Website Creation Recommendations
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@scottalanmiller said in Website Creation Recommendations:
@JasGot said in Website Creation Recommendations:
@scottalanmiller said in Website Creation Recommendations:
@JasGot said in Website Creation Recommendations:
Lots of places offer wordpress hosting for very low cost. Here's one example:
https://www.dreamhost.com/wordpress/shared-wp-hosting/They offer hosting, but expect you to be a competent, experienced web master doing your own database management and they never (AFAIK) give you cache access so that you can properly manage your WP instance. I know of no service like that where you get a good site in the end because to do so requires a level of technical integration at the app layer that they can't provide.
For someone who is just starting out, and using it for personal use, it will likely be a perfect stepping stone.
Well, the problem is that it's a much larger step. It's not an impossible step, but it's one that leaves security, performance, management, etc. up to you rather than having it handled. Not a big deal, but often a surprising amount of work for someone who thinks that they are paying for something and finds out that they may actually get nothing for their money. Paying $5/mo for hosting that might be harder to use and far less performant than a $5 VM and getting no support or services for that money is a bit odd, I think. If you are in need of assistance, you will want to receive that assistance. If you aren't, then you'd want to run your own VM and get all the power and flexibility and ease of use that that provides.
The "cPanel" hosts I think are a scam. Harder to use, higher cost, and slower performance than just running your own server. They give the illusion of getting everything managed for you, but my experience is that they actually have so much complexity that they create more work from something that was actually quite easy if you don't use them.
I went down this path convinced that standard web hosting must make sense and learned my lesson. Not a big deal, but I'd say it's the opposite of a stepping stone.
My personal favorite "What are you thinking" "feature" of cPanel is the custom compiling Apache options. Seemed like every time I wanted to change what is normally a basic option within an OS, I had to recompile Apache within cPanel.
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I wonder why cPanel is the industry standard?
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@scottalanmiller said in Website Creation Recommendations:
Vultr also offers LAMP, LEMP and CWP pre-configured options, too. I had forgotten about those. I'd still deploy from the command line, it's so easy and standard. But there are these "already done for you" options, too.
I forget that, but had thought (but didn’t) suggest a VULTR instance could be a simple, good option.
And you get snapshot option
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@VoIP_n00b said in Website Creation Recommendations:
I wonder why cPanel is the industry standard?
Because it's really easy to sucker people by claiming things are "easy" and they don't look any further. Same as like with macOS. Anyone who's used it knows it is the hardest OS out there to learn, but people spend a fortune because advertising says "it's easy." It takes no effort to convince non-technical people that "running a webserver is hard... so buy this thing."
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Selling "make it easy" solutions for things that are already easy is a tried and true pattern for big money making.
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Don't forget github/gitlab pages with a static generator.
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@jmoore said in Website Creation Recommendations:
Don't forget github/gitlab pages with a static generator.
That's amazing and we use it all the time. But given his need for the end user to make blog posts, that's why we said WordPress. You can totally blog on a static engine, but doing blogging through a code editor and then doing GIT commits and controlling a CI pipeline to get it published and deployed is not likely going to go over well for the end user.
WordPress is built for blogging specifically and shines at it. Beautiful editor, dead simple to use, automatic publishing, lots of built in media handling, WYSIWIG writing, etc.
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Any idea how much I should charge the client being that I have 0 experience setting up Wordpress?
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@Fredtx said in Website Creation Recommendations:
Any idea how much I should charge the client being that I have 0 experience setting up Wordpress?
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@Pete-S said in Website Creation Recommendations:
@Fredtx said in Website Creation Recommendations:
Any idea how much I should charge the client being that I have 0 experience setting up Wordpress?
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I'm definitely going to charge something as I'm doing the necessary research and educating myself on the whole deal. But lets say I charge her a flat fee of $100, and there's someone else with lots of experience who would charge the same, well she would be getting ripped off, and I would either lower the rate or direct her to someone else.
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@Pete-S said in Website Creation Recommendations:
@Fredtx said in Website Creation Recommendations:
Any idea how much I should charge the client being that I have 0 experience setting up Wordpress?
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I agree. An experienced person will do it in five minutes, and if you are charging for hosting, just roll it in. It's a standard skill that's expected of an IT department, it's a very common, repeated skill. And there are command line tools that make it just so easy. Just do it for free.
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@Fredtx said in Website Creation Recommendations:
@Pete-S said in Website Creation Recommendations:
@Fredtx said in Website Creation Recommendations:
Any idea how much I should charge the client being that I have 0 experience setting up Wordpress?
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I'm definitely going to charge something as I'm doing the necessary research and educating myself on the whole deal. But lets say I charge her a flat fee of $100, and there's someone else with lots of experience who would charge the same, well she would be getting ripped off, and I would either lower the rate or direct her to someone else.
Except someone who does this, every day, like me and loads of others that I know, it would literally be free. So charging $100 to learn something that you could get for free feels like overcharging.
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@Fredtx said in Website Creation Recommendations:
I'm definitely going to charge something as I'm doing the necessary research and educating myself on the whole deal.
This is one of those tough places. How much do you charge for learning something to then use to advise a customer. The problem here is that this is really basic stuff that generally they'd expect you to just know and be able to answer off of the cuff. Not that everyone can, but someone in an IT advising position should be able to in most cases. This is very much like "how do I get a word processor" or something else like that. Stuff that should take a split second and presumably you are already compensated somehow. If this is asked in the middle of a billable meeting, sure, you don't take 30 seconds to stop and start the clock on a 30 second answer, but you don't go out of your way to bill for it either, I don't think.
Now if you are going to charge for ongoing maintenance of Wordpress, whether hosting on Vultr or on a cPanel host, sure, you get paid for your time. But set up? It feels like it should be free because if it takes you more than the five minute install in time, you are getting paid for being distracted or something. If you really want to bother billing for five minutes, well okay.
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But, as an example, I have a one liner that builds a website for me. So if I am installing WordPress, I just run a single command and three seconds later I have a working WordPress site with a unique login. Literally three seconds is all that it takes.
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Thanks for the explanation.
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Now if they want you managing plugins, adding behavior, finding a theme, etc. Thats all totally billable. That stuff is unique to every install.
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I wouldn't necessarily say ZERO - but listed it as a donation - You mentioned this was for a church, and churches are Non-Profits. You could easily claim it as a donation of services.
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@gjacobse said in Website Creation Recommendations:
I wouldn't necessarily say ZERO - but listed it as a donation - You mentioned this was for a church, and churches are Non-Profits. You could easily claim it as a donation of services.
Sure, but services aren't tax deductible. So while it looks nice on paper, it doesn't count on your taxes
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@gjacobse said in Website Creation Recommendations:
and churches are Non-Profits.
Many are not, actually.
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@gjacobse said in Website Creation Recommendations:
I wouldn't necessarily say ZERO - but listed it as a donation - You mentioned this was for a church, and churches are Non-Profits. You could easily claim it as a donation of services.
I understood it was for her and not the Church.
