Whitepaper: HP StorageWorks 3 Data Center Replication. The HP 3DC architecture provides data currency & consistency by protecting against both local & wide-area disasters by simultaneously supporting synchronous replication.
 Internet.com ISP-Planet
Search ISP-Planet


Search internet.com
internet.com

IT
Developer
Internet News
Small Business
Personal Technology
International

Search internet.com
Advertise
Corporate Info
Newsletters
Tech Jobs
E-mail Offers

internet.commerce
Partner With Us
Free eCommerce Demo
Find Project Software
Calling Cards
Car Donations
Online Education
GPS
Promote Your Website
PDA Phones & Cases
Memory
Get Business Software
Logo Design
Online Shopping
Logo Design
Promotional Golf

ISP Equipment

Miscellaneous

Disintermediating the Web Design Firm

When web design is integrated into software that is delivered as a service, no tech knowledge is needed (but design talent is not supplied).

by Alex Goldman
ISP-Planet Managing Editor
[January 11, 2007]
Email a colleague

Immigration to the U.S. is a hot topic again, and the debate is framed by a vision of agricultural workers streaming into the country. But in tech, many important businesses were founded in the U.S. by people who came here from India or Eastern Europe. One such person is Ivalyo Lenkov, who founded his company in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1991 but now runs it from Santa Clara, California.

Like many internet companies, his enterprise has changed its core business several times over the years. Founded as NetClime, the company released the RoNet Network Operating System. In 2001, the company moved to Los Angeles to build content management systems for movie studios, Lenkov says. Now the company's big product is SiteKreator, a website building system that provides more features than the competition because it is a stripped-down, streamlined version of the content management system.

"Our goal was to try to fill the gap between the normal site builders currently available (almost every ISP has one) and the professional services provided by design studios," Lenkov says. Thus the goal was a product with more features than usual but priced about the same as, say, DotNetNuke or CM4All's offering, familiar to customers and resellers of 1&1 (see the ISP-Planet article: Handling the Thermodynamics of Webhosting).

Features, features, features
The feature list for the Business Edition is impressive (the Personal Edition is free for any website of 10 MB or less). It includes a broken link prevention mechanism, photo galleries, space for downloadable files, a blog, web forms, and mailing lists.

Lenkov says that the forms and lists allow store owners to build communities around specific products. "Every website has to be interactive to be competitive in the Web 2.0 world," he says. "Our tools are integrated so people without tech skills can add a form or send a newsletter to a group or give access to a part of the site to a community."

Lenkov is a hands-on CEO, running a small company, and was doing QA on the software the night before we spoke. He's as proud of what users don't see as he is of the features they use every day. SiteKreator, he says, is very efficient, using caching to reduce the load of a website.

"An ISP is able to put between 20,000 and 30,000 websites on a two-CPU box, depending on the size of the hard drive."

The software caches frequently loaded elements of a site, such as headers and navigation bars, separately from the content. "Let's say a website is 100 MB. When we divide the frame content from the page content, we are able to hold it in 50 MB of memory because the parts that appear on every page are only stored once. Of course, this is just one of many techniques we use to reduce overhead."

He was not eager to describe other techniques—every business needs its secrets.

Pricing and availability
SiteKreator is available now. The Business Edition retails for $15 per month (that's $180 per year). ISPs can pay an unpublished monthly per-user fee. Larger ISPs will pay an unpublished license fee plus an annual support fee.

—End

Related articles:
  [Nov. 7, 2005] Is This Blogging God Right For You?
  [May 19, 2005] Website Builder for Any ISP
  [July 6, 2001] Building Web Communities

 

 

ISP News
IDC: Microsoft's Yahoo Deal Could be a Big Hit
Ballmer Fills in 'Software-Plus-Services' Plan
Report: Enterprise Search Will Top $1 Billion by 2010

More >


ISP Glossary
Find an ISP Term

Newsletters!
ISP-Planet Weekly


Best of ISP-Planet

 

Feedback


Advertising inquiry? Click here!

ISP-Planet's RSS feed



JupiterOnlineMedia

internet.comearthweb.comDevx.commediabistro.comGraphics.com

Search:

Jupitermedia Corporation has two divisions: Jupiterimages and JupiterOnlineMedia

Jupitermedia Corporate Info


Legal Notices, Licensing, Reprints, & Permissions, Privacy Policy.

Advertise | Newsletters | Tech Jobs | Shopping | E-mail Offers