Sampa is a personal website creation tool that lets you customize your own freely hosted website. Unlike Weebly and Synthasite, Sampa is not as much focused on layout as it is on content. Site creation is focused instead around adding content to your site through modules. They’ve recently crossed 1,000,000 page views to their site last month on a $4,000 per month burn rate and have added their service to Facebook today.
Sampa sites revolve around modules. You can add modules for blogging, photo galleries, static pages, YouTube, Flickr, Twango, Amazon, Delicious, Blue Dot and Blogger. When you add a module, a link to it is added to the menu bar at the top. You can restrict access to any of your content to anyone, friends, or different Sampa members. The layout of the page is basic, allowing you to move around modules and adjust the number of columns. The design can be changed by applying any of the templates from their gallery.
The addition to Facebook allows you to create and manage your page right through Facebook. You can view your page and your Facebook friend’s pages through the Facebook canvas page. Sampa also adds a mini version of your site to your profile page.
Other website personalization services may enter Facebook, but it will be a tough slug considering the site’s rigidly spartan design principles.
One more cool feature from Sampa!! I use Sampa pretty much everyday and these guys keep adding features every week, it’s amazing!
I’ve been using Sampa for awhile now and love it. I especially like the way I can set up different privacy levels for every part of the site. And I can set up other people as editors so they can add blog posts. Makes sense to integrate it with Facebook — it’s got everything else!
I like the concept, but I find the design view a little bit overwhelming (at least for a first time user). It does look very complete, though. Facebook integration was definitely a smart move. $4000/Month… yes, this is the way it should be done…
I’ve been using Sampa since last year and I love it. I have no special knowledge about computer and never in my wildest dreams would I think I’d be able to build a site. Sampa made that possible. The new product for FaceBook doesn’t surprise me at all. What else would you expect from Sampa? I’m sure it’s a great product.
Way to go, Sampa!
I tried pretty damn hard to sign-up and I couldn’t get it. First, it’s impossible to find a link to the application in facebook, you have to go to their site. Then, I had to sign-up for an account, inside of facebook? Isn’t the point of facebook that I don’t have to sign up, since it already has my info? Then, I had to confirm my email, what a hassle. Then when I went to confirm, it said “link not found”, and then I tried again and “Oops! Our database just acted a little crazy and we could not create a domain for you. Could you try again later? Thanks.” came up. And you can’t blame traffic — the app has a grand total of 10 users. I give up!
@Ryan,
We found a bug on our code that caused this problem. It has been fixed and deployed already.
We need your email address because that is not an information that the Facebook API is passing to the apps, and a lot of cool/critical features on Sampa depend on your email address, like the ability to post via email and to receive updates on who visited your site. Also, it is the only way for you to manage your site directly from the Internet.
Still can’t get in…
Too bad Ryan is having trouble getting into Sampa. I’d stick with them to work out any bugs because it is a great tool. When I first started using is a couple of months ago I found it to be a decent tool. Since then, they have steadily improved the site’s tools so that now I’m really happy with it. They’re good people doing good work and making their offering amazingly better just about every day. It has everything you need. Yet they are adding more stuff that’s fun to have and making it easier and easier to harness all the capabilities. I really love being able to email content to my site from anywhere. VERY cool.
Seems everyone is bringing out Facebook Apps these days. I hadn’t heard of this service before. From my first look at what Sampa have to offer it looks rather good.
The $4000 burn rate sounds good, compared to other sites I read about here. But honestly 1,000,000 pageviews a month. I do that on a shared hosting account. $9.95/month.
Very cool stuff!
I have to keep a close eye on Sampa just to keep up…they’re rolling out new functionality all the time.
I know the folks behind Sampa and they’re great: talented, hard-working, and committed to their customers.
Ugh, Facebook’s biggest draw is that it’s nice and clean. This just opens the door for Myspace-like whatnot jumping out at you.
Very cool
I find facebook irresponsible in forcing people to use the “real names” rather than a nick name. The amount of information people post on their profiles leaves vulnerability to anyone choosing to use that persons information in a negative way. Identity theft and fraud are on the rise.
Besides how can facebook prove you are not “jennifer aniston” or Mr. Smith? Facebook has grown to measures that it’s initial purpose was set for and people should have a choice to either use their so called real name OR a nick name pending their reasoning for signing up to begin with.
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