Reply to: Plan B - Custom vs Bespoke CMS and Website solution

[tomtomagain]

Instead of thinking "I am going to create a product/service and sell it".

Think :

"I am going to conduct an experiment to see if this product/service is viable/wanted" and focus your efforts on that.

I have hundreds of "Plan B" ideas ....... the vast majority of them never get further than a mock up screenshot and a bit of research.

Ideas are ten a penny. The hard part is the execution.

>And there are already a lot of people baking cupcakes.

That's because there is a proven market and low barriers to entry.

[eek]

WHS. And there are already a lot of people baking cupcakes.

WTBS

Important things:-

Find a possible market then create the simplest viable product which allows you to test if you have a market for the product. That is a very basic product that works (just) with a means of signing customers up.

Give that to the first set of potential customers you meet. Then if they like it iterate, iterate, iterate until you have a viable business.

If you don't have a set of potential customers spend £100 on targeted google adwords and try and find them. If you don't get enough people signed up for that amount try something else because you are clearly looking at the wrong market.

As for website language and other stuff. Use what you want as its quicker to write what you know rather than learn something new. Only use a different language if it solves a problem you can't solve another way (plan c uses node for something because it was the quickest way to fix a problem consistently). Pud (of fu**edcompany and other start ups) still uses cold fusion because although its expensive to run its really quick for him to write.

[doodab]

You have fallen straight into the first trap that happens to most technical people and gone straight to the implementation.

Whether you pay £100, £30 or nothing per month for hosting is irrelevant if you have any aspiration to create a real, viable business.

What does your typical customer look like? How does he get value from it? How are you going to sell it?


> From the start I am wanting to get this one right so need to make the right decision. Any experience would be much appreciated.

Well make sure you have a market and have identified a solution that other people will value.

Nothing more dispiriting then spending 5000 hours coding to discover nobody is interested.

WHS. And there are already a lot of people baking cupcakes.

[tomtomagain]

You have fallen straight into the first trap that happens to most technical people and gone straight to the implementation.

Whether you pay £100, £30 or nothing per month for hosting is irrelevant if you have any aspiration to create a real, viable business.

What does your typical customer look like? How does he get value from it? How are you going to sell it?


> From the start I am wanting to get this one right so need to make the right decision. Any experience would be much appreciated.

Well make sure you have a market and have identified a solution that other people will value.

Nothing more dispiriting then spending 5000 hours coding to discover nobody is interested.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Has anybody used nop Commerce before?

[Sysman]

You should get on to the udacity.com python courses. Great way to learn.

Recommended by a former colleague who knows his stuff: Khan Academy

[Sysman]

How about using Django? I've just started reading up on it while I keep the bench warm, and it looks promising.

I keep getting that as a suggestion. Are there any quick start packages suitable for a beginner available?

[Sysman]

Also £100 is quite excessive, I am considering trialling it on a 1&1 Windows Virtual Server with 4GB guaranteed RAM... £30/month

Agreed that £100 per month is excessive.

I am currently paying £210 a year for a Unix based hosting service with decent support. It's plenty and then some for Plan B stuff.

[doodab]

By doing this you are promote yourself and let other people know about your pure awesomeness.

Awesome.

[BlasterBates]

I would recommend MySql, Php. I would also make your site custom. There are plenty of examples on the Internet where CSS style sheets, javascript. and html can be down loaded.

Free Templates - WebsiteTemplatesOnline

One of the nice things about php and mysql is that it is supported everywhere by providers.

I´m looking to build websites and I think it is the way to go. Another option is Java J2EE, for example Apache Tomcat.

[DieScum]

How about using Django? I've just started reading up on it while I keep the bench warm, and it looks promising.

You should get on to the udacity.com python courses. Great way to learn.

[DieScum]

Depends on exactly what kind of site it is. If it's just a small site for a business knock it up on wordpress. Download a theme for $40 and you're set.

If you need to do backend coding I would highly recommend google app engine hosting with code in python (or java if you want) and frontend using one of the popular css frameworks like twitter bootstrap.

If you can code in another language you'll learn python quickly and if you've never used it before you'll probably fall in love.

App engine is free to start with and you only need to pay if your usage goes over a threshold and even then it's cheap. I've got some sites where I just use the free account (main drawback is it takes a couple of extra seconds to load if nobody has visited for a while and it has to spin the instance up) for sites that need better performance I pay $10 or so a month and the instance is always up.

Amazon AWS might be a good idea as well. I've never used it just because google works so well but it's a good skillset to pick up from the infrastructure as well as coding side even if your plan B doesn't take off.

[camfish]

...There are so many routes to take to get this i.e. technology. PHP/MySQL or SQL/.NET and bespoke or get open source solution and tailor it....

How about using Django? I've just started reading up on it while I keep the bench warm, and it looks promising.

[NorthWestPerm2Contr]

Why pay. Amazon AWS will give you enough free low spec boxes to run a .net solution for free for a year.

I love Amazon but this site has confused the hell out of me.....

[lilelvis2000]

Sign up for BizSpark and I think you get a Azure server for free as well. Windows Azure Platform