Hi, All WHT members:

I'm here to announce the NEW CyrixWeb.net design that my friend at i3Optic.com created for my company. Everybody here loves our new design and we'd like to not only have WHT members view our site but also extend our gratitude and thank you to our designer for making it possible.

"i3Optic really captured the image of what we are all about and converted it to HTML format."

Adam (the creator of our site and i3Optic.com), knew exactly what we wanted with very little description needed. As you can see his designs are well worth the investment!

Needless to say, i3Optic.com is now our leading provider of Web Design Services. CyrixWeb.net highly recommends i3Optic for the best Design Service ever!!

It looks good. But I think that there is a little too many things going on at once that you really don't know where to start. I think that if he makes it a little longer and give things a little more space it will look much better.

I love the design, but I agree it is a bit busy. Especially at the bottom budget packages. Too many squares right there and it gets me confused. Also, no link to the TOS (that I've managed to find at least) on the main page. TOS/AUP link is a must.

Dear One_web and Justin,
Allow me to explain the reasoning behind the actual size of the design. For starters, you visited the website to review it and not really to purchase a hosting plan. Therefore you don't really know what you're looking for, it's more of a general viewing. Cyrixweb's most valuable audience will visit looking for hosting, and will have some kind of idea as to what specifics they want. They can clearly find the necessary links to each plan on the index page.

The actual design is compatible with 800x600 and up, and from a statistics point of view, very few people actually go further down a webpage using a scrollbar. I made the content as managed as possible. If you can see it from a customers point of view instead of your own preferences, which are still valuable to me, of course, hopefully you'll appreciate that a 'busy' design can be just as, if not more, user friendly and rewarding than a spacious one. Also, please remember that I had 9 plans to fit in, and not the more usual 3-4.

Also, Justin(of CyrixWeb), thankyou for your kind words. :)

Regards,
Adam

I still think it's a little crowded even from a customer standpoint, and only having the TOS linked from the order page is annoying for those customers that may need to review it again at a later time. I went a little deeper into the site this time and have one little additional suggestion and that's to organize the FAQ a little better. Just lumping together all the questions can be an eye strein on the person viewing, especially with the text as small as it is.

Originally posted by I3 Optic
Dear One_web and Justin,
Allow me to explain the reasoning behind the actual size of the design. For starters, you visited the website to review it and not really to purchase a hosting plan. Therefore you don't really know what you're looking for . . . . .As I'm not looking for hosting; I suppose I can't offer a review. :rolleyes:
Maybe next time.

Originally posted by SoftWareRevue
As I'm not looking for hosting; I suppose I can't offer a review. :rolleyes:
Maybe next time.

Dear SoftWareRevue,
I didn't intend for that to seem snappy at all, I was just pointing out and explaining one aspect of a person's criticism. If you or anyone considers this to be wrong, then I do apologise. I appreciate everyone's feedback on my work and take it account as one should. Should that really prevent me from doing my best in explaining what I have done and why?

Regards,
Adam

The site is blue so you know it's good.

Originally posted by I3 Optic
I made the content as managed as possible. If you can see it from a customers point of view instead of your own preferences, which are still valuable to me, of course, hopefully you'll appreciate that a 'busy' design can be just as, if not more, user friendly and rewarding than a spacious one. Also, please remember that I had 9 plans to fit in, and not the more usual 3-4.


I got to agree with one_web and JustinK here. The layout is a little busy. Takes no whitespace to new limits. :(

What really gets to my eyes is that there isn't a single eye distractor in the design. Nothing to say, "order me now." The layout and logo are top-notched, it's just one color themes don't grab one's attention. You need to get a customer's attention to keep them at the site long enough to want to buy your service - especially when the guy down the internet highway has a chroma intense site.

Chris

Look Nice! :D

Thanks to all of you for your valuable input :)

Please let it continue...

Many Thanks,
Adam

i can not find anything which says something about what your customers have to say about you. It will be very nice for the visitor to read reviews of what your customers have to say about you guys. i.e. testimonials page.

also, adam, which software you used to design such a very nice and complicated logo. its fantastic. :spiny:

very good design and site layout. :agree:

CyrixWeb.net, the Reviews Forum is not for 'new site announcements' promoting the web designer. It is for members to ask for reviews on their site. Please keep the advertising to the correct forum (thread moved). Thank you.

Looks good but your borders don't line up on the right side of each of the side columns in Netscape. Sorry to be so picky, I just always review sites in both browsers. :)

EDIT:
Only effects the right site in Netscape 6 (not that there are many using it I imagine. Ver. 6 is crap. :) )

I don't like the rollovers on the links, change the colour or something instead.

Everybody who has said it is right, it's a bit busy, you've crammed too much into such a small space. I realize you made it compatible with 800x600, but it can be a fair bit wider for that to happen.


It looks great in general though, I really like the graphic work, but regardless of my perspective (non-customer), as a friendly suggestion, maybe calm the design down a bit (if that makes sense? :) ) or make it a bit wider so it doesn't look quite as crammed.


