I used to like computers, I remember liking computers, now I just want to give up on the whole thing

[algeh]

Argh. All I ever post here any more is whiny complaints about how the world doesn't work the way I want it to. This is pretty much the state of my life the past few years, so I guess that's not that surprising. So anyway, me whining. Again. Dammit

Comments

[algeh]

I was referring to CMS as Content, but I'd rather have a proper Course Management System if I can do so on the cheap hosting through my ISP (I want to use Tilted because I've had another site with them since 2003 and they've been consistently good during that time, and I'd like to get the cheapest plan on this page because I'm not exactly made of money - they're also offering me a discount for being an existing customer).

There is probably some other kind of thing that I actually want - a Customer Management System or something. I don't even know enough to know what to ask. I'm just used to dealing with Course Management Systems, online gradebooks, and other kinds of student record systems, so it's easy for me to see how to twist something like Moodle into doing what I actually want and I have no idea if there already exists something designed for what I want. (I've been a staff trainer and/or building support person and/or a system administrator for several during my teaching career - such things tend to roll downhill to me because I'm good at twisting whatever thing the district already has into doing what I need it to do somehow.)

What I pie-in-the-sky want is for each client to have a login that they can use to access a private site with a blog that I update each day I'm overnighting with their pet, a calendar that shows any future bookings they have with me, a bill/payment history, and an interactive form where they can tell me the things I need to know to take care of their pets/house (most of my clients currently leave me several printed pages of information about things like when/how their pet eats, health concerns, and which plants need watering when - I'd like to offer a dropbox option where they can attach these files as well as a form they could choose to fill in instead). I am confident I could make Moodle do all of those things well by making a separate "class" for each client, but I am also well aware that Moodle is not designed for that task and has a lot of other features I wouldn't be using, so I kind of wonder if there is something lighter-weight that does what I need and wouldn't require as high-powered a host.

I could do all of that except for the interactive form/dropbox with totally static pages I create offline and upload and just assign each client a different password-protected directory, it just wouldn't be nearly as nice of a system as proper integrated logins and a dynamic site. It would also be a pain to code properly and probably end up full of mildly invalid HTML and break in weird ways over time. On the other hand, I could get the initial setup done in about an hour.

I'm also aware that I really need to get a domain and get business cards up places this week rather than spend the next six months building a beautiful site that does everything well. I can attract clients with a static website that just lists service area and prices rather than my dream website, so I need to just make a decision and go with it. I'd like to structure that static site in such a way as to make it easier to build the Site of Awesomeness later without breaking links, but I really need to not have this turn in to a programming project that doesn't actually advertise my business because it's not done yet and have it sit that way for a long time while I whine about how I hate computers and threaten to build it from scratch.

[two_star]

Hmm.

On the one hand, I made my static site with html hand coded in emacs, on top of which I used hand coded css, along with a bunch of css snippets and javascript that I found in various places, and when it got complicated enough that I needed to generate the files from templates, I made templates with PHP and used make to build from them. It works for what I want it to do, which is look like a site from 1998 instead of 1994. It's also a somewhat ridiculous way of doing things if you aren't incrementally improving your site starting from what it was in 1994, and it doesn't do anything fancy, and I expect if I tried to make it do anything fancy, I'd end up curled up on the futon and gibbering.

On the other hand, I just used wordpress when I needed a blog. (Well, there have been a couple of plugins and a tiny bit of manual tinkering.) The world is full of wordpress plugins, and you may be able to cobble some together to do what you want. The world is also full of other systems that are not wordpress that I don't know anything about.

Anyway. I suppose I should just wish you good luck with this thing, and not try to be helpful.

[duncanmac]

I forgot to mention that the HTML and CSS I used for the stuff this summer were also hand-coded.

I made templates with PHP and used make to build from them.

That trick (of using Make paired with PHP) is not something I've tried, though I can see that it might work. IMake (used in the X11 project) might go even further, though getting those "cpp" macros running together with PHP might prove awkward.

There also are programming tools such as Cake-PHP, but I have not yet used those.

