Company

The company is a rapidly growing web hosting company based in central Manchester. Founded in 2000, the company now employs fourteen staff and is a Limited, VAT registered company.

Position

The successful applicant’s role will be within our systems team.  The 34SP.com systems team oversees the smooth operation of all the technical systems underpinning 34SP.com, from the main website to products and services.

The successful candidate will work as a systems administrator.   This involves  the oversight and maintenance of 34SP.com servers, equipment and other infrastructure to ensure both their stable operation and security.

Availability out of hours is required of staff working in the systems team to attend to emergency/critical issues should they arise.  The systems team is also responsible for the internal messaging of any fault or customer impacting issue to the support team.

Salary

£18,000 -> £26,000

Salary reviews are conducted every 12 months.

Hours

8.30am to 5.30pm weekdays.

Required Skills and Experience

Excellent technical skills a must, specifically in hosting related areas e.g. DNS, PHP, MySQL, Perl, FTP, POP3/IMAP, SMTP etc.
A thorough working knowledge of the *nix environment
Good communication and interpersonal skills
Experience with the Plesk control panel a definite advantage

Interviews will begin the week starting November 14th. Please submit your application and CV to stu@34sp.com with subject ‘Systems admin position’.

After many months of design and development work, the new 34SP.com website is ready to launch. You can see the entire new site debut on Monday, October 3, 2011. When the new site is launched, both existing customers and new visitors alike will benefit from a number of innovations and added content sections. Here is just a short list of what you can expect to see when viewing the new website.

Revamped Design – Our talented design team has created a truly eye-catching and easy to understand ”look and feel” to the new website. It is thoroughly modern, while retaining the brand sensibility that lets you know you are interacting with the trusted brand of 34SP.com.

Faster Page Load Times – Each and every page of the new website will have a note in the bottom left corner which will indicate how quickly the page loads. The specific language is: ”Page Generated in 0.573656 seconds”. That way visitors to the site (and also our hugely capable development team) can see a quantifiable and clearly definable metric to determine page load speeds. Of course the goal is to reduce page load times to be a fast as possible – which will be a new project once the website goes live.

Deeper Product Detail – Although none of our current products are changing at this time, the descriptions and detail provided for products will be even clearer. The model for the product pages was recently rolled out on the current 34SP.com website for the new Business Hosting product. Using a tabbed architecture means that much more product detail can be added in the same space. By tabbing around the product one can see the general product information, detailed specifications, and even information on PCI compliance and testimonials from current 34SP.com clients.

Improved Integration – Customers are constantly shifting between the 34SP.com website, the hosting control panel, and the support section of the website. The new design takes advantage of this interaction by much more smoothly integrating each of the separate sections and making navigating between them effortless.

Improved Ordering – For those who are frequently using the 34SP.com order form, you’ll be happy to know that we have significantly reduced the number of steps required to sign up for new products and services. That means you can order your products quickly and get on with the business at hand.

Reorganized Site Navigation – The heart of getting around on any website is the site navigation and the new 34SP.com website navigation has been both streamlined and logically laid out. The various website sections are now even easier to access via the site navigation. Additionally, our design and development teams have created a handy footer to the website with links to all the main website sections which can be referred to as well.

Lead designer on the project, Mr. Simon Foster had this to add, ”As with any new design, we had to make sure we weren’t redesigning the website for the sake of it. We looked at the strengths and weaknesses of our old site and I think we have made significant improvements, that create a far more coherent and integrated user experience for our customers. As the front end designer working on this project, that was my primary concern. I felt that we could be make improvements in order to make our customers lives easier. We’ve done this by increasing the integration between the main site, the ‘Control Panel’ and the ‘Support’ section. I felt that on our old site, users could get lost quite easily using these sections. We’ve addressed that issue and I’m delighted with the outcome. We’ve also made it much easier to purchase hosting, domains or any of our other products. Navigating around the site is now much easier now too, thanks to a more structured site layout.”

