Meet Ansel…
Posted on January 29, 2009
Our Portfolio Ansel was named in honor of Ansel Adams (Feb. 20 1902 — Apr. 22, 1984).
‘I hope that my work will encourage self expression in others and stimulate the search for beauty and creative excitement in the great world around us’ – Ansel Adams
I was looking for a way to say how beautiful his images are, but was struggling for a way to do it justice. Turns out Ansel had already said it perfectly. His images are what inspired my passion for photography, and we wanted to design a template that could do such works of beauty justice. Ansel Adams always wanted his imagery to be seen by the many, and not hang on the walls of the few. For anyone interested in learning more about Ansel please visit http://www.anseladams.com/content/ansel_info/anseladams_biography2.html . Our Ansel template was created to really showcase images in their raw beauty. We built our Ansel sample using only black and white images in honor of Ansel’s imagery.
CLIENT HIGHLIGHT: PLAYER WEDDING FILMS
This is probably the most creative and impressive way I have ever seen to use one of our portfolios. We were blown away by the creativity displayed by this site. Congrats James on a site well done!!
http://www.south-carolina-wedding-videos.com/player_wedding_videos/index2.php
If you think that was impressive check out their videos on their blog! I wish I knew about them when I got married 
http://www.sc-wedding-videographer-blog.com/
Company News:
- We are still looking for an alternative way to accept payments. Currently only Paypal is accepted, but we will announce as soon as we have a new way available.
SNEAK PEAK!!!!
We have decided to show a sneak peak of our new site early instead of waiting until next week. This new portfolio will launch within 2 weeks and is a LARGE image interface! It also will be our first to support accented characters and that can be viewed in full screen with no browser interface at all! Stay tuned next week for more information and screenshots!
(image by Table 4 Photography)
Have a wonderful weekend everybody!
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Meet Diego…
Posted on January 22, 2009
Our template Diego was named in honor of Diego Rivera who was a muralist painter (December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957). We envisioned the template as being perfect for paintings, using vibrant colors to enhance the beauty of the site’s content. We also envisioned it being built in a way to showcase the artists/photographer’s story through their imagery. This is why Diego was a perfect name. Diego Rivera was an artist who specialized in paintings that told stories. An example can be seen in his mural depicting Mexico’s history at the National Palace in Mexico City.
COMPANY CORNER:
- I can’t express how excited I am about what we have in store for you all… I can’t wait until it’s no longer ‘top secret’ and I can spill the beans!
- Did you know that Tammie is pregnant with a girl? She is expecting in February! We are so excited for her and her husband! 
- Do you know you can make a backup of your site in case of emergency? We do have nightly backups in case of hardware failure but we recommend that you also keep backups to be on the safe side. This is also useful in case you are uploading third party databases or files and accidentally overwrite content from your site. The article can be viewed at:
FAQs
Where is PortfolioSitez located?
A: We are a Colorado based company, but half our team lives in CA and the other half lives in CO.
How long have you been in business?
A: 1 year and 2.5 months… we’re young but are growing faster then we ever imagined!
Do you offer phone support?
A: At this time we do not offer general phone support. A phone number is provided to our customers upon request, however all other support issues should go through our ticketing system. Tickets allow us to save you time. Any computer based issues tend to take time to re-create and figure out. If we were on the phone you would need to be on hold an awful lot so we could figure out the issue and fix it Through the ticketing system you can rest assured we will work on it immediately and respond to you in a timely matter so you do not need to wait for someone to figure it out while you sit on the phone. We also offer a knowledge base that we update regularly to help make the process as smooth as possible.
Why don’t you offer unlimited hosting like some other companies do?
A: We have been asked why we do not offer unlimited hosting like others in our industry or other hosting companies. The answer is simple, we don’t agree with this practice. It’s not that we don’t want to offer you everything we can, it’s just that we do not want to use gimmicks to get you to sign up. You can’t actually have unlimited space and bandwidth because servers have hard drives which have limited space, and companies have bandwidth limits. Companies that do this limit ’server resources’ (if they try to keep their servers running at optimum levels) which causes your site to be suspended temporarily at times for ‘CPU usage exceeded’ or have a lot of downtime due to overloading their servers. We don’t agree with this practice because it gives the illusion that you are getting a better product and more when in reality these servers are more overloaded and oversold then those with limits.
We want you to know that what you get with us is what you have to use or keep open. We do not oversell our servers which is why our servers run at optimum levels all the time. Even though our servers have a lot of extra space since the majority of clients never come close to using their 2Gigs we keep them clear so that clients can feel comfortable knowing that there is a limit on how loaded the server they occupy will be. This help us maintain an excellent uptime and server speed. Our servers are also housed in state of the art data centers with some of the fastest connections in the country.
Will my rates go up if I sign up for a monthly/yearly plan?
A. NO! One thing we are proud of is our company model. When Jamie and I sat down to discuss starting a business we listed what we considered important. What came out of the discussion was the fact that neither of us like where the industry is going and we vowed to start a company that put their customers first. This meant good customer service and a business model that valued our long time customers. In doing so we decided that once you are a customer your prices will not increase, even if ours do, as long as you are a customer. This means that whatever price bracket you signed on with (monthly/yearly) will be what you pay even if our prices go up for new customers to cover costs. You also will always have the option to upgrade/switch templates for $20 even if our upgrade/switch fee increases or the template you are upgrading to has more features.
Do you have any other templates other then the 4?
A. Not at the moment, but that will be changing this year. This year we are concentrating on releasing many new designs for you to choose from!
Do you accept any form of payment other then Paypal?
A. At the moment, no, but we are working on incorporating another payment method soon.
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We’re back!! well…
Posted on January 16, 2009
technically we never left. With the holidays it was hard to maintain the blog and make sure no current or new clients with the holiday rush received sub par service. Now we are settling into the new year and man, are we excited! This new year’s resolution – MORE DESIGNS!! Now that we have the features we want it is time to build out all the design ideas we’ve had since the beginning… have we got some surprises for you!!!
Last bit of holiday fun:
Below is my (Jen’s) picture with Santa – Santa is my husband Russ and of course our son Rusty is the cute lil’ one
Did you know all our templates are named in honor of artists we admire? Over the next couple of weeks we are going to showcase the artists that have inspired the designs.
MEET DOROTHEA:
Our very first template, Dorothea, was named in honor of Dorothea Lange. Dorothea Lange was a famous American Photographer that was known for her portrayal of rural life in the Great Depression, and the plight of individuals during these, and other, hard times. Her images are powerful and emotional. She even sent images she took to newspapers around the country for free so they would be able to show ‘the contemplation of things as they are, without error or confusion’. She was a strong woman, and a strong role model. Being a woman owned company we felt it important to start off our business in honor of a strong woman artist. Her images are very clear and to the point which anyone can appreciate, which is how we envisioned our first template being.
Until next time!
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