Today Sentel is very happy to launch its most recent production. The new website for the Hellenic Cheerleading Union. Read more →

2012 was quite a BIG DEAL for Sentel. It was a year of few but huge changes. Let me write something that can sum up the things happened for Sentel in 2012. Read more →

Today we are happy to announce the launch of the new website for the Cité Chicago restaurant in Lake Point Tower, Chicago, Illinois! Our partnership with the Cité Chicago team began back in the 2009 when we designed and developed the 2010 website. Today after 2 years the time is right for an extensive re-design. Read more →

The last month we began building our portfolio in the Envato marketplace. We made our debut in Graphicriver, with a simple logo. This very first logo is bought already twice! We are very happy to see this!

We are continuing to enrich our portfolio by uploading photographs in Photodune and a second item in logos. We are expecting photographs to be approved very soon. The first batch of photographs will be about “Cyclades”

Yesterday we made our debut in Envato marketplace. Our first item for sale is a Logo Template. We are very happy to introduce ourselves there and we will work to build a strong portfolio and hopefully some useful resources for your next projects!

We are very happy to announce that we are adopting CodeGuard as our main backup service for our clients’ websites.

What is CodeGuard? It’s is a Simple Time Machine for your Website!

Techcrunch wrote about

At TechCrunch Disrupt NYC last May, the unanimous winner of the “Audience Choice” award was a young, Atlanta-based startup called CodeGuard. The startup caught the audience’s attention based on a simple value proposition: To become a “time machine for your website.” In other words, CodeGuard’s free service allows any site owner to back up their website and revert to earlier versions, while monitoring for infections.

After months of tweaking and beta testing, today CodeGuard is officially pulling back the curtain on a new-and-improved service, backed by a fresh $1.3 million in funding from Imlay Investments and a host of angel investors, including Palaniswamy Rajan, Bert Ellis, Tom Noonan, Matt Chanoff, and Merrick Furst.

What do you gain as a Sentel client, with CodeGuard?

• Your website is backed up on a scheduled basis (hourly, daily, weekly) based on your needs
• Encrypted Website and Database backups of files
• Website Restores are Fast, Reliable, and One Click Away
  CodeGuard offers users multiple restore options. We provide automatic FTP and MySQL restores with the click of a button, but also give you the opportunity to backup your files manually. We just send you a zip of any backup version you request and you’ll receive it by email!
• 2 Gigabytes of Storage
• Daily Monitoring and Change Notification Alerts
  CodeGuard is constantly checking your website for changes, and we notify you when we see them. A malicious attack against your website’s files would instantly be presented to you with our daily monitoring and email notifications. You can see the changes that are happening on your site and keep track of versions you’ve made through the dashboard.

Using CodeGuard and CloudFlare services we make sure your website has the best possible protection.

On June 20th I was invited in the latest Google Engage seminar in Greece, as Sentel is part of the Engage network. The seminar was held in Gazarte, a nice art venue in Gazi, Athens. Despite the hot temperature, quite a few people was there. The ratio was 60-40 (designers/devs VS marketeers).

What is Google Engage?

The Seminar

In general I think this seminar was mostly for non-marketing people. The speakers talked about basic principles of a client meeting and on how to maintain a business relationship.

The main speaker was Ariel Hochstadt an online enterpreneur, author and founder of Symbolicom. After a couple of a bit boring sessions, Ariel began talking about The Hallo Effect. Basic stuff there, but his speech was quite uplifting and i have to say I enjoyed him a lot.

Coffee break and time to networking with other Google fellas there. I met some old friends there and talked with some new ones as well.

The second part of the seminar was about client relationship. How to start, impress, understand him, stand the test of time and finally take it to the next level. I have to say that Ariel’s presentation was to the point and kept me focused.

At the end of the seminar (about 14.00) I had a nice morning with fellow web people, in an event held by Google, plus a goodie bag!

Photostory

You can find all the photos from the official Google Engage Greece Picasa account

Let’s face the fact that administrative tasks are much more time consuming than you imagine. The problem gets bigger as the clients and websites lists, I need to maintain get bigger and bigger.

I still remember old times where backing up websites and assets were pain in the ass. Burning and filing CDs (yeah, do you remember them???) was a total waste of time and money. Now I praise the lord for the tools I have available and make my life easier as a webmaster (sic). If you are interested in the tools and services I use in Sentel to keep my mind sane, I will quickly name the most important: WPRemote (for keeping websites up to date), Dropbox (for storing everything – and by everything, I mean EVERYTHING) and CloudFlare (for taking some of the bandwidth and attack pain away). I will talk more on how Sentel takes advantage of these services in another post.

Although there are these wonderful tools which let me have some peace of mind, there are times, things are getting wild and some tasks are left behind. Some updates need more care because of huge code changes, some auto backups missed schedule (always happen) etc.

These are some of the reasons, we dedicate the first days of July, October, January and April, to prioritize updates and backups. Our goal, during maintenance days, is to have every website we manage and its plugins updated to the latest version. Also we make sure our backup log works correctly, renew the domains that will expire in the next 4 months and re-organize the client assets in our dropbox account.

I see these days as a checkpoint, where I draw a line and say “Until here everything is happy, now i have the 4 next months to mess things up!”
Probably I am the kind of person that needs to summarize things from time to time. I think I work better this way.

We love to see our clients take advantage of technologies that help them enrich their audience experience. Today (06/13/2012) one of our most successful redesigns Thales + Friends, will broadcast live the Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative book presentation, in association with the Princeton Club of Greece. The whole setup and hardware is as minimal as possible, but it will be great for people around the globe, to virtually attend this event.

Circles Disturbed is the first international, research book that examines the relationship of mathematics and narration. The custody belongs to the author and mathematician Apostolos Doxiadis and the American mathematician, professor at Harvard, Barry Mazur.

Anyone can attend the event live online at: Thales + Friends website

Thales + Friends is a not-for-profit organization, based in Greece, that works to bridge the chasm between mathematics and other forms of cultural activity.

We love to see our clients take advantage of technologies that help them enrich their audience experience. Today (06/13/2012) one of our most successful redesigns Thales + Friends, will broadcast live the Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative book presentation, in association with the Princeton Club of Greece. The whole setup and hardware is as minimal as possible, but it will be great for people around the globe, to virtually attend this event.

Circles Disturbed is the first international, research book that examines the relationship of mathematics and narration. The custody belongs to the author and mathematician Apostolos Doxiadis and the American mathematician, professor at Harvard, Barry Mazur.

Anyone can attend the event live online at: Thales + Friends website

Thales + Friends is a not-for-profit organization, based in Greece, that works to bridge the chasm between mathematics and other forms of cultural activity.