Blog

Everybody is writing about Heartbleed this week. The reason? It probably affects more people than any other vulnerability we've ever seen. If you ever log into any web site, anywhere, your password might be revealed -- and that is just the start. The biggest problem?

Ha. Just got another message from a client who has been the victim of several comment spam campaigns:

Why is it that there is no top-notch Drupal shop in Seattle? There are several small shops here, and several large companies with branches here, but no really top-shelf, world-renowned Drupal shop based in this great city.

Previously we learned why a custom web site is not a car. But it is a lot like a building.

"Make me a building. How much is it going to cost?"

"My budget is really tight, can you get the project started and show me what to do to finish it?" -- Yet another request from several different prospective customers.

"I just want a web site to do memberships, events, and e-commerce. How come you can't tell me how much it's going to cost? I just want to know the price, like when I buy a car."

I've long been a Bitcoin skeptic, not necessarily seeing the point of it. While I've kept passing tabs on its progress, I did not think it was viable, or worth much beyond pure speculative game play, a forum for making bets that today are up quite a lot.

Clients love fixed-price projects, because they have transferred the risk of the unknowns to the vendor. Even so, if the vendor cannot fully handle those risks, the entire project might fail.

Ask any contractor the most economical way to get a job done, and the answer will be "Time and materials." The reason? You are taking on all the project risk.

In a few short years, dot-com will be a quaint throwback referring to a couple of economic booms, and not something to indicate a web site. Like the Great War -- everybody now calls it World War 1, since we've had another great war... Why? Because the floodgates are about to open on domain names, and so we're about to see the rise of dot bike, dot plumbing, dot gifts, and even dot dentist.

It goes something like this:

(Client): I want to add a shopping cart to my site. I heard that xyz cart is free, can you add that for me?

(Developer): Sure! That looks easy.

Whether you realize it or not, you're doing CRM already. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become a hot buzzword that all kinds of businesses desperately want.