You’ve been asking for it for a couple of years, and now we can officially answer “Yes!”

Over the past 2 years we’ve received this question literally hundreds of times: “Can I use Clover for my small business?”

Our answer has typically been something like: “Yeah, you can. You’ll just have to be creative with using the tools created for ministries on your business site.” But now, we have opened up cloversites.com to any small business, artist, non-profit, or industry you can think of. The internet-wide problem of not being able to have a decent looking site that you can manage without spending a fortune is now over.

We’ve created an experience at cloversites.com so that a visitor no longer has to do the mental gymnastics to see how Clover will fit for their specific industry. We’ve done the work to allow anyone looking for a website for their organization to have a true Clover experience when visiting our site. Also to help, we’ve just posted a bunch of new Green Thumbs for you to see how businesses have been using Clover. Check them out: Green Thumbs

Here’s what we’ve changed:

1. Cloversites.com Home Page: Before today, when you typed in cloversites.com you got the line “We make websites for growing ministries”, along with a video that was very much ministry-specific. Now when you visit our site, you will receive a generic home page with the tagline of “We make websites for people, not programmers”. If you’ve visited our site in the last 3 months or so, you will still get the “ministry experience”, because we put a cookie on your browser to say that’s what you care about… That will make sense more as you read #2.

2. Demos: With the pressure now of showing people how they can actually use Clover for their business, we went through the (rather tedious) work of making all of our existing demos represent a specific industry. For example, Sunset was turned into an Italian restaurant website, The Stone was turned into a band’s website, and Shadowridge was turned into a civil engineering firm’s website. We felt with a huge span of industry-specific sites (rather than a generic, “small-business” example), we could clearly show people how Clover can be a fit for them.

If you go to the websites page, you’ll notice a new drop-down arrow that allows you to cater your experience to your industry. This will shuffle the more industry-specific site designs to the front of the demos, so you don’t have to search around to find out how you can use Clover for a specific type of business. We’ll also remember what industry you are a part of, so next time you go to cloversites.com, you’ll receive the same industry-specific experience.

Oh yeah, like I said before- If you have entered into cloversites.com before today, you will only have the “ministry” experience. This will mean that you will still get every demo as an example church, and all testimonies will be from ministries using Clover. All future entrants to cloversites.com/church will receive the same, deluxe treatment.

Here’s why you should care:

1. Clover Friends: If you haven’t signed up for Clover Friends, do so now! Clover Friends is our affiliate program that allows you to get $100 every time someone purchases a website because of you. It’s a pretty amazing program that was created to say a great big “Thanks!” to everyone who has been telling other people about Clover.

But here’s why Clover Friends is so huge now… The majority of us probably only know 2-3 churches that we might have influence on when it comes to their web presence. If you’re signed up for Clover Friends you’ve probably already told them, and received your check. But think of how many people you know that need a website for their small business? Off the top of my head, I can name 10-15 people. We’re pretty convinced that you could actually make a living off Clover Friends now…

New Site Designs

Along with this new expansion, we’re launching two new site designs: Rock Point and Harvest. Check them out when you get a chance.

So that’s the exciting news. We’re pretty stoked to be releasing this much-needed tool into the market.

We hope the rest of the world finds Clover to be as great a fit as the church does. We will still be releasing new, free updates to you soon, so stay tuned for that.

Thanks to you all, we cut a check to Gaba yesterday that we believe will have a great impact on their ministry. We feel so grateful to be a small part in what God is doing through them. They have a unique set of programs that is raising up leaders and training pastors to ultimately transform the communities in Uganda.

For the next three months, we’ve chosen a ministry that I personally support and believe in: The Well in Thailand. I’ll quote their website since I probably can’t explain their organization as well as they can.

The Well’s “purpose is to love Thai bar girls and sex workers in the same way that Jesus loved that woman and others like her; to help her see and experience her true value as a creation by God, and to help her, her family and village indeed find their dream of a better life. The Well provides counseling, training, job development and other services to women and their family members.”