[duncanmac]

I'm impressed that the ISP/host you chose supports Free BSD OS fully. Quite a few ISPs won't give support for non-Windows (or, sometimes, non-Mac) software. I wish they provided more support for Linux ... though, with the "blossoming" of the Linux market into dozens if not hundreds of varieties (flavors), that may soon become an impossible task.

There is probably some other kind of thing that I actually want - a Customer Management System or something.

At a guess, that sounds like a "customer relationship management" (CRM) system, particularly one that has customer service and support features. I found this list of CRM systems (in Wikipedia :-), but that list seems to only include one or two with a customer-service orientation, and only a few of them will run under the Free BSD OS (as "cross-platform"). From what (little) I know of them, there should be at least one or two that support this kind of configuring, though you may want to encourage the customer to fill out the form rather than attaching a file. [Natural-language parsing, even for limited subject "domains" as house-sitting and pet-sitting, is still *hard* for a computer to do; the form also may implicitly detect or prevent omission (or, perhaps, over-specification) of the information. In a different subject domain, I am reminded of the house seller who specified a house siding of "CBS", to the total bewilderment of would-be buyers. It turned out he meant "concrete-brick-stucco," but I'd bet most people were baffled what a building siding and a TV network had in common.]

Given that I need to keep looking for work, I probably won't be able to help much beyond this, but I'm perfectly happy to send you some more details for free if need be. [I have been out of the computing biz for years, and miss it badly.]

It's after 2:30 PDT [5:30am local], so I should be fading out here ... :-/

[algeh]

I was planning on reading through whatever document they sent using the dropbox and hand-pasting it into my system rather than expecting a parser to do it. :) I've programmed enough to know that parsing stuff like that is hard to set up and for the volume I need it's much better to just do it by hand (I can have a maximum of one overnight client per night, and generally people hire for more than a night at a time, so it's probably less than 100 documents a year even if I become wildly successful, and I can do the cutting/pasting while I'm dogsitting for the previous client since dogs don't take your full attention 24/7).

I think I'm just going to set up a static site for now because I can see that I have to give Actual Thought to what kind of dynamic web stuff would make sense and I just don't have the time right now. My competitors don't generally have very elaborate web presences, so it shouldn't cost me much business if mine's pretty basic. I just need something to put on the damn business cards so I can start putting them up on local bulletin boards and such. One of my competitors says she gets most of her new business through newspaper ads, even, so I may go that route.

[unkle_social]

Google docs? Good old fashioned email?

[duncanmac]

I have heard of people having issues with accessing GoogleDocs. However, e-mails may be the most straightforward answer to what algeh wants to do for her customers.

[clipdude]

There's a tool called Google sites, which lets you make a site that only some people can view. Google Apps for small business costs something like $50/year, and I think you can make it look like it's coming from any domain.

[algeh]

I don't want to use GoogleDocs because I want to be able to take my toys and go home if I get mad at my ISP, and GoogleDocs means I'm stuck with Google regardless. (If I have it all on my own domain, I can always switch ISPs and just copy everything over if the service starts to stink.)

[clipdude]

Sure. That's why I'm suggesting using a Google Apps account, rather than their regular Google service.

[algeh]

I assume that I'd still have to re-design my site from scratch if I moved away from Google in that case. While setting up a dynamic website on a new server after a move may be more difficult than copying and pasting a few static HTML files (although it may not be, I've never done so) it's still likely I could keep the same website design even with a new host if I use open-source tools installed onto my own server space.

[unkle_social]

You can have up to 50 users for free! Itʻs what I use for my derby leagueʻs website and we use the docs for internal communication. Itʻd be pretty easy to remove all the content and move if I felt like it - but so far why would I? Itʻs free, people understand it, itʻs free, and I use my own domain name. Also itʻs free, we can edit things collaboratively, and itʻs easy to use. And itʻs free.

[unkle_social]

Oh and the people who have issues accessing it? They have issues with most of the internet, especially when log ins and passwords are involved.

[algeh]

I don't want to use GoogleDocs because I want to be able to take my toys and go home if I get mad at my ISP, and GoogleDocs means I'm stuck with Google regardless. (If I have it all on my own domain, I can always switch ISPs and just copy everything over if the service starts to stink.)