I believe we are! After a brief mention back in September, we decided to buckle down and focus on getting ourselves ready for a launch as soon as possible. We couldn’t wait to show everyone what we have been cooking all this while, and we are now ready to do so.

Over the next few weeks, we will be inviting friends and people who signed up to get a peek at Atticous and try it out, giving us feedback while we further improve it for a full launch early next year. Atticous has come a long way since its first outing in how much it does and allows users to do, but we realised that not everybody immediately understood what it’s really about since it really is a re-imagining of things we know and are already used to. So we’ll use this first post as an opportunity to talk about the idea and concept behind Atticous, and what we have in mind for the next few months.

Very simply put, Atticous is your online identity. It’s a way for you to see and share everything that you are and do on the Internet — all in one place. It’s what having a website should mean, without all the hassles that come along with having and maintaining one. Of course, Atticous can mean different things to different people. It can be your simple, hassle-free, beautiful looking website, or it can be your one-stop shop for your entire personal brand.

We started off by adopting one mantra, “Let the users do what they do best, and we’ll handle the rest”, and that’s at the heart of everything — from the setup to the maintainence — in the sense that there is no set-up and there is no maintenance. The way we do this is simple; we save all your content from the services you use — whether that be tweets from Twitter, or photographs from Flickr, or posts from Tumblr, or any (yes, any!) other service that you use — and keep it up to date. All this content is then mashed together and used to build you a beautiful website. That’s right — we build your website for you. So, take for example that you’re a budding photographer. You will no longer have to give people different URLs to your Flickr, Picasa and Facebook pages; from the moment you sign up with Atticous, you’ll be able to give them one URL that shows all your photos, served from your website for that extra professional touch. Because we store all your content, it also means that even if those services were to go down at any time, your photographs will continue to look pretty because your Atticous account is completely independent. The same idea applies to any other service that you use. We are working hard to integrate as many services as we can, as quickly as we can in the next few weeks. So there is a good chance that we’re already working on adding your favourite service if it’s not already there. However, feel free to drop us an email if you use something that’s not so popular or you think we might miss, and we’ll work harder to add it just for you.

Our administration panel showing photos management. Photos from all photo services are aggregated alongside your uploads in one place to make it easy to keep track of them.

We’ve tried to build a powerful, yet easy to use system that lets you customise your website. Other services make you build your website by adding widgets and pages and all that ugly stuff. Let’s face it, this is ‘11, and things really should be easier. That’s where we come in. Your Atticous website is ready to go from the moment you sign-up, and as you connect the services you use, your content from those services will automatically show up on the correct pages without you having to do anything else. Should you choose to make your website look truly unique, our powerful theme editor makes it fully customisable — from the colours and background pictures to the text. We will be adding more themes in the coming days which you can choose to use — for no charge — and then customise using our theme editor to make your site look just the way you want to.

The theme editor in action. Here you see the background picture, colour and the website’s name being edited.

Atticous will be free to use during the closed beta period, so you can try it out without any hassles or commitment. We will reveal our pricing plans as we near a public launch, so you will have enough time to make a decision.

For those joining us during our beta, we hope you like using Atticous as much as we’ve liked making it for you. Don’t hesitate to to send us feedback about what you like or don’t like, and what you would like to see that will help make your experience better. For those who are not a part of the beta, we’ll be adding more and more people every week, so sign up for an invite and keep an eye on your inbox!