Meet the Bloggers . . . What we do with your comments
I’m really pleased with the response to our product blog! You’re keeping our blog group busy, which is great. Just thought you’d like to know that yes, we DO read every comment to the blog; here’s what we do with them!
First, here’s who reads them. Homestead’s product bloggers are a group of people from practically every department in the company, including managers and directors from technology, product development, creative services, customer service and marketing.
We all review each comment before it gets posted to the blog, mainly to check all the links provided to make sure they’re accurate and appropriate, and then we meet to discuss trends and the priority of new development. Thanks to your comments we’ve already moved some new product features to a higher priority! We’ll post information on what those are here shortly. But here’s a hint: do php support, enhanced help center support and new elements ring a bell?
That’s why your comments are so important: they really do influence how we prioritize new product development. We made the decision to make this a blog about the products and not a forum, so you won’t be seeing replies to individual comments, but believe me, we read them all and they all make a difference. So thanks for writing in! Stay tuned this week for a post from Jon about our enhanced help center.
July 15, 2007 at 6:13 am
Good Morning,
I am wondering if you could not make available the possibility to have a slide show as shown on the link below:
http://www.myartspace.com/viewer/gallery/?subscriberid=dvbxdlplp9rhxb01&gallery_id=14riw2st29ryaet7
My Art Space is a free website and I think that this method of showing artwork, photos, crafts etc is a perfect way to really show the work. I believe that this would be a good addition to your website. I have been a member for many years now.
Thank you for your attention.
Sonia
July 21, 2007 at 7:15 am
Hello
I’ve been with Homestead for years and like the convenience and speed of the web editor and being able to build several web sites with ease.
However, I am really annoyed at the slow pace of change to the tools available for web publishers. The internet is a fast-paced environment and simple things like templates and fonts should keep up with the times. I personally have never used Homestead templates because I thought/think they are cheesy and/or unprofessional. Last I checked (last year?) you guys still had the same templates from many years ago - very late 90s stuff.
Most people building websites these days are not building personal sites. We are promoting useful information, products and services. We want our sites to keep up with the times and look sharp. Remember, we are competing with millions of other sites for visitors. We need all the advantages we can get!
I’m highly annoyed that the site builder doesn’t have some kind of automatic adjustment to make our sites actually fill the whole screen on larger computer monitors. Yeah, when most monitors were small our sites looked fine. Now, with larger screens, all my sites have a large white space on the right hand side. I have a larger monitor and it’s embarrasing that my sites have this space, which I can’t get rid of. The editor should be adjusted to fix this immediately.
A few years ago, I was looking to create a website that would also have password protected membership abilities. I was told by your customer service that you do not have this function - end of story. So, I went somewhere else and gave them my money so I could have this one feature.
PLEASE create some NEW and ATTRACTIVE Add to Favorites/Tell a Friend buttons. The lack of colors and style selections are atrocious. These have never been updated and don’t fit with many site designs - making them almost useless. I’m using them, but not happy with the old-fashioned cheesy look of these at all. Yet, it’s good that you have them because they encourage people to come back or tell a friend.
Finally, my most recent annoyance is with the inability to post videos from sites like Youtube, etc. directly onto my sites. I know we have the ability to post a video file from our computers, however, that’s only good if you create the video yourself.
Most other web hosts are allowing customers to easily upload videos from other web sites that host videos to share. Right now all I can do is link to videos - what a shame. Videos are hot and becoming hotter and soon Homestead customers will be clamoring to post these types of videos on their site - makes sites sticky. Please consider adding this capability soon.
I would like to be able to refer people interested in creating a website to Homestead, but until you guys do some more modernizing, I’m just not comfortable spreading the word - even though I still enjoy your service overall.
Thanks for listening.
Donna
July 25, 2007 at 10:37 am
The new features are great, for the people who wanted those features. I personally don’t even know what PHP is or what I’d do with it.. But for the people who requested it, it’s wonderful that Homestead listened!!
BUT, just as many people, including myself, have requested MORE DISK SPACE!! Homestead, come on!! Your charging us more per month than most website hosting company’s and you allow us A LOT less space… The average website company now offers 300GB per site.. You give us only 100MB for the gold package, and as I understand it, there is appx 1000 MB in every GB, which means you are giving us such a tiny little slice of the web it’s not funny.. PLEASE, update the disk space you allow us.
Homestead is a great tool to make a website your own, but we need more space… And again, we’re already paying more for our sites than many other company’s are charging.. Please provide us with more space at NO EXTRA COST…. I, for one, would be so happy with your company if you would just be more competitive with other company’s as far as space, cost of domains, etc goes…
I’d like to comment on Donna’s blog above (July 21)… I agree that homesteads templates, fonts, etc are really out of date.. I don’t use your templates, your paypal buttons, guestbook, add to favorite’s, any of the buttons, etc. because they all look very generic and as Donna said, cheesy!! I recently went through the templates to see if there was something I could use for some new pages I’m working on.. I was shocked to find the same templates you provided over 4 years ago!! I’m at a loss as to why you took time to update the look of the Homestead website but haven’t updated the templates, fonts, buttons, accessories available for your customers?? Maybe you don’t realize how outdated they are? Might want to think about updating a bit, right after you give us all more space :o)
July 26, 2007 at 11:11 am
I totally agree with Donna’s comments:
“I’m highly annoyed that the site builder doesn’t have some kind of automatic adjustment to make our sites actually fill the whole screen on larger computer monitors…. (A)ll my sites have a large white space on the right hand side. I have a larger monitor and it’s embarrasing that my sites have this space, which I can’t get rid of. The editor should be adjusted to fix this immediately.”
