For years we recommended Netfirms as our recommended domain registrar, but those days are over. Over the months (or years) we’ve noticed Netfirms is continuously “changing” their domain registration process in attempt to sell more hosting accounts among other upgrades which are totally unnecessary – it’s gotten as annoying as a Jehovah’s witness knocking on my door every other day.

Hidden Charges by Netfirms!

Today I tried to register a new domain for a client. Since we at Sonika have our own private dedicated server, we never need our clients to purchase their own web hosting – we host it, bill it, and manage it. All I needed was a $8 domain. Quickly, because I forgot to uncheck an item that they squeeze in forcefully, it became a $15 shopping cart with some option added. When I went “back” to modify my cart, the promo price for the 1st year had disappeared and the domain it self was up to $11 from $8, plus that added bullsh*t item (whatever it was).

A 5 minute registration turned into a 1 hour struggle for a refund from Netfirms

Few months ago I sent an email to Netfirms in order to explain that their new upsell attempts, while valiant, are actually causing a lot harm as the registration process is so painful, and the secretly added charges that show up upon checkout are as devious as that of Canadian cell phone carriers. I don’t think they took me seriously.

This email was provoked because I had sent one of my new clients to go register a new domain – and at some point, even though he didn’t intend to, he had added a whole year’s hosting package. Then we had to deal with calling them, getting a refund etc. It was a complete waste of an hour. This was one of many incidents. The way the registration at Netfirms works is that you have to diligently uncheck all the small checkmarks that pop on automatically in order to avoid extra charges. It’s sort of like having to tell your waiter, “No I do NOT want a bottle of wine added to my dinner by default and be charged for it, thank you!” How ridiculous is that? Normally it’s the other way around.

The New Kid in Town – Namecheap.com

We now recommend Namecheap over Netfirms for domain registration

Instead I decided to try www.namecheap.com – a company I’ve heard lots of recently – Wow, what a difference. There was no up-sell, and the WHOIS privacy option was free, unlike Netfirms, which charges close to $3 for it. The process was quick. No surprise charges, no back-and-forth to drop items that were added to my cart against my will. I didn’t have to look carefully to see what else came checked on by default in attempt to charge me more cash than I intend to spend. What i clicked was what I got. The only way to add more charges to my credit card was for me to proactively click on new services to be added on top. This was a great and simple experience. So instead of spending 20 minutes registering a domain, and another 20 minutes struggling for a refund for something I did not intend to keep in my cart with Netfirms, I took 5 minutes to get a new domain, and 10 minutes to write this post – and then 5 minutes will be spent on tweeting it out through @jeffkee, @sonikastudios & @brixwork to let everybody know of our position switch.

Better customer service wins; sleazy sales practices fail, and in this case, Netfirms failed us greatly. It’s too bad – they did have one of the easiest back-end platforms for managing your domain’s nameservers, contact info etc. Much better than webnames.ca – they get my vote for one of the worst domain admin panels ever, so I guess Netfirms isn’t at a total loss.. yet. I wonder if they will make a change in their registration process to make it less of a cash grub and more of an easy & friendly process to recover their reputation. It seems we’re not the only ones fed up with it.

Vancouver Financial Advisor, Rhonda Sherwood

We added several new service pages to Rhonda’s Site:

• Holistic Approach to Wealth Management?
• Financial Planning
• Investment & Capital Management
• Retirement Planning
• Succession Management
• Insurance Planning
• Tax Planning

BRIXWORK {real estate} offers the best Realtor websites

With the years of experience, we have developed BRIXWORK {real estate} (originally called the Regale Suite for Realtors, back in the days), and we are now entering the market aggressively with the product. So far we have only been accepting new clients based on referrals as we grew & developed our system, and now we are ready to expand our market further and service more customers throughout the Lower Mainland and Vancouver (and of couse, we have our new US customers too, another market we are going after).

We have had some great developments over the past few months:

• Google Maps® Based MLS® Search Function for easy property search
• Making reCAPTCHA our standard spam protection mechanism
• A new dashboard for BRIXWORK {real estate} back-end for Realtors®
• SEO upgrades for the listing detail pages
• New MLS® Search Form with Criteria & Filters and Preset Listing Groups for SEO

Dan & Charlie's new Website

For Dan and Charlie’s website we used our own personalized Brixwork software, designed specially for the Real-Estate market. You can take a look at it on http://www.brixwork.com/realtors/.

Realtors need websites where potencial clients can find what they are looking for, with speed and beauty.

Key features:

• clean layout, easy navigation, clean fonts
• automatic Twitter feed integration
• Facebook fan page integration
• Facebook like button integration on all listings & blog posts for exposure
• embedded Google Maps & Streetview for properties

Full WordPress Integration

Since 1970, Stonepay has offered construction & management services. Their work has been done in 13 countries, and covers Residential homes, Commercial buildings and Expatriate housing.

A glimpse of the Stonepay's home page

As always, we strive to provide our clients with a high-end, state of the art website with the latest technologies on the market.

