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Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
16:20
Man @StefanoPalazzo trying to find a site design that I like for Ondina Hosting is hard.
I thought I liked that one I showed you a while back blog.ondina.co but now I'm just not sure.
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
I've got to take a look at the competition
most of them don't have this CMS look to them
interestingly, some of the big ones, like hosteurope.de don't look all that appealing
I'll be back in 20 minutes
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
16:38
k
If you're looking for "high up there webhosts" you've got hostgator.com inmotionhosting.com rackspace.com mediatemple.net site5.com
I'm not really a fan of any of these though
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
17:10
I like rackspace's page, really nice
okay, apart from the fixed header and the fly-in chat box. that's just silly :)
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
17:21
I think the difficult part is to make it look serious while preserving the simplicity. most serious hosting providers just cram their pages full of stuff
most of that stuff is meaningless to most of the visitors, so they just put everything on one page, in the hopes that a customer will spot the relevant bit. the way to solve this is to know your audiences and make big obvious buttons for each of them.
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
That gives me an idea for a site layout
I'll try to draw it on paper
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
great
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
17:38
Instead of focusing on what package we have, hone in on the audience instead.
I don't have a scanner here, so you'll have to bear with crappy ink drawing via phone
"Web Hosting for the modern human" or something stupid like that
user image
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
this is awesome
you seem to have these audiences down pretty well
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
there's a button on each image
which goes to a "learn more"
I imageing that page would be a simplistic FEATURES YOU WOULD PROBABLY LIKE
in an easy to digest form (anything but a table)
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
I worked out some "corporate colours". by coincidence also 5 of them
user image
I know you're not a big fan of the red. neither am I, it's difficult to work with
they could give each of the sections a different "feel"
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
sweet
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
user image
I don't know what this image means, but here it is anyway (:
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
17:59
haha
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
are you think of these boxes as photos or drawings?
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
Probably photos?
Though if drawn properly could be cool
Not sure how they would be stylized
I dislike the service, but kind of like the characters from spotify.com/us
I really liked their call to action video
►
Though it really doesn't talk about what spotify is too much
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
that's nice. though I often think that these videos tell you to little about what the company actually does. Let me find a really bad example
ah, there it is: cloudflare.com
the title promises so much, the video doesn't deliver any of it
the, if you scroll down, there are five boxes. that's what I actually wanted to know
so you've got to be careful not to waste any time. you only have up to five seconds to explain why the user should stay on the site
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
right
I don't think a video will be needed at all for PPR
I do want to make a video for webhostingintervention.com
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
that's genius by the way
not just the domain, but the marketing strategy
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
18:09
well, I may or may not have borrowed the idea from Google
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
doesn't matter :) Ideas are cheap, execution counts
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
Though it'll be less of "SPAM YOUR FRIENDS" and more of "this is why you need to switch"
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
the thing about the spotify page is,
this tune stays with you all day, and the green background
stock photography doesn't
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
yeah
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
did I ever show you this? lingscars.com
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
18:19
MY EYES
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
18:37
@StefanoPalazzo in python how would you execute, say "/etc/init.d/bind9 reload" and capture the return status?
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
in python2, you can do this:
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
What's the API written in? heh
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo 
import commands
status, output = commands.getstatusoutput("/etc/init.d/bind9 reload")
in python3, replace commands with "subprocess"
the api is python3 I'm pretty sure :)
oh, I completely forgot to mention this:
when you hack on the API, be sure to remove all "print" calls before you put it into production. If you leave them in, then disown the server and kill the associated terminal, it'll give you I/O errors
use cherrypy.log("hello") instead
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
18:53
sweet
Where does the log go to?
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
you can define that in your configuration. by default, it goes to the terminal if there is one
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
ah, cool
yes, logging the API and making it verbose it a GOOD idea :)
Stefano Palazzo
Stefano Palazzo
in the 'global' section of the config, you can add these two keys: 
'log.access_file': '/home/stefano/web.access.log',
'log.error_file': '/home/stefano/web.error.log',
the files will look almost exactly like apache logs, except they're missing the UTC offset
Marco Ceppi
Marco Ceppi
That's fine

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