The Scenery Has Changed
August 27, 2007 by Kevin Hazard, Web Hosting Evangelist in Evangelist's Corner
Welcome!
If you’re reading this post, you have made it to http://blog.theplanet.com, The Planet’s new blog home! For the past few months, we have been testing the blog waters at a temporary WordPress.com address, but that installation couldn’t provide us the flexibility and expandability that our new home does.
Additionally (and more importantly), we’ve got the blog humming along on one of the 45,000+ servers on our network! If you haven’t taken a second to bookmark this page or add the feed to your RSS reader (http://blog.theplanet.com/feed/), you should do so before starting the next paragraph. Trust me, the guilt will weigh heavy upon your head if you do not bookmark/add before you continue reading.
As you can see, subtlety was never my strong suit.
Now that you’ve updated you bookmark and added us to your RSS feed, I can fill you in on what you can expect to see from our team at this fancy new address. The main cosmetic changes — or what we like to call “bling” — of the new site includes a wider page layout and a brand-spanking-new navigation bar. We’ll continue to update the blog’s presentation with sidebar widgets, new content and new pictures.
On the back-end, we’ve installed a few plug-ins to cache the content and improve functionality.
What does this move mean for you? Well, since you’ve already updated your bookmarks and RSS feeds (or started crying in response to the guilt of not doing so), we just ask you to stay tuned! We’ve got a lot of great ideas coming this direction, and we’re confident that you will love them.
- Kevin
August 27th, 2007 at 8:54 pm
Honestly, I was sort of embarassed that you were on wordpress’ site in the first place with your blog. I mean a company the size of The Planet should surely be able to click a few buttons in Fantastico. What was the reason you chose that path in the first place? (Just curious).
August 27th, 2007 at 9:30 pm
Tony, The wordpress.com installation was the quickest and easiest way to jump into the blogosphere. In retrospect, it probably would have been just as easy to get this installation up and running, but as it turns out, the old installation can just be considered “The Planet Blog: Beta” or “The Planet Blog 1.0.”
August 27th, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Good idea. If you already have the RSS feed subscribed you will need to give it a new name for the time being.
August 28th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Gary, You’re right about the bit of confusion caused by the feed’s title. Hopefully, that slight inconvenience is the only trouble that comes out of the move.
August 28th, 2007 at 9:16 am
I love that feed mega-icon!
August 28th, 2007 at 10:13 am
Thanks Jackson. When I got the image initially, it was 450px X 450px… That would have been a little overkill. I scaled it down, but I added the arrows to make sure that subtlety was still thrown out the window.
August 29th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
I happened upon this blog, because I looked up Memeorandum’s Whois info… Interesting Blog and Company…. just a quickie question… what’s the difference between say you and Bluehost or Imhosted?
Shared Hosting VS ????
Please don’t hate on me too hard for being an idiot.
I did bookmark the site… as I like reading the techy geeky stuff, I don’t understand some of it. But I’m eager to learn…
too bad ya’ll don’t have a Michigan office/Data Center, I’d be showing up saying stuff like…..”Where you want me to work???” 
-CHuck
August 30th, 2007 at 9:27 am
No worries about the quick question, Chuck. We focus on the dedicated server and managed hosting infrastructure rather than the shared hosting environment. We’ve got six data centers (none of which, unfortunately, are in Michigan) housing around 45,000 servers.
We’re in the same market as a shared host, but we look to provide solutions for a different kind of need… We work closely with several shared and reseller hosting companies as their hardware and network provider (since the capital expenditures are so high in building a data center, maintaining hardware, and hiring a support team).
August 30th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Does this mean we may see the subscribe to comments added?
August 30th, 2007 at 1:15 pm
The comment feed is enabled by default: http://blog.theplanet.com/comments/feed/
You can even subscribe to individual categories… I hear this one is especially entertaining.
November 12th, 2007 at 8:24 am
Kevin, let me compliment you on this…… Not only it is eye catching with that large icon, but the language used is also very pursuasive yet friendly. Keep up the good work… Btw, I booked mark this too
December 11th, 2007 at 12:18 pm
Great blog. I’ve come across your site in the past but the blog made me notice it. It’s always a good idea to get personal with your users. It brings a human touch to the business!