Gandi Bar - Moonfruit - Comments

Gandi is coming to the UK - rvb

rvb — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 20:10:31 +0100

Hi Joe, sorry for this late reply.
I send an email to Wendy through the support, to keep a promise back from the USA. She must have the photos in hand/on screen now.

Thanks for these details, that helps indeed. So I have pick-up one Irish provider for the moment, with a nearly clean offer: domain name ownership, DNS management, etc... not too bad at 25 euros excl. VAT per domain. I asked them about a reseller account, but obviously it is not as good as Gandi's one, and maybe not free

So I really hope you can complete the accreditation procedure very soon, and in the meantime, I contact the Dream Team, aka Gandi's support service, to make the domains.ie fully forwarded to the domains.com (web+email at least). Maybe the IE domain registry will make it easier for EU registrars. Glad to know you have already plenty of Irish customers! Maybe we can write to the IEDR: do you have some points to relay/ask to them?

And if I can be of any help to you about this little part of Western Europe, you more than welcome (Céad Mile Fáilte) to ask, anytime. I read all the Gandi's blogs daily now

Get your site at Gandi! - joe

joe — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 11:10:34 +0100

Hi Anonymous (if that is your real name ;-),

I didn't mean to suggest that Flash was an upgrade to HTML in general, but more specifically that this was how it was handled with SiteMaker, e.g. for SiteMaker the Flash version is the full fat version, though the HTML alternative does have all the content present, just not presented with as much style.

SiteMaker started development 10 years ago when HTML wasn't capable of all the things Flash was, and browser compatibility wasn't what it is today. It is true that HTML has come a very long way since then and as you say can do all the things Flash can do, and sometimes more. In fact it is our objective to add more and more direct HTML features and improve further the HTML output so that ultimately the user could decide which version is their 'primary'. But this is still some way off.

The important part of my point was that regardless of which version is 'better' both are presented so that all content can be seen by all potential visitors, which I believe was the concern that El Bruno was raising.

Anyway, thanks for your input and we'll let you know as and when we produce new features. Take care,

Joe

Get your site at Gandi! - Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:34:06 +0100

@Joe: Your post hinges on one unfortunate assumption: that Flash provides an "upgrade" to HTML.

Furthermore, what the tool itself uses and what output it produces need not have any connection. An easy to use site creator tool could still produce sane HTML rather than Flash. You certainly don't need Flash for "rich media"; at most, the Flash should represent a fallback for modern browser technologies. For isntance, you could embed a video with the video tag and fall back to Flash for browsers that don't support that tag.

At this point, HTML can do absolutely everything Flash can, and often better.

Get your site at Gandi! - Joe

Joe — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:02:18 +0100

Hi El Bunto,

It's true that the editor is in Flash, as this allows unparalleled easy of use for the site builder, please have a go to see what I mean. But for the output, the site is generated in both Flash and HTML.

SiteMaker sites use progressive enhancement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progre...) to produce the viewable site, so we start with a W3C compliant clean XHTML version and then upgrade this to the full Flash version if we detect Flash and Javascript. The HTML version contains all the same content as the Flash version, and is designed to be clean and easy to view/navigate. It has no 'tables' in it ;-), and uses a standard format to it is easy to understand.

The full Flash version is the best way to view the site, as it contains all the 'rich' media, but the HTML alternative is there for those that cannot see this. If you use a screenreader with Flash turned off, it will read the HTML version correctly. So you are right you cannot add HTML directly, but anything you add to your site is then rendered in the HTML and marked up correctly. So for users who don't know how to write HTML this is a better solution.

Standards are an extremely important part of making the web accessible to everyone, which is why our tools outputs in this way. The reality is that web professionals can create wonderful standard compliant sites, though these can sometimes be out of reach for non-professional users, or those just learning.

The SiteMaker tool is certainly aimed at these non-professional users or those building for the first time on the web. So we make sure that the sites that are produced by it are standard compliant and gracefully upgrade (rather than downgrade) if the viewer has the appropriate technology.

