Looking for some help and advice, part1

[smilodon]

I'm looking to set up a commercial web site and am trying to sort through the various options available to me. It's something of a mine field so any geeky types who care to offer up an opinion or advice will have my eternal gratitude, and a pint if they're coming to the LAN.

Basically I'm trying to set up a web site with a sexy front end, that allows customers to log in and after entering some specific information then generate a number of reports, letters etc. that are then sent on to 3rd parties. the system will need

A Customer login / account system

Some sort of Customer management system (for editing customer details, adding new info etc) which I assume would be part of the login system

Content management system to allow each customer to run their account and generate their documents etc

Report generating / polling system (to link to a 3rd party company system)

An SSL encryption license would be nice but I'm not entirely sure it's a must have?

I've been given quotes in the Ã,£2500 region to set it up. The recommendation is that I use an 'in house server' rather than rent something at an external host. The servers recommended seem to be around the Ã,£800-1000 mark.

I'm not sure if this is the best route to take or if I should use a data center. There start up is cheaper but of course I'll be paying higher monthly costs this way.

I'm not sure how fair the prices are or which is the better option; self hosting or data center? Any thoughts would really be appreciated.

[Penfold]

Totally out of my depth (as you could probably guess) but good luck with it :thumbsup2:

[smilodon]

Obviously if someone does this sort or stuff for a living, then there's the real possibility that I could put this work their way.

[Benny]

Volume of traffic?

Basically is this a startup or something bigger?

You could colo it and get a web monkey to do your config. That would give you the resilience you would want.

In terms of code is it not just a passworded website with some CRM stuff on it? Is the CRM something you've looked at to buy as a complete package already?

[b00n]

You haven't given specifics on the purpose of the system you're talking about so this may or may not be an issue, but any time you intend to pass customer information around there are obvious legal issues and compliance requirements to take into consideration.  I'm no lawyer so from this perspective I couldn't tell you offhand whether encryption is a requirement or a nice-to-have; but I would suspect if any information landed up where it shouldn't, a lack of encryption would land you in the territory of 'not having taken reasonable precautions'.

If I had to guarantee the availability of a web service I was responsible for and didn't already have some kind of hosting set up in-house, I would just source it out to a reliable data centre.  Are you sure the advice to purchase your own server isn't coming from someone who happens to be in the business of selling servers and support contracts? (although now I think about it, Sun servers are great...)

The system itself doesn't sound terribly daunting to implement though I'm not sure you would find something off the shelf that fits the bill.  That said the country is no doubt awash with code monkeys who could use some extra cash in exchange for a few hours bespoke coding work (*cough*me*cough*) although whether this would be suitable for your needs would depend on the intended scope/volume of traffic of the system.

[smilodon]

Okey dokey.

The business is a start up so initially the volumes would be quite low. How much they would grow would be anyone's guess but as volume grows so to does revenue and therefore spending more money on the web site etc shouldn't be an issue.

The company is a credit protection agency. What happens is that some SME buys the service from them. They get a login and can set up their own account details as well as the details of their customers. If they need to pursue outstanding debit they log in to their account and activate the debit recovery process. This generates various letters that get printed and sent out to their customers. As I understand it the system streamlines and automates debit recovery and allows these smaller businesses to concentrate on their core business rather than spend their time chasing debt. It's a lot more complex than my brief description (I don't understand it all myself).

So the system needs to allow a client to enter details securely, activate some automated processes that print out letters (which are then posted daily) and to run various reports that provide levels of debt outstanding, bills paid etc etc.

That's really all I know at the moment. The basic question I'm being asked is:

1. is Ã,£2500 fair to design a web site and glue the cms system on the back end with the relevant report facilities, automated priniting etc etc?.

2. should they go for dedicated hosting, managed, sahred etc? The suggestion was that  having their own was that there would be no restrictions on what could be run on it and yes the person who gave that advice was flogging the server as well

Would this require ongoing support from a professional company or is it a build and forget system where once it was up and running there would be no need for paid for support etc from the designer?

Again thanks for the help lads

[b00n]

1. is Ã,£2500 fair to design a web site and glue the cms system on the back end with the relevant report facilities, automated printing etc etc?.

Hard to say how long it would take without a detailed specification, but to give you an idea, the average hourly rate for a contracted PHP developer is about Ã,£25/hr (http://www.itjobswatch.co.uk/contracts/uk/php%20developer.do).  Pulling a number completely out of thin air, I'd give it about 40-50 hours for a prototype.  Bear in mind also that most PHP developers are not graphic designers and will not be expecting to design your layout/artwork too.  Basically, if you want something that looks flashy and top notch you'll probably need to hire an arty type at some point, but you can probably get away without this if you keep the design simple.

