Blogcast Becomes a Rackspace Select Partner

2007-03-29T19:20:52Z

I'm pleased to announce that Blogcast has become a Rackspace Select Partner. All Blogcast services will begin utilizing their world-class managed infrastructure services effective immediately.

Based on the feedback we received after our initial launch, it became clear a higher level of infrastructure services was needed and we are more then happy to deliver.

Working with Rackspace enables Blogcast to offer greater depth and breadth of infrastructure options and a higher level of support to our clients. These options include firewall and VPN services necessary for secure, outsourced internal blogging systems in addition to more robust and expandable multi-processor servers and the backing of their "fanatical" infrastructure management services. It comes as no surprise that many of the largest and most high-profile sites powered by Movable Type such as the Huffington Post, Seed Media and Intel use Rackspace.

We are very bullish on this partnership and look forward to working with Rackspace to make a powerful blogging system easy for you.

Hello World: Introducing Blogcast

2006-11-13T15:00:00Z

I am pleased to officially announce the launch of Blogcast, an integrated bundle of Movable Type software, services and hosting for organizations who need a sophisticated weblog publishing system without the hassle.

Blogging is transforming how a business communicates and collaborates, and Movable Type has emerged as the leading blog platform for professionals. It's no surprise really. Movable Type is a mature tool that has been in use for over 5 years by countless users around the world. During this time Six Apart has continuously improved and evolved the tool with many powerful features to scale with the growth of blogging and the sites it backs. Despite its power and sophistication, Movable Type makes blogging easy for any type of user.

While the benefits of blogging today are clear and Movable Type's well-crafted design balances power and simplicity better then any tool on the market, it doesn't run by itself.

What you want to do is blog because that is what is valuable to your organization. In order to do that you need to understand, assemble and operate a lot more then just Six Apart's software.

For most companies this can seem daunting and difficult to do effectively without potentially costly misteps and delays. Well, for us it is second nature. Appnel Solutions has worked on business blogging projects longer than most and we know what it takes to build a system that is both powerful and easy to use.

This is why many companies large and small have engaged Appnel Solutions' consulting services. While Movable Type consultants like ourselves and others in the Six Apart Professionals Network will yield excellent results, working out the specific details of each system setup from scratch takes time and effort -- costs that are passed on to the customer. Further it does not address ongoing maintenance and operations.

This is why I created Blogcast.

Blogcast is Appnel Solutions way of delivering our same great service at a better value. We take care of the hard, boring and on-going technical stuff so you can focus on publishing to your blogs. Better still, you have one bill and one point of contact.

At the core of the Blogcast offering is Movable Type and a collection of the best free and commercial plugin extensions available pre-installed and ready to go -- no additional licenses or support contracts needed.

We've added world-class web hosting services with tried and true software for serving web pages, database services and email to provide a reliable and ideal environment for Movable Type that is provided by Pair Networks.

Having a preset configuration for an optimal Movable Type software stack reduces risk and streamlines the process of getting up and running.

The Blogcast service doesn't stop with the setup. Once running, maintenance such as upgrades of all software and system backups are handled as part of the service. We also provide ongoing support in addition to what I call "mentoring."

Typically support only starts when there is a problem. When it comes to figuring things out or doing it right -- you're own your own. Mentoring is the ability to ask us advice at any time. Have a question about how to do something with MT? Not sure something is a good idea? Just ask it's part of the Blogcast service. With mentoring you can do things quickly and effectively and stay out of trouble in the first place.

Blogcast represents our years of expertise and know-how developing the very best Movable Type systems assembled into one integrated package that provides the best of everything you'll need to get up and running.