 at 01:30 PM dave
I agree with Bendon and cbmeeks. the blue shadow on the logo makes it look dirty, and not as crisp as the rest of the design. Looks subtle on my mac lcds, but on my pc crt it looks pretty dark.
Other than that, looks great!
March 26th, 2008 at 01:33 PM Rodrigo
I was like “Oops, I must have mistyped the address… ahh no! They redesigned, beautiful!” And yes the old site was good, I was able to find the right content, actually content is king in a website, being beautiful is a plus.. and you guys got it now!
Well done!
March 26th, 2008 at 03:27 PM alex
Looks standard. With standard icons. Liked the old non-glossy design better.
March 26th, 2008 at 04:07 PM Eivind
What was wrong with the old one…?
March 26th, 2008 at 05:12 PM Brad
The new look is excellent. Very clean, fluid and friendly.
March 26th, 2008 at 05:12 PM ben
Very nice! :D
March 26th, 2008 at 05:26 PM Garett
The site looks great. I really like over the past two days the new exciting changes… first the 4 GB slices now this… Looks great, small browser thing… windows 2000 with IE 6 the monthly prices are not appearing for me on the front page. However, if I use firefox, the prices are there.
March 26th, 2008 at 06:59 PM Bill
This is not a knock on the new site – it is superior to the vast majority of sites out there – especially web hosting companies.
That said, I have to admit that I like the old look better. The old look seemed be less hype laden on the home page Probably not just the number of check marks on the new page that is the issue, but also the font seems smaller. The old home page seemed to have more text in paragraph format – seemed like more to read, therefore.
Also, I have the same problem as noted above in IE6 (I know…use Firefox—however, where I must spend most of my day I’m stuck with IE6) – no visible prices on the home page.
March 26th, 2008 at 08:19 PM Matthew
Very nice – and all nicely-accessible CSS too. Bravo! :-)
March 27th, 2008 at 02:20 AM Dan
Yaaaa… I’ll have to admit I too really had no issues at all with the old site.
March 27th, 2008 at 05:55 AM Jeff
Oh, wow, didn’t even notice the blue shadow behind the logo
- on my PC LCD’s it doesn’t show up at all! (And I think I like it better without too -cleaner :D)April 2nd, 2008 at 04:56 AM Shawn
I just realized that the new site passes the w3.org validator. I remember checking the old one before and it had loads of errors.
April 3rd, 2008 at 01:16 AM baruch
Yes, definitely like this new look. The design seems cleaner and clearer to me. I like it lean. I like the colors. I like how you spell out the various plans right on the first page, so anyone I send to you can see what you’ve got to offer without another click (so far, no one has been interested, but you never know…). Bravo. Please don’t add any cheesy photos of data centers. Just like your service, keep it lean, clean, and simple.
April 5th, 2008 at 09:22 PM Daniel Patterson
Looks great! As long as no quick setup scripts are released, we should stay safe from the Eternal September effect…
April 6th, 2008 at 06:35 AM Noel Hurtley
Looks and feels excellent. The site really stands out as a clean, concise alternative to the cookie-cutter sites we’re used to seeing in the hosting industry.
Bravo! SliceHost’s services have never looked more appealing.
April 8th, 2008 at 12:44 AM Josh
Slicehost! I loved the old look. I never thought of it as something designed by a 10-year-old with a CSS book, and in fact held it as iconic for a certain aesthetic of minimal, unhyped design.
The site now looks very… standard. The old design was more timeless, I think. This one is very easy to date and in my mind less attractive. I should have kept your old CSS etc, then with a bit of work I could just go my merry way and the site would stay the same for me.
Why don’t you try making more than one style available? (I know, there are plenty of reasons…)
April 9th, 2008 at 08:45 AM Ed Spencer
Awesome, I love seeing the little green tick on the Firefox HTML Validator plugin – I thought I was the only one who cared about such things :)
April 10th, 2008 at 06:26 PM Brian
I like the new look a lot. Great job. It’s very clean and modern.
April 16th, 2008 at 02:45 AM Jordan
I like the new design. I thought the old one was fine, too. (Had to go back to the wayback machine to remind myself what it looked like). If I had to vote, I’d give the new one a slight edge. But thanks for keeping the essence the same – clean, simple, modern. Just like your hosting!