2. should they go for dedicated hosting, managed, sahred etc? The suggestion was that having their own was that there would be no restrictions on what could be run on it and yes the person who gave that advice was flogging the server as well

A start up can probably go with a cheap business hosting package from a decent provider.  You have definitely been given duff advice, you should find no problem in getting all the facilities you need to run what you want from the large number of external hosting solutions out there. A quick google and I found this: http://www.fasthosts.co.uk/hosting/linux-business/ . That has everything you'd be likely to need and way more - shared, load balanced hosting, unlimited space and bandwidth, SSL access, you don't need to lift a finger to configure it all, and you can upgrade to dedicated hosting if the need arises.

It does raise a few questions that need thinking about though - for example, you mentioned automatic printing of letters, if the site is hosted externally where would the printing take place? And how is the information transferred there? Would there be someone responsible for overseeing this and posting the letters? All in all it sounds like there'd be a fair bit more to it than just gluing stuff into a complete site.

Would this require ongoing support from a professional company or is it a build and forget system where once it was up and running there would be no need for paid for support etc from the designer?

Again hard to say - most systems could be classed as 'build and forget' as long as nobody wants them to do anything different, but it's almost inevitable that someone will at some point.  The code itself should not require ongoing paid support and would only require hiring labour if any changes were required.  With external hosting, support for everything else is pretty much taken care of.

..and to run various reports that provide levels of debt outstanding, bills paid etc etc.

Presumably there's more to this that I'm not aware of but surely this system isn't linked into the accounts of the companies using the service? So would clients just enter the amounts owed and repaid or whatever?

[smilodon]

Cheers you're a star. As I say at the moment I just volunteered to help a mate out who knows little to nothing about computers.

I think they're keen on having a simple but professional design that runs consistently throughout the site.

Thanks for the info about hosting. I was suspicious about the recommendation for buying a server outright.

I have no idea about the printing. Seems the letters are legal and cannot be sent electronically. So somehow they will have to be printed and posted manually by my mates company. Maybe a part time secretary sitting infront of a networked PC? . I imagine that would need to be done from my mates home-office? It also needs to link into the ICC  credit checking service so it would seem to be a fairly big job.

I'm just a bit concerned about the price. Ã,£2500 for 3-4 weeks work seems a bit steep. I doubt anyone would be working on this full time?

Again thanks for the info.

[b00n]

That ICC service is pretty interesting, seems it's designed to provide data externally so probably wouldn't be hard to integrate with.  Any idea what they charge for it?

If it were possible to have a networked home office PC online at least during business hours then it wouldn't be hard to have it receive and automatically print letters and other documents. Depending on the urgency you could probably even get away with having someone log on to do a print run each morning.  All it would need then is someone to post them.

You're right, I guess your mate wouldn't be looking to hire a full time developer in a professional capacity, so I expect the development work could be done for considerably less.

[DogMeat]

The competition:

http://www.lariatsoftware.com/software.php

Base price for Lariat-IP with 10 users: $11,900.00, additional users are $890.00 per user.

[smilodon]

Thanks for all this. The Lariat link is interesting, we might even be able to buy that service and resell it? Who knows . I'm frantically trying to convert $ to Ã,£ but it seems to be an option to pursue

[b00n]

That Lariat system looks like the proper deal, but if Ã,£2500 is a lot for a system that you would own outright, isn't $12000 a bit hefty for an annual license?! :blink:

[smilodon]

There appear to be cheaper options if it's hosted. I've got my work cut out finding the best option

[smilodon]

Back again

I see that php coders are looking for about Ã,£25 p/hr (previous post). Would that be a similar rate for web design? I'm not looking for anything flashy, just a clean pro looking web site that runs consistently through the front pages and into the php generated stuff?

Lastly does anyone have any experience of using any of the CMS systems. I've set up a few Joomla sites but never had to try to get all this letter printing, report generating stuff sorted. I'm wondering if a Joola, Droopal etc set up with some community generated addons might do the trick. I doubt it, but I could save a lot of money?

Cheers

[b00n]

Joomla is nice, haven't used it for a while though.  It has a lot of third party modules made for it, like I said before though, you still might be struggling to get something that does exactly what you need - but if you can get something that will get you by it would definitely save a lot of money.

Not sure on the rates for web designers, bu tthe site I linked before should have it listed somewhere?