The back story here is that The Well was started by a guy I know named Jim (not Clover’s Jim) who gave up his dream of retiring to the comfy hills of Wisconsin and moved his whole family to Thailand. They started this ministry from incredibly humble beginnings simply because they felt God was calling them there. In the five years they’ve been there, they’ve helped hundreds of girls (and their family’s) change their lives and find Christ.

The work they’re doing is simply amazing. If you have time, check out a few quick stories from some of the girls (Mei, Wan, Pontip).

So for this next quarter, the first month’s hosting payment of every new Clover website purchase will be going to our friends at The Well.

As of today, all site design switches are only $200.

With the new Greenhouse launched and more capabilities available to Clover users, we wanted to give you a chance to “freshen up”. If you haven’t noticed the earlier post, we’ve also released some brand new site designs to inspire you.

In order to switch your site design, just give us a call at 805-527-8900. It’s still a little bit of work on our end to get you up and running with your new design, but you’ll have your new site design within minutes of calling us. We’ll transfer all your current site’s content into your new site design automatically, so you won’t have to replicate the work you’ve already put into your current site.

Once you switch your site, you’ll be able to design and edit your new site design without the world seeing it until you’re ready. Then you’ll simply hit “Publish” in your Greenhouse, and your new site design will be live.

As always, if you have any questions about the process, feel free to give us a call. We’d love to chat.

Brighton: This was designed with “Sunset” and “Sunrise” in mind. With huge picture options, this site is great if you have a ton of photography or a designer buddy who knows Photoshop.

Vetica: This site was designed after watching the documentary “Helvectica”. It’s a bit of an homage to the font- The first site designed by Ben (with a little love from Jim).

Woodland: This is one of our first site designs we hired out (to get a little bit of a different angle with our designs). Our friend and designer with Collide Magazine, Ryan Jarrell, designed this site. Stay tuned for more designs from Ryan…

So there you have it… Make sure to give them a test drive.

In the six days the contest ran, people wrote in on what is quite possibly the first blog post in the history of the internet to have 1091 encouraging comments in a row.

The woman who won had an especially touching story. It’s definitely worth reading: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/06/07/and-the-ipad-giveway-winner-is/

If you have some extra time, the entire list of comments is pretty amazing to read as well. It definitely encouraged us to be that kind of person in someone else’s life.

MARK ZIEGLER from Desert Cross Community Church

Congrats, Mark, and thanks to everyone who entered.

Here are a few videos highlighting the new Greenhouse (Thanks Jacob and Bjorn for the great 3 out of 4 videos below… I did horribly capturing the bottom video. Sorry.):

60 Second Promo:

Walkthrough Video

New Greenhouse Video

The Launch

We’ll put this bad boy up soon on our Greenhouse Updates page.

This month’s non-profit Clover will be supporting is Gaba Bible Institute, based out of Kampala, Uganda. You can check their (rather well-designed) website at http://www.gbiuganda.org.

We love how Jeff and the team are committed to raising up a generation who’s in love with Jesus and called to pastor and lead the next generation of believers. Check out their site to read more, or feel free to donate here.

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Clover Gives – Spring 2010 Re-cap: Children’s Hunger Fund

Clover was able to give a substantial amount to CHF in their relief efforts with the Haiti Earthquake. Thanks again to all who helped us equip CHF in their efforts (knowing and un-knowingly!)… This money went a long way in providing food and the Gospel to people in desperate need of both.

We just announced the winners of the Clover site and swag giveaway through our friends at the Echo Conference. Echo did a special giveaway for registrants into their conference (July 28th-30th in Dallas).

Here they are:

Free Clover Website & 1 Year of hosting: Jonathan Ramos – Jesus Exaltado

Clover “Be a part of something beautiful” T-Shirts:

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Congrats everyone. Those who won the T-Shirts better rock them at Echo.

If you are a techie in the church world, you should seriously consider attending the Echo Conference. These guys have worked their butts off to give you the best info and inspiration for you and your ministry.