After listening to all of the user feedback we have collected in the past few months since launching our electronic payment system, we have finally put it all into action. The largest complaint was the complexity and inconsistency of signing up for an account. Well, now if you visit our Services or Ordering pages, you will notice some shiny, new buttons prompting you to sign up. Clicking any of these buttons will lead you to our new 2-step sign up process. This 2-step process allows you to select your domain name, which it will verify as valid and available, providing a chance to confirm that the entered domain name is in fact the one you desire. Once you confirm the domain name, you will be shown our much more concise payment information form. After submitting this form, a confirmation screen will come up providing instructions on how to access your account manager and informing you that you’re domain and hosting account will be set up within the next 24 hours. Once it is ready, your control panel or dedicated server access information will be emailed to you.

PLEASE NOTE: At the moment, only one hosting package per email address is allowed. We plan to tackle this and integrate the ability to have multiple features within a single account within the next month. This means that if you were to register a dedicated server package with yourname@domain.com, you would not be able to register a shared hosting package or another dedicated hosting package with the same email address. Instead you would have to create a 2nd email address (which you could have forwarded to your actual email address), such as yourname_2@domain.com.

At the moment, the cheapest shared hosting plans (Essentials and Tinkering) have not been fully integrated with the new system, as they are based on subdomains, instead of standard domains. We plan to complete their integration and make them fully available again by Sunday, August 1st, 2010.

Screenshots of the new sign-up process:

Here is a small taste of our other planned features as development continues:

• A single central account log in, under which you can subscribe to multiple hosting packages at once.
• Integration with our new web site design which will be launching late this fall.
• Account management via mobile app (iPhone and Android).
• Support and discussion forums for customers.
• A fully revamped FAQ’s section in order to allow us to completely phase out the old backend system.

I know we have been a bit on the quiet side for the past few months. Our apologies, as we have been transitioning some of our architecture and internal applications to leverage the cloud, while working on our soon-to-be released File Hosting plans. We’re aiming for June 30th for our new File Hosting plans to be released and made open to the public. The initial version will be pretty barebones for now, providing basic FTP and web-based file access, as we work on providing additional functionality. The best part of it all? Going forward, ALL File Hosting plans will all be Cloud-based! Obviously, you may choose to opt out if you have your doubts about cloud-based technologies, but we encourage you to give it a shot and see how well it serves you, especially with the flexible pricing plans we’ll be unveiling.

Enough of that for now though; we can’t throw all of our cards on the table at once now, can we? Keep your eyes open for our plans as they roll out in the coming months, and get ready to take advantage of them!