But the key for these non-professional users is to make a tool that is easy to use and not as frightening as handcoding HTML.

You are quite right that there are many bad tools out there, but ours is not one of them.

Having said that, there is always room for improvement. We've been working on this product for 10 years and we've still got more to do. I hope you will appreciate our efforts.

Joe

Get your site at Gandi! - El Bunto

El Bunto — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 16:50:46 +0100

From the linked site:

``Our sites are based entirely on Macromedia's Flash technology''

and

``You can't upload HTML for use in your site.''

I am really surprised that Gandi are promoting such a tool that ignores all web standards. I expect better from an ethical and considerate company such as this.

Get your site at Gandi! - Zhang

Zhang — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:55:56 +0100

Wonderful....
I will try this new feature shortly....
Keep up the good work Gandi.....

Gandi is coming to the UK - joe (gandi)

joe (gandi) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:10:25 +0200

Hi Cyman, yes we do have the US on our horizons, but not yet (see some of the comments above).

@ ivb we're happy to accept all kinds of 'fancy English' ;-). Re the .ie extension we are working our way through all the European extensions and .ie will be on that list. It's quite an expensive tld and requires that we have commercial ties with Ireland, so it can be complicated to get accredited for, but we will get there, and have plenty of Irish customers too to show our commecial links.

I hope that helps, Joe

Gandi is coming to the UK - rvb

rvb — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:53:25 +0200

Iontach Gandi! it is grand, that fancy French-English could be horrible, I know... I use it sometimes 8-( And there are other " fancy Something-English" a lot worst over here!! Then, are you willing to support your friendly neighbour accross the Irish sea, before crossing the Atlantic? I mean, when will you add the .ie ccTLD ?? This little country rank 14th among European states. And Ryan, you have such an Irish first name, did you know?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_(...)
And I must say that Wendy is such a charming name!
Anyway, I gave all my support to all of you from the US (including about 20% with Irish roots!?), Gandi in the USA could be great as well, I will think about you when visiting California next month ;-p
Again, well done to all the Gandi team(s) !

Gandi is coming to the UK - Foxtunes

Foxtunes — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 14:57:34 +0200

Glad you're coming to the UK.

I'm happy to registered http://www.foxtunes.com with you, although at first I thought you were based in India not France because of the Gandi name Then I realised it's Gandi not Ghandi

Gandi is coming to the UK - Cymen

Cymen — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:41:23 +0200

Any chance you'll come to the USA too? I'd love the same hosting service with lower latency!

Gandi is coming to the UK - Wendy(Gandi)

Wendy(Gandi) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 12:03:18 +0200

Sandra, many thanks. Where are you based yourself? Curious as Allende is Spanish/Latin? Of course you could be anywhere! We have a significant group of customers in Spain too.

Anonymous and GH Customer, always good to hear debate around the services and products you require. It's invaluable for us and enables us to make the right choices for our customers as we grow. As you can see from Stephan (as if I'd ever do that ; )), we have lots of projects in the pipeline. I can honestly say we're working hard but having fun right now.

Gandi is coming to the UK - Stephan

Stephan — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 15:39:01 +0200

Hi guys, and thanks for your warm welcome.

I can confirm we'll come one day to the US, while keeping our other facilities in Europe. This way, and thanks to our cutting edge hosting and computing technology, you'll be able to choose the exact location of your servers, rack per rack, datacenter by datacenter ...

I leave you guys with Wendy, Joe and the rest of the Uk team, otherwise they'll kick my ... :D

Don't worry, you are in the best hands now !

Stephan

Gandi is coming to the UK - Gandi Hosting customer

Gandi Hosting customer — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 05:49:36 +0200

In reply to Anonymous #10: While I sympathize with your comments, you might keep in mind that France has laws equivalent to many of the more egregious laws in the US (for instance, an equivalent to the DMCA), and also some you might not know about that haven't come to the US. For example, did you know that by French law, if you make a comment about someone, they can legally require you to post their response to your comments on your site? Sadly, no country that I know of has 100% reasonable laws; pick your poison, and hope that technical solutions like Freenet and Tor eventually become universal.

