Your company's website

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

You said the same thing when you dumped me off at Kinko the Clown's doorstep almost 40 years ago. Dead-beat.

Deadbeat hell...I got $125 for you.

 

How is the web site going gnubler?

Wow! I stand corrected. Impressive.

[gnubler]

How is the web site going gnubler?

Huh?

[Joe]

How is the web site going gnubler?

Huh?

Lame attempt to get it back on topic. DCS was running amuck.

[gnubler]

Check out Hostgator. The shared hosting starts at $4.95 per month for the Hatchling plan. If you need more than one domain name, addon domains, or parked domains you will need to move up to the Baby plan @ $7.95 per month. A lot of people bitch about Hostgator being an over-seller, which they are, but I've not had any bad experiences with them. Unlimited disk space, bandwidth, mysql databases, email accounts, etc...

They also have a website builder that sucks and they have a crap load of free web site templates, quite a few for printing companies, that you can download and modify or you can build your own from scratch or install popular open source sites like Joomla, Mambo, etc...using either Fantistico or the Quick-Install from CPanel.

I will. Because we are currently paying over $100 a month for hosting + addons I wanted to look into something more homegrown. I'm familiar enough with Joomla and other scripts to build a site from scratch, but my concern is how challenging it would be to maintain the same tools that our customers use (mainly fulfillment orders). Also, we have a lot of customers that have already created accounts on our current site. I can already smell complications and they smell like nuts...

Will also look into the local FTP setup. Is it hard to get going? Does it make the connected computer more vulnerable?

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

How is the web site going gnubler?

Huh?

Lame attempt to get it back on topic. DCS was running amuck.

Boi?

[Joe]

Check out Hostgator. The shared hosting starts at $4.95 per month for the Hatchling plan. If you need more than one domain name, addon domains, or parked domains you will need to move up to the Baby plan @ $7.95 per month. A lot of people bitch about Hostgator being an over-seller, which they are, but I've not had any bad experiences with them. Unlimited disk space, bandwidth, mysql databases, email accounts, etc...

They also have a website builder that sucks and they have a crap load of free web site templates, quite a few for printing companies, that you can download and modify or you can build your own from scratch or install popular open source sites like Joomla, Mambo, etc...using either Fantistico or the Quick-Install from CPanel.

I will. Because we are currently paying over $100 a month for hosting + addons I wanted to look into something more homegrown. I'm familiar enough with Joomla and other scripts to build a site from scratch, but my concern is how challenging it would be to maintain the same tools that our customers use (mainly fulfillment orders). Also, we have a lot of customers that have already created accounts on our current site. I can already smell complications and they smell like nuts...

Will also look into the local FTP setup. Is it hard to get going? Does it make the connected computer more vulnerable?

Ours is setup on an old Windows 2000 server using the Filezilla FTP server. It is only used for FTP.  I have anonymous logins turned off and have not had any trouble with security on it. Every now and then I see someone trying to login as Administrator into the FTP server over and over and over. A quick check of the IP address usually point to China, Pakistan or something like that. They've never been successful logging on. I don't actually have an account named Administrator which helps. A quick IP ban stops it in its tracks. It does require opening port 21 and 22 on your firewall.

[NefariousDrO]

We sound like the most complex of anybody, so far. We're hosted by "Websites for Printers" which allows us some pretty robust features. We have very extensive online ordering, online softproofing, messaging, etc. I'm sure the fees are pretty robust, too. There's a fair amount of customization that we can do up to a point, and we even have things like business cards set up for some of our customers where they type in their info. and we get a print-ready 12-up imposed PDF! Like I said, though: I'm sure the fees are rather robust as well, but I'm not involved in that part.

[Syphon]

We also are hosted by Websites for Printers. Have online ordering, proofing, and clients can upload large files.

[Joe]

Probably worth these prices if you need all of this stuff.

[Syphon]

Probably worth these prices if you need all of this stuff.

Email accounts for employees?! I didn't know that!
I have been hinting for email accounts for those of us in our prepress dept, but the supervisor has been strongly against it. Big Brother rules our dept!

[Joe]

It's crazy to operate without email accounts for prepress employees. Of course we don't have CSR's here. One of the prepress operators duty here is that you are also a CSR and have to communicate directly with customers. Email is a necessity for customer survival because if we had to interact with them in person we would kill a lot of them.

[gnubler]

We've discussed the prepress email issue before. I think it's ridiculous that prepress doesn't have one. Even one shared account would be fine. 90% of the emails I get are internal - job info & file attachments from the CSR to me. They try to shelter me from the customers, but occasionally I have to email customers directly or farm files out.

If they're so effin' suspicious then monitor the email accounts, FFS.

Do you not have Internet access back in your pit either? :gimmeaflippinbreak:

[gnubler]

Email is a necessity for customer survival because if we had to interact with them in person we would kill a lot of them.

Hi, Joe. So when exactly will me, you, and DCS team up to start a business? Our tagline:

"The last printing order you'll ever make."

[Joe]

September 1st.

[DigitalCrapShoveler]

I think I'm going to start a sign business. I have a great idea. Came to me a few nights ago.