We created a fully customized website for Stonepay, aiming for a well-structured site, with easy-to-find and organized content. We have replaced their old flash website with a new modern website that meets the industrial standards.

(note.: Sonika Studios did not do the branding and logo design for this company)

Diacarbon's bamboo USB Flashdrive

We are featuring the USB Flash drives. Instead of using paper for company presentations, we decided to go with a more sustainable alternative by keeping the material in electronic format on USB drives for their clients.

Covered with bamboo, the drive has all the information clients need. It includes a video explaining the basic information about the company as well as PDFs, which can also be printed, and links for their website, facebook and twitter pages.

Pop-Up Screen

We decided to have some fun with this here at Sonika Studios Inc. Perhaps this leans more on a gruesome side, but it’s Canadian hockey with plenty of hits, blood & testosterone.

Orca Hunts a White Shark

The Original Shot of the Shark

We started with a photo of a shark splashing out of the water. These rather menacing creatures have razor-sharp teeth that can rip you apart. Sharks can keep growing new teeth as they lose them, unlike humans, where we only get two sets of teeth throughout our lives (if you dont’ count the veneers).

Did you know that shark bodies do not have any bones? They are made entirely of cartilage! Also, their organs are not attached internally (being underwater relieves a lot of the gravitational force that would otherwise pull the organs downwards).

An orca snatching a seal off the coast

Next up is a photo of an orca snatching a seal. Orcas can sneak up to a seal resting near the shore (seals generally do not swim too far out, as they do primarily live above water breathing in air) and chomp down on one. Orcas are also more commonly known as killer whales. These magnificent (and potentially deadly) creatures are also the mascots of the Vancouver Canucks.

With these two photos as ingredients, we just needed a few photoshop brushes from our friends at Brusheezy.com to simulate some water splashes & blood splatters!

Biochar produced by Diacarbon (@ the DC Labs)

About Diacarbon Energy Inc.

This week we are featuring Diacarbon Energy Inc. business cards. Diacarbon Energy Inc. is a local green energy company that brings biomass solutions for true carbon neutrality.

Diacarbon is located in Vancouver, BC. Their goal is to produce renewable fuels from biomass, to provide waste solutions for pulp and paper, forest, and agriculture industries, and to make available portable biomass refinery technology.

About the Business Cards

Diacarbon Business Cards

We have used cleaner and environmentally friendly material In these cards by choosing 100% recycled paper stock (Sundance Felt 100lbs Cover Stock). The paper stock and the printing facility are FSC Certified. To minimize environmental impact we used no varnish or coating; the paper alone proved a great finish and feel.

Choosing the colours carefully, we managed to minimize the number of print plates and ink used in the cards. Moreover, the printing location was less than 7 kilometres away from the Diacarbon headquarters (and less than 3 kilometres from the Sonika Studios Inc. office), making this an even greener choice. Our clients (and we) believe in walking the talk, not just talking the walk!

We are also producing presentation folders and bamboo-cased USB flashdrives for Diacarbon. Check this page again soon for an update on these items.

Trifold Folder/Brochure with Document Pocket

The folder includes a pocket for holding contracts and paperwork and has a complete explanation of their services and advantages for their clients.

Alta Pacific's Business Card

The Business Card is a key item for communication; the business card portrays the first impression of the image and identity of the company. A poorly communicative and unapealing business card will not encourage potential clients to get more information about the company. For Alta Pacific we created a clean and direct business card, using their main colours–blue and white.

Alta Pacific has just moved to a new address:

306 Water Street
Suite 1, Vancouver, BC, BC V6B 1B6
phone: (778) 328-7401

That being said, we will now be clearing out our previous computers at a great price, so here they are:

iMac (Summer 2009)

We are selling the larger 24" model

Asking $1150 – includes iMac, full size keyboard w/ keypad, under warranty until summer 2012.

This unit has a 3 year extended warranty purchased through Futureshop, so it’s good until summer of 2012. The unit was very gently used – sitting on my desktop, basically, with no drinks or food near it whatsoever. The technical specs of this model can be found at this Apple webpage containing the model info. This model is the first 24″ model (MB418LL/A) with a Dual Core 2.66 gHz CPU. The RAM is stock at 4G, and the HDD is an astonishing 640Gbs! Great price for a unit in great condition & under warranty!

Macbook Pro (Winter 2007)

Macbook Pro from 2007 is still in good shape

Asking $600 – includes a near-new charger, original installation DVD, Snow Leopard Upgrade DVD.

This is a sturdy aluminum cased Macbook Pro from a while ago, with a RAM upgrade from the conventional 2G to 3G. I had a 2 year warranty, which covered the replacement of the optical drive, the HDD, the battery charger, and recently, under the recall of the nVidia video cards, had the video card replaced (only in February, so it’s fresh!). Also this year (2011) I put a brand new authentic Apple battery in.

Well maintained, with many new parts! The technical specs can be found at this Apple webpage with the model info. The model in question is the first model (MA895LL/A).