Gandi is coming to the UK - Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:49:56 +0200

One of the reasons I am planning to buy hosting services from Gandi is that the French (and the rest of the truly free world) are about as likely to cooperate with illegitimate demands from American "authorities" as for jewels to rain down from the sky. And it's not just me who is paranoid; my department is legally prohibited from allowing personal data to be stored on any servers under American control, either directly or indirectly. Gandi, if you decide to store any data outside of France, please keep in mind that some of us can't do business with you unless you are protected from America. Thanks.

Gandi is coming to the UK - Sandra_Allende sandheartone

Sandra_Allende sandheartone — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 01:52:52 +0200

To Wendy: Good Job! I want to wish your team well. You seem to be well prepared for the future in technology. May You All continue to perform to your expertice. You seem to have it all together.

Gandi is coming to the UK - Ryan (Gandi)

Ryan (Gandi) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 11:36:40 +0200

Thanks for your compliments!

Yes, as you mentioned, there is some slightly longer latency for our customers across the Atlantic. We are actively working on getting better access to American traffic by maintaining the best possible network peering relationships (more on our architecture), and as Wendy eluded to, we are even discussing the future possibility of hosting that is specifically located in the United States!

Gandi is coming to the UK - Gandi Hosting customer

Gandi Hosting customer — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 08:46:38 +0200

As a US customer of Gandi Hosting, I do hope that at some point Gandi has hosting in the US, so that I can get better latency to my server. (I love my Gandi server otherwise; I just wish I could get better than 200ms latency.)

Gandi is coming to the UK - Wendy(Gandi)

Wendy(Gandi) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 17:06:16 +0200

Thanks Jake and Sebastien.

Jake, the customer service team will remain in France but there are plenty of English speaking team members who are well set up to look after UK customers. The support team are the experts on anything to do with using our domain name and hosting services. We will set up a UK contact email address so you can talk to the UK team here. Specifically about any ideas or general queries to do with the UK which cannot be answered by the support team. We'll also be setting up a Uk Gandi Bar , where we'll be hanging out to chat with you. More about that when we launch Gandi.co.uk.

Sebastien, like your style We've always got time for our friends in America and the team in the UK will support you as much as we'll support our UK customers. Please feel free to contact us. Did you know? You have your very own Gandi Bar Manager who is from the US and based in France, Ryan. He will be a great person with whom to discuss any US specific queries.

And of course, crossing the atlantic is on the horizon .......

Gandi is coming to the UK - Sebastien

Sebastien — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:23:18 +0200

Jolly Good

Now guys please come to the US.

Gandi is coming to the UK - Jake

Jake — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:17:00 +0200

Excellent news! Thanks for coming to the UK Gandi.

Will you have a specific contact form, email address of phone number for UK customers?

Gandi is coming to the UK - joe (gandi)

joe (gandi) — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:05:52 +0200

Hi guys, we don't yet have servers located in the UK, but are looking at that as a future possibility. With the connectivity of our French datacentres it should make little difference anyway, but I know people like them close to home

@Zhang, the customer support team will still be based in Paris, though some members of the team there do have English as their first language, and many others English as a second fluent language, and we are building up additional languages skills for other territories. The UK team will support the customer service team in Paris and be available to answer things on the blogs and groups. Essentially we're an additional resource to support the UK market on top of the existing Gandi teams.

Looking forward to working with you! Joe

Gandi is coming to the UK - Zhang

Zhang — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:53:57 +0200

That's great news!
Anyway, is the UK team only support UK customers?
How about Non-UK and Non-France customers, is it still supported from France?

Gandi is coming to the UK - Michael S.

Michael S. — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:33:56 +0200

That's great news! Will you have any servers physically in the UK?