@ Nate. I know you were half kidding, but it's not a bad thing for me to be reminded a little about contributing, especially for the hosting -- I certainly waste time when it's not there! With regards monitoring, I've seen some services which can send out SMS messages - just a thought... http://www.google.pt/search?q=website+monitoring+sms
@ Webbit. Wow, after reading all that, now we don't have any spare time either! Hope you can get all your ducks in a row soon. :-) On Dec 8, 4:36 pm, WebbedIT <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > cakephp.org is back up and running! > > > Your ability to grow your company has more to do > > with your marketing, project management, customer relationships and > > organizational abilities, then it has to do with the technical > > advantages cake brings to the table. > > Going completely off topic now then. I generally agree with most of > what you say about marketing, project management and CRM etc. > However, in my circumstances this does not ring true. > > I run a one man web development (self-taught HTML, PHP and MySQL - > some Ajax/JS - lots of bad habits) and hosting company > (www.webbedit.co.uk) servicing 50+ customers, mostly charities, I > would say 50% are hosting only customers (I manage my own servers). I > am married with one gorgeous daughter and as my business doesn't bring > in enough money to pay all of the bills, my wife works full time as a > nurse (regularly finishing at 9pm). We have no family nearby so when > my wife is at work and my daughter is not at school I stop work and > look after my daughter. > > As such 100% of my available working time is taken up by coding for > customers or carrying out business admin (accounts, VAT, chasing > money). There are no funds to employ an external marketing agency and > if I were to do so I would not currently be able to cope with much of > an increased demand, hence my company is firmly stuck in the category > of lifestyle, as it really only pays my bills. > > Although this is a million times better then being in full-time > employment, I have aspirations of being more succesful and executing > the various marketing plans that I have drawn up over the years. I > know I can't compete with established web agencies and I want to > diversify into running my own websites rather than creating them for > customers. I have a great business idea, which recently got me into > the finals of a regional entrepreneur competition, but I don't have > the spare time to code the various sites/apps I need to launch this > new business. > > CakePHP offers me a growing light at the end of the tunnel. > > 1. It has forced me to get to grips with the MVC design pattern which > will help massively with maintainability of projects > 2. Once I am competent in using CakePHP, its convention over > configuration approach should drastically cut development time for > projects > 3. Although I am a one man team, I can call on the collective > knowledge of the CakePHP community > 4. When I do have the funds to begin employing people, I know my > coding will be more understandable to those I bring in > > Then I can concentrate on marketing and managing my business and it's > customers more effectively. > > The idea is that I can get bigger, better projects finished faster .. > giving me the time I need to launch my new web business which promises > to quickly become much more than a lifestyle business. It's been a > steep learning curve over these last few weeks, but I am steadily > growing in confidence in using the framework, and know that even if I > have made mistakes, the principles it's based will make them easier to > find and correct. > > BTW, my organisational skills are terrible and don;t think I can > improve them, but my wife is super organised so when my business makes > enough money, she will hopefully join the company and keep me in line. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "CakePHP" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/cake-php?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
