Comments on: Business Launch Preview Part 2: How To Build Trust Online

By: Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 19:11:58 +0000

Gotcha, you are right it may be worth paying more. They are inexpensive but you can get lost in the large numbers there. I’ve seen sites restored from their backups though so at least they work sometimes. Thanks,
Brian

By: Lucky

Lucky — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 02:53:45 +0000

I use 1and1 but am looking to switch because their customer and tech support is so bad that it is not worth their cheaper rates (which are going up this month anyway).
I upgraded to a newer version of wordpress and something at 1and1 was not compatible and it wiped out my entire site. I made a backup but that wasn’t compatible either. I asked 1and1 right away to send me their back up or help me out. They said that they would put in a request and it would be taken care of in an hour or 2. 2 hours later when nothing was done, I called back, emailed and was in touch with a few people at 1and1. They assured me that it will all be taken care of. I called a few times over the next 24 hours to make sure that things were being taken care of and each time they said all they can do is put in a request. After 24 hours I got an email from 1and1 saying that unfortunately since it is after the first 24 hours, there is nothing that they can do for me and next time I should contact them sooner.
It did not help that nobody at 1and1 speaks fluent English.
There is price for everything and sometimes it’s worth spending a bit more for that extra confidence.

By: Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:21:38 +0000

Hi Dan, sure no problem…

A: For this blog I host it on Wordpress.org – love it! – and 1and1 hosting
http://www.startbreakingfree.com/go/1and1

But the site mentioned in the article was developed with Ruby on Rails and I’m using SliceHost.com for this since they are better with Ruby On Rails (it’s slightly more expensive).

B: Yes, SliceHost is doing the backups for me.

C: The software was developed in house. The hardware is all managed by SliceHost (outsourced). I think for webhosting it is much better to outsource it than to try and do it yourself. Managing servers is a hassle and it’s so inexpensive now (about $20/month) that the tax savings aren’t a big issue.

D: Yes it’s using MySQL. I’ve used MySQL for every web project I’ve ever done and I love it. Honestly I don’t know why anyone would ever buy a proprietary database when MySQL is open source and free.

E: Yes I programmed it. I wouldn’t be to worried about other developers stealing your idea though. In general, ideas are cheap. It’s executing it and marketing it and making the right decisions that is the hard part. An idea alone is practically worthless. There are probably at least 1000 people who had the basic idea for YouTube and 100 who tried it but didn’t execute it correctly. That being said, if you want you can have developers sign an NDA, but I wouldn’t let this get in the way.

You can try sites like eLance.com and Guru.com to get programming work done. I’ve had mixed results with this though. Some work has been great, some terrible, so you have to research people’s past work carefully and maybe give them smaller projects to work on first.

Hope that helps!
Brian

By: Dan G

Dan G — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:29:06 +0000

Dear Brian,
this is a great service your providing to the community, encouraging others to pursue their entrepeneurial dreams. I have a business idea of my own and would like to ask you for some direction.
My business idea involves a form based website, which his much like your own, which gathers information like First Name, Last Name , email address and a comments field (like this one I am using). I also have to email recipients that post messages, that will email others based on some rules … automatically when the original person leaves a message, keeping everyone in communication with one another.
My questions to you are as follows:
A) what web application(s) did you use for developing your site? What are the pros of using it, what are the cons if you have seen any? Do you think it can handle increased load?
B) do you use a backup/recovery system in case your system goes down?
C) did you buy the hardware and software yourself or did you lease it? I see an advantage to going both ways (ownership vs. lease), the former gets tax writeoffs, the latter does not enjoy tax write offs but gets low cost startup investments. How do you know if your being taken by an ISP if you decide to lease diskspace and hosting services?
D) did you build a relational backend database with this release (if yes what did you use? are you happy with it? Are there any limitations that you see?) if you didn’t build a relational database (why not?)
E) it looks like you developed / programmed your own site, therefore you didn’t have to find someone to trust, to share your idea with through development. I don’t therefore… how do you think I could go about finding a software developer or two? that won’t look at my idea and cannabalize it for themselves seeing potential or informing their friends?

Warm Regards,
Dan

By: Lucky

Lucky — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 03:44:29 +0000

this is so true. there are so many things in life that you have to give up a portion of the pie to get a piece of a much bigger pie. It is like taking on investors to grow your company. If you dont take on investors, you might keep 100% of the profits but with investors, 50% of the profits might come out to much more.