[thelist] Standalone server?

Mark Groen evolt at markgroen.com
Mon Sep 18 11:14:34 CDT 2006


On Fri, 2006-09-15 at 16:18 -0600, Amy Johnson wrote:
> I have an ambitious client who wants a MySpace type component to his
> website.  He anticipates it to be well-used and I agree that it probably
> will be.

The myspace.com web site consists of a lot of different components
integrated together and it wasn't built in a day. However, someone that
has expertise with Ruby on Rails or similar could probably put the
pieces together in a week or two I'm guessing...I've only played with a
couple different MVC frameworks - seemed like one could create
complicated appy's as myspace.com fairly quickly.

>   He also wants his database to be accessible to his web site and to
> his office software.

Assuming that he's using Excel locally...and the web database is
MySQL...at the outset, all that is needed is the ODBC driver installed
on his local PC for Excel to "talk" to MySQL on the web. Not a terribly
big project, but could run into a fair amount of time if the client
needs someone to set up Desktop Sharing and create a VNC and install the
driver etc...

On the other hand...seems there is more to it than that though from your
question...it rather sounds like he wants a marriage of Access and MySQL
- would be problematic(?) but a quick Google did turn up an article from
someone that seems to have accomplished same:
http://www.aspfree.com/c/a/Microsoft-Access/An-Access-Front-End-to-MySQL/

Can't tell you much more without a *lot* more information. You need to
spend more time with the client and go through a discovery process with
him to determine more precisely what his requirements for the database
and web site are.

>   At this point, I'm thinking that it's time to get him
> his own server to host his site rather than use shared hosting.

A dedicated server with a good administrator is inherently more secure
than shared hosting, the nature of shared hosting is that other
clients/domains will be accessing the same processes as you, and it's a
bit more work to sandbox individual accounts/domains.

>    I've never
> done this with a client and am not exactly sure how to proceed.  Any tips or
> warnings would be greatly appreciated.

Get a lot more information from him and determine more precisely the
scope of the project, can't begin to give an estimate on time or cost as
it sits...perhaps a few grand or so...

HTH!

cheers,

	Mark







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