These are just a small sampling of the many improvements that have been made to the 34SP.com website in preparation for our relaunch on October 3, 2011. It’s easy to get to the new site – it will remain at: http://www.34sp.com.

Hello, I’m Joe, I work in the support team at 34SP.com. I have recently started to ride my bicycle to work each day, as part of the Government’s ”Ride to Work” Scheme (the official links are http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk and the one I’ve used was http://www.bike2workscheme.co.uk).

I’ve done this as a way of getting some exercise into my daily routine, to aid losing some weight that’s been creeping up over the years, and to enjoy the nice weather we get in Manchester (when it’s not raining).

The scheme itself is great. You sign your company up to it, go to the bike shop, pick out your bike and accessories, and then your quote is then paid off via your wages over a set amount of time. This is very handy if you don’t have 500 pounds to spend on a new bike and helmet.

I ride my bike morning and afternoon, 7 miles each way, here’s what I look out for when I’m preparing to ride.

Visibility
I need to make sure that I am visible to other road users and pedestrians. This means that I wear my hi-vis jacket with reflective panels on it. I also have some front and rear lights for the darker days, thankfully I’ve not had to use them yet. This will ensure that I am seen. For a website, being visible is crucial in order for it to survive or to gain hits. Keeping your site up to date regularly with new posts, information that will ensure that your site is viewed favourably by search engines.

Safety
Being safe is one of the most important parts of riding a bike. The one aspect of town-riding is that not enough bike-riders do not wear a safety helmet. Should the worst happen and that a car does not see you, keeping your head in one piece is very important. Keeping your site safe is one aspect that has been overlooked by web users in the past. We have rolled out our FTP Security Lock especially for this, you can read more on this link: http://www.34sp.com/ftp-security-measures.

Awareness
After taking all the precautions you can make, you still have to be aware that sometimes there are careless or impatient road users that lurk on the mean streets. This includes people that don’t check their blind spots, won’t or don’t indicate (I believe that some cars don’t actually have indicator lights as standard!) or generally don’t like the idea of other people on the roads.

Don’t take chances, don’t assume that someone has seen you, and don’t take risks. The same can be said for emails. If the email has come to you from an unknown source, has a weird address or subject name or generally looks a bit dodgy, don’t open it. We provide complimentary Spam Filtering on our shared hosting accounts that does collect known spam emails and addresses, but it’s not completely infallible. I would always advise caution, as the last thing you want is an infected website or computer.

Shortcuts
Like any other person, every one loves a good shortcut, a time saver that will be more beneficial to them. I love riding my bike past all of the static cars. Thankfully, Manchester Council has set up quite a few bike paths and lanes along the main routes in and out of the city that allow me to weave in and out of the main hotspots of traffic. This can also be said for your websites. Keep the name and the domain snappy. Make it short and sweet, maybe even think ahead and order both the .com and .co.uk equivalent of your address to make sure that any typo’s will still reach your website URL or email address. Also, when building up your site, keep everything as clutter free as you can. Allow for natural navigation such as menus along the top or sides of the page (just don’t use tables though! Google will back me up on that!)

Pedal Power
At first, biking after a long time away will hurt, but progressively, it does get easier as my legs and body get accustomed to the rigours of biking and the stop/start nature of the exercise. Some days, especially on cold dark mornings, up hilly terrain, you need that extra bit of power. This can also be the case for your website and the hosting package you are using. If the demands for your site isn’t enough for the server (the legs of your website) to cope with, we have bigger and broader options to use. Our new Business Hosting packages are more suited for the more common e-commerce websites that are springing up all the time, and the VPS Hosting packages are an even more economical and hands-on server you can get. The VPS will give you the strength of the server, and the and the reliability that you need when your site hits it’s peak and needs that extra memory.

