Since from the very beginning we were used, here at Altervista, to read all the messages from users.

At the very beginning there was no business plan, no investors but there was a crystal clear vision.

At that time, early 2000, lot of opinions were spreading around about what was going to be the web. Altervista vision was plain and simple: people would love to share their ideas, to stake their claim on the web.

Even people who weren’t able to write code would love to publish on the internet, that’s what we thought at that time. People would love to do it free of charge, easily and maybe they would love it even more if they could earn something form their web traffic.

So we start the free hosting with revenue sharing (and no mandatory ads) system. That system just worked out, actually it’s still working. The plain and simple idea we had at the time it’s still here, two Millions and a half websites created on Altervista later.

Since from the 2005 Altervista is part of Banzai, the e-commerce and digital editor company leading in Italy; on February Banzai stocks are placed in the Milan Stock Exchange.

At the very beginning Altervista was a student project, now it’s part of a group in the Stock Exchange Market. We still run the same system, we still like to offer web space for free, with the freedom to use it and the opportunity to earn money from your web content.

The other day we received a message from Arthur:

Dear friends at Altervista,
My experience with Altervista has been an eye-opener. I had tried several other hosting services and registrars, and Altervista comes on top.
Thank you for a wonderful service. May you go on to greater success.
Ciao
Arthur, Sydney, Australia

We’re happy that we  still do read all the messages we receive.

This is something that tells you about our history. It was December 2000 when a student uploaded a fresh new brand online. The start up named “Altervista” was focused on offer free web hosting, pretty much as it is now: fourteen years and two Millions and a half websites later. The first Altervista logo had been made by using Microsoft Paint and poor skills in web graphics, but it came out from a solid source of inspiration. That source was the opera of Keith Haring: its vivid, joyful and playable vision. A vision that we, here at Altervista, still keep on share, and that’s why we named “Altervista Keith” the brand new release from Altervista WordPress Lab.

Vivid, joyful and playable WordPress Theme

Altervista Kieth is a free WordPress theme, we create it and we chose it as default theme when you start a blog on Altervista.

We wanted create a WordPress Theme in which you can set anything as you like it and no bothering you with back panel, difficult to use.

So we designed a kind of What You See Is What You Get interface: it’s pretty immediate to understand what you’re going to obtain, depending on your preferences. Continue reading →