Otherwise, great work ;)

Thanks for all of the feedback about the new design!

CHICKEN: I'm sorry for posting in the wrong forum. I thought Website Reviews was the right forum for this but apparently it's not. Thanks for moving it to the correct forum!

-----

I will take all of the responses into consideration. We like to have everything matching (as far as colors).

MAHINDER: I like the idea about having Client Testimonials and will look into having that available on our site as soon as possible!

Thanks again everyone for your honest opinions. Your comments will only help making our site better!

You might wanna check this out...

From Sfiles.com datacenter page
http://www.sfiles.com/datacenter.shtml

Your Datacenter page
http://www.cyrixweb.net/datacenter.html

Hi, inogenious:

Yes. They are colocated in the same Data Center. :)

Originally posted by CyrixWeb.net
Yes. They are colocated in the same Data Center. And both, like dozens of companies hosted at Alabanza, lifted that text copy from the Alabanza site.

In fact, that would be the focus of my critique of the site. Too many hosting companies (and those in other businesses, for that matter) pay too little attention to the text content of their sites.

In this case it doesn't even seem to be accurate, since a traceroute resolves to Pegasus' servers at NAC, not Alabanza. Yet the site content states that the data center is in Baltimore. A recent move, maybe? But it's a new site... odd. Customer sites hosted at Alabanza, but the company site's at Pegasus? This should be explained, because investigative customers will be wondering.

Similarly, I'd criticize the too-common hype that borders on deception, like the claim to be "one of the largest and most successful hosting companies in the USA."

I've commented on other sites about the use of building pictures that attempt to give the impression that they are the "headquarters" of the powerful company; and that technique is used here. It's also deceptive, in my opinion, to make statements like "Due to technical difficulties beyond our control, phone support is not available at this time;" which implies what? that there's a phone support staff just sitting there doing nothing because the phones are out of order?

Those support people are, by the way, "award winning Support Personnel." So why not mention what awards they have won?

So yeah, it's a decent-looking site. It's hard to take the company's offerings seriously, though, after reviewing the text content of the site. I'd recommend putting some work into that.

Thanks for your thorough investigation of our new site!

Thanks to you I have found several text errors that will be addressed immediately. To help clear things up, our Data Center isn't located in Baltimore, MD anymore. We did move but it was well before the design of the site took place. The text of our previous sites stayed the same and was not updated for a long time (except for our plans and feature information). However, most of the Alabanza DC stats are very identical to ours (like most facilities).

We do own our own facility now and we are actually located in New Jersey (midsize office building). The trace route has been blocked for security reasons as we strive to remain an isolated facility. We don't offer Colocation at this time either because of that reason. I just did a traceroute myself and saw the same thing, Pegasus. That is definitely part of the blocking feature as we have not done business with them in the past.

Phone Support is unavailable and we do not have a current date on when we will be relaunching it. As all of our clients are aware, we lost our Phone Support on Sept. 11 due to the tragedies. In short, the phone company was unable to issue new phone numbers so we had no choice but to transfer phone reps to E-mail support instead. Although it is possible to get Phone Support once again, we have not yet began to set it back up. Needless to say, our phone support team wasn't located in the same location as our data center.

We will be adding pictures of our awards that we have earned for excellent support when we build our testimonials page.

Finally, our site is meant to look regal and dignified. We do consider CyrixWeb to be a big company simply because we have grown in size and have been in business since early 97.' Although we are far from being huge as far as Microsoft or Verio, we are very happy with the success that we have gained.

We will be updating the text of every page within the next 2 days.

I think that about covers it for the design review of our site. Thanks again to everyone who has posted a reply! I just want to let you know that I will no longer be viewing this thread as I have gathered enough information for changes.

Thanks again JayC for your analysis of the text content of our pages. It is most appreciated.

Originally posted by CyrixWeb.net
We do own our own facility now and we are actually located in New Jersey (midsize office building). The trace route has been blocked for security reasons as we strive to remain an isolated facility. We don't offer Colocation at this time either because of that reason. I just did a traceroute myself and saw the same thing, Pegasus. That is definitely part of the blocking feature
I'm sure that I don't have to point out to anyone reading this how ridiculous that assertion is. A traceroute is what it is... packets travelling in response to a traceroute are not routed differently than, for example, http requests; if requests to see the website are answered by your server so are traceroute requests.
Finally, our site is meant to look regal and dignified. We do consider CyrixWeb to be a big company simply because we have grown in size and have been in business since early 97.' Under what name? Both cyrixweb.com and cyrixweb.net were registered within the past two months.

By the way, use of the federal registration symbol as you do both in your sig and on the site is prohibited in the US unless the mark is actually registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. According to the USPTO neither "cyrixweb" nor any phrase containing that term has been registered.

Dear, JayC:

Our trademark is registered under just "CyrixWeb". Neither extensions are included in the trademark registry name. Just look under "CyrixWeb".

We have been in business since early 97' and have the documents to prove it. We were under a different domain name about a year ago.