As I’m sure anyone who reads this blog regularly will know, 34SP.com celebrated its 10th Birthday in October of 2010. As well as celebrating the company’s 10th anniversary towards the end of last year, we also moved into a fantastic new office space just a few weeks ago. This is an exciting move for any company, especially during these difficult financial times. However, when you consider that 34SP.com is an online company which successfully grew out of the dot com crash, you begin to appreciate that 34SP.com isn’t an ordinary company. While we grew at first through our business hosting and Professional web hosting products, we’ve grown into supplying virtual servers and dedicated servers now as well. That 34SP.com was an extraordinary company was apparent to me from the first day I started working at the company, nearly 3 years ago.

Born out of frustration at the lack of quality hosting alternatives, 34SP.com has always kept its customers at the heart of the business. This commitment and dedication to high quality customer service is unlike any other company I have ever worked for. The lengths the staff will go to in ensuring customer satisfaction often go well beyond the standard ‘call of duty’. It was certainly an eye opener for me when I joined the company nearly 3 years ago. I had not previously worked at a company where the customer was so squarely at the center of the business. Obviously most companies recognise the importance of providing good customer service, but at 34SP.com it genuinely feels as though the company exists to fulfill the needs of its customer base. I have never known a business to go to such lengths to satisfy the needs of the few, as well as the many. This level of commitment to customer service has always been a core value of the company, and is one of the reasons why all the staff at 34SP.com are able to look back over the last 10 years with immense pride.

The other aspect of 34SP.com that makes it such a special place to work, is the attitude to the staff here. We all work very hard (I’m bound to say that aren’t I?) and are regularly spoiled with monthly staff outings, and our now legendary end-of-year Christmas party. These outings are so much fun, we regularly have former members of staff attending them as well. Whether it is go-karting or ten pin bowling, our nights out are about more than just team building, they are a chance for all the staff to unwind and enjoy themselves.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed working here for the last 3 years, and I’m delighted that the company has been able to celebrate its 10th anniversary this past year in style. Here’s to another 10 years of quality web hosting from 34SP.com, and a hearty ”Thank You!” to all the customers who have entrusted their websites and domain names to us over this past decade!

Tasked with creating an article about ’10 Years of 34SP.com’ is not an easy one, especially having barely known the company. Ten years ago, when 34SP.com was gametal but with a goal I was quite literally half-a-world away sitting at home In Perth, Western Australia and quite possibly on the telephone trying to introduce a small business owner to the benefits of the Internet and having a website. As Daniel and Stuart both realised there was a niche market for cut-price Internet services. In Western Australia there was a single hosting company quoting prices that even today would scare people. Convincing people to invest thirty pounds a month in hosting a simple website was not easy!

That same year I found myself in Singapore where I ‘saw the light’. I found a website hosting company that made everything much more bearable and business boomed. Unfortunately for my customers these savings must have been coming from the ‘support’ budget but luckily, as I lived on their doorstep I could apply the required pressure when necessary.

Web hosting began to boom with companies popping up right, left and centre. ‘I’ll give them a whirl’, I thought. Two months later they’d vanished and have taken my website with them. This pattern I found repeated over and over and it reached the stage where it just felt safer to me to be with the Singapore outfit. My sites were safe, they offered everything – although I knew it meant me working all-hours in a support role.

Little did I know that many thousands of miles to the northwest 34SP.com was developing into exactly the kind of web hosting environment that I desperately craved. Be it traditional website hosting, VPS web hosting or dedicated server products, the company was spot on.

There’s the old saying, ‘You get what you pay for’ but this isn’t, I find always applicable. Especially when you only look at a situation from a monetary point-of-view. If you take into account attitude and the attitude of like-minded people who realise that good service coupled with realistic pricing is what the market wants then you’re on to a winner.

Ten years on and my customers who have always followed my advice continue to do so. I stumbled upon 34SP.com through a job advertisement and one look at the ‘Who Are We’ page and I knew these guys had the attitude I desired in a company and shared with them.

If I wasn’t working for them both I and my customers in Asia and the antipodes would certainly be with them.