One solution would be to manually resize the background image to fill a larger screen, but this is tedious and you’d have extra space off the side of the screen when viewing it on a smaller monitor. I agree that Homestead should have an option to automatically fit background images to fit whatever size monitor is viewing the site to avoid this aesthetic eyesore.
I also think that “password protected membership abilities” should be a regular feature with Homestead sites. For example, visitors to our specific Homestead sites may login and view pages under a particular folder reserved for specified visitors.
July 27, 2007 at 10:14 pm
I also, felt embarrased yesterday when I saw my site on my new widescreen monitor. A lot of blank espace on the right..
Hope you can find a technical solution for this.
Thanks and have a nice evening everyone.
July 30, 2007 at 2:22 pm
Donna, you can add YouTube videos on your site. You have to get the code from your YouTube account and paste it into your html tool. I got around the cheesy stuff buy creating items in Word. I then view it in a web browser right click, view source and the copy and paste.
August 2, 2007 at 10:08 pm
Hi Donna,
I wanted to thank you for being a long-time Homestead customer AND also for your thoughtful, honest and helpful feedback. I’m happy to report that almost everything you’ve mentioned is already being worked on.
The one thing that I wanted to specifically comment on is “automatic adjustment to make [your] websites fill the whole screen on larger computer monitors.” That was an excellent observation, and it prompted me to write our latest post “Keeping Your Customer’s Monitor in Mind.” Please check it out and feel free to comment if you have any more questions.
Thanks again for the feedback - customers like you help make sure we keep improving!
Sincerely,
Rochelle
August 25, 2007 at 7:38 am
I agree with Donna S. who says, “A few years ago, I was looking to create a website that would also have password protected membership abilities. I was told by your customer service that you do not have this function - end of story. So, I went somewhere else and gave them my money so I could have this one feature.”
This is a feature that I also requested at least a couple of years ago–and it seems that when so many other web hosting companies offer this, that it should be a relatively simple thing for all your technical people to add this feature as well. NOT just a password protected page–the code for that is easy to find all over the Internet. I’m talking about having membership passwords, where each member/visitor to my site would have their own unique password. This is a feature that I really need, and may have to look elsewhere to find it–especially in light of the HUGE disappointment Hmail is–I’ve had another window open for 35 minutes now, with the message “waiting for….” at the bottom of the screen. But wait! I cannot even access my own email (three days now), so why should I think a membership password feature would be forthcoming?
September 10, 2007 at 8:24 am
I still think an essential tool for SiteBuilder would be a visitor login feature where our sites’ visitors could key in a unique username and password to gain access to a specific folder in the site. For example, if they were to login to their account at http://www.myhomesteadsite.com, I could customize it so they could access all pages and subfolders in the folder http://www.myhomesteadsite.com/restrictedfolder1/ but not http://www.myhomesteadsite.com/restrictedfolder2/
Homestead already has a feature that allows me to password-protect individual pages, but nobody wants to have to key in their password every time they go to another password-protected page.
What are the chances of something like this being in the works soon for a Homestead upgrade?
September 14, 2007 at 9:26 am
Hi,
I am a long-term Homestead user and very happy with your service and prompt replies when i need some assistance from you. Thank You!!!
Your feature in sitebuilder the “Image Scroller Element” only allows for 16 images to be placed in it, i was wondering if Homestead may increase the the image load to say 25 at any near time in the future at all?
Sincerely,
Parys
September 27, 2007 at 5:02 pm
I agree with Karen, while I started w/ homestead back in 2000 I have since grown with the times and require more for my money. The space issue is probably the BIGGEST one I have. I have had to buy space on another server for only a fraction of the cost of homestead and for the whole year! I have slowly been migrating some sites over as my space limit with homestead reaches maximum capacity and im finding the space issue a real concern for me as each day passes i only need more and more. If homestead could fix this very easy to resolve issue and not be so tight and greedy with this feature [especially for loyal clients] i think you would have a log more happy clients on your hands. I for one can vow to remain a customer of homestead for many more years to come if ONLY this space issue could be resolved and for no additional fees.
December 5, 2007 at 5:03 pm
Great!
Regards,
CMS,
Sergio’s World Beers
Email : generalmailbox@sergiosworldbeers.com
http://sergiosworldbeers.com
December 17, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Is it possible to create a blog on one of the pages of a Homestead Site Builder designed site?