"Shameless Self-Promotion"
Joyce,
I am a server administrator, I lease my own servers in a server farm, this provides full 24/7 hardware support on a very reliable and huge "pipe" (bottom line: maximum uptime, no bandwidth restrictions). The newest one I designed the server software using Debian Linux and Plesk for the customer interface. Very secure.
I spent 6 months rewriting my shopping cart software, with a lot of help from customer ideas (mostly David Takes) for the presentation and admin areas of the cart. (Thanks again David).
I work with the customer for a design, no templates because everyone's ideas are different. I base my work on $50/hr, the typical design/redesign with shopping cart runs $500 - $600 before product entry (which the customer can do themselves). Monthly changes/maintenance is also at $50/hr, if needed.
I'm at the point that I insist on doing the work on my own servers, other hosting doesn't have the software (or updates) I require for customer security, and always ends up costing more of my time, so in the long run I either end up costing the customer more than I should, or I end up doing too much work for free. I prefer transfering the customer to my servers, but can also forward from their present site to my server.
Hosting is $120/yr (paid yearly) and on very rare occasions can cost more (high bandwidth and many GB useage like streaming audio/video). I don't "over pack" my servers, I just add another server.
If I may be of assistance, feel free to contact me.
johncfish at johncfish.com
"If you give someone a program, you will frustrate them for a day;
if you teach them how to program, you will frustrate them for a lifetime." |