Traceroutes can be masked to point to a different DC. We have done it and a lot of other isolated hosts have done it. It is actually becoming quite common. The information packets are sent out from our facility (of course) but traceroutes will point to a different location all together.

I hope that answers everything for you but if you still have more questions, please PM or E-mail me and I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

By the way... We have already updated all of the text on our website. Now all the information is accurate about our servers and facility.

Originally posted by CyrixWeb.net
Traceroutes can be masked to point to a different DC. We have done it and a lot of other isolated hosts have done it. It is actually becoming quite common. The information packets are sent out from our facility (of course) but traceroutes will point to a different location all together.Uh... you do know what a traceroute is, right? Even if your own server could somehow be misidentifying itself, all the servers ahead of it along the route have already responded, giving their identities. The path to your server, before your own server has been queried, leads to NAC.

In any case cyrixweb.net resolves to 64.247.9.62. That is clear and simple. Any doubts, look here: http://64.247.9.62

Presto, cyrixweb.net... interestingly, that IP is where the "masked" traceroute points. Nonetheless, the IP block from 64.247.0.0 through 64.247.31.25 belongs to NAC. NAC provides inverse mapping for your server. Facts are facts: http://samspade.org/t/ipwhois?a=64.247.9.62

That server is at NAC.

Sheesh. This is WebHostingTalk; a place where people understand how things like this work!

Our trademark is registered under just "CyrixWeb". Neither extensions are included in the trademark registry name. Just look under "CyrixWeb".As I said, nothing including the term "cyrixweb" has been either registered or is pending. See for yourself: http://tess.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&p_lang=english&p_d=trmk

WHT longtimers know it's not really like me to get into this kind of thing. But there have to be limits.

Dear, JayC:

Yes, you have the correct IP. Considering that I own a Web Hosting company and often perform server maintenance, I have a pretty good idea of how traceroutes work. The site link you provided does identify Pegasus, obviousely if we mask the traceroute, we also mask the Whois info.

Regarding our Trademark:
I have done a search myself and I'm not getting any results either. We only got our registered trademark a few months ago but it should be shown in the database at least. I personally have no idea why it's not listed, however (by law) I will have to look into this immediately as we are (legally) trademarked.

JayC you are not the only one who has been skeptical of our services. Most Hosting companies are colocated and hardly ever own their own facility. Thus, I would be skeptical myself because CyrixWeb is not world-wide known as other bigger companies are.
Hopefully, (as business increases) maybe we will be more known.

Like I have said, if you have any further questions, please E-mail or PM me.

Originally posted by CyrixWeb.net
Like I have said, if you have any further questions, please E-mail or PM me.

Personally I would much rather have this sort of information public. Jay seems to have poked a few holes in your company, it seems you've gone on the defense and don't want anything else going public.

(If you plan to reply with "It's because I'm not checking this thread anymore" You clearly are, and have been, since you first said that)


-Aron

Hi, Relyc:

I have been replying simply because I do get E-mail notifications when a new post has applied to the thread. I'll probably be turning them off as they do show up quite often. Any decent company would care about their image to the public. However, I don't find this thread to be any threat to us at all. We are (simply put) not a here today gone tomorrow company.

The only "holes" that I saw was the inaccurate text that was on some of our pages and (of course) the Registered Trademark not being viewable. The text has been fully updated and reviewed several times as this is a critical piece of any sites content. And I continue to thank JayC for his findings so we can make further improvements.

As any company would, I was trying to inform JayC on how our company works. I definitely find no reason to have to convince JayC on his beliefs as I'm almost positive he's not looking for hosting. Plus, (in reality) people are going to be believe in what they want to believe anyway. So, why bother?

Most companies (related to hosting or not) have people with both positive and negative inquiries all the time. And I definitely see why some people would be skeptical of any company. I would be the same way in most cases.

Just trying to clear things up.

Justin, I think what the members are trying to say is that NAC is highly regarded around here and would be a *great* selling point, though misinformation would not.

LOL, I've got to agree that the site's 'busy' (sorry if I'm a bit late on saying that). But that site looks nice, the graphics are great. Overall, it's a professional looking site.

In terms of the layout of the text on sub-pages, in the centre column, I think it'll look better if it's spaced out slightly more. For example, on the order form at the bottom is two buttons, if there was a little white gap above and below the buttons it'll make a difference to the appearance. I would certainly make a few changes of my own here and there.

Well done CyrixWeb, and a good job by i3Optic.

Please,

Do yourself a favour and avoid CyrixWeb like the plague - you really do get what you pay for. There are many tempting offers on the net that seem too good for the money, and CyrixWeb is one of them...wall to wall problems. I cursed the day I ever signed up with them - be very, very careful.

With virtual hosting, the team providing your hosting really need to have a good knowledge of the systems they are working with, and offer support to you at the highest level - because, lets face it - if something goes wrong, you can't fix it yourself. CyrixWeb fall short of this by miles. Just my opinion/experience of them obviously - but you have been warned.

They should more money training their staff, and less time fiddling with flashy graphics to try and entice customers.