If you have a web idea, here are the top 10 reasons you should start up that web venture NOW!

Number 10 – Your idea WILL WORK! Ever pick up a newspaper or magazine and hear about a web idea/venture (that YOU thought of before) just get launched and sold for a billion dollars (can you say Groupon, Twitter or MySpace). YOUR IDEA WILL WORK, you just have to “build it and they will come…”

Number 9 – The software is FREE! – What’s the cost of the software you will need to build your site? How about FREE!!!PHP, MySQL, Drupal, and many open source scripts you can use to jump start and build your web venture are all available to you for FREE!

Number 8 – Hosting is cheap and scalable Hosting sites like Siteground.com, BlueHost.com, even GoDaddy.com have very reasonably priced hosting packages (< $5/month) that you can use to initially launch your site. You can pay a little more for more capacity and bandwidth. This allows you to postpone heavy investment in the clusters of load balanced servers until your web venture is super successful with super serious traffic.

Number 7 – Viral Marketing is all you need to drive SERIOUS user volume to your site – The viral marketing tools that you’ll need to “market” your new site are at your disposal today. VerticalResponse.com, ConstantContact.com, LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, Craigslist, all allow you to drive serious user volume to your site without paying a dime for expensive print ads, direct mail campaigns and other traditional advertising.

Number 6 – You can make REAL MONEY! Even if you don’t cash your venture out for a billion dollars, people are making a living (a GREAT living!) with their web ventures today. The cash you can generate from your web venture rivals (more often exceeds) the cash flow from any fulltime job or “bricks and mortar” business.

Number 5 – Large Companies still laying low Large companies are still laying low with this economic recession which mean you will not have to compete with them as you start your new venture. Contrary to conventional wisdom, economic downturns are the best times for startups. But do it now, sleeping giants will only stay asleep for so long.

Number 4 – The World is your Oyster The web has broken down all geographical barriers for transacting business. Anyone with an internet connected browser can access your web venture. Paypal and Authorize.net allow you to accept payments from anyone in the world. Search engines, listing sites, etc. are all global. The world is truly your oyster (see my blog (Going Global!) for more on this.

Number 3 – Seed it yourself Because infrastructure and marketing costs are minimal, you can start your new venture on your own dime. This allows you to keep 100% ownership of your venture for a while longer until it becomes a going concern and generating real revenues. This could equate to hundreds of thousands, even millions of dollars, when it finally is time to bring in the investors.

Number 2 – Cash out Strategy – There is a real “jackpot opportunity” (trust me…more LinkedIn stories coming!) for any successful web venture. We are in a transitional phase in history where what used to be good business investments are no longer not. Real estate is no longer what it used to be. Neither are stocks, bonds, etc. (Even the banks themselves are different!!!) Very few, if any, “traditional” investments are currently showing cash flow or equity growth. And because of this there is lots (trillions of dollars) in investor money sitting on the sidelines. What does this mean? If your website shows steady cash flow and growth potential, you won’t need to find investors to cash you out, THEY WILL FIND YOU!

Number 1 – THE WEB IS STILL THE NEW FRONTIER The next google.com, facebook.com, ebay.com, groupon.com etc, could be your idea. We’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the success stories coming out of the web. The web is truly the new frontier and there is a “land grab” going on for anyone willing to put a stake in this “virtual ground” and claim it. Why not you!

These are the reasons why you should start up that web venture in TODAY!

Need help putting the pieces together. Call me and let’s get it started!!!

Luis
415-722-3786
luis@luisphpmysql.com

*I want to know what you think about of this posting. Comment on this blog posting.

In 1997, just like today, people were coming up with creative ways to change the world (and make lotsa money) using the web. Just the other day, I was cleaning out my filing cabinet and found an old client file from back then, that had all the invoices for what they spent setting up the infrastructure for their new web idea. Boy, the world has changed since 1997. Here’s a list of a few of the main items and how much my clients spent.

Infrastructure Cost of Launching a Website in 1997
Server – $10,000
Software Licenses (Operating System, Web Server, App Server, etc)- $30,000*
Internet Connection (T1) – $750 per month
TOTAL – $40,000 (one time) / $750 (per month)

Infrastructure Cost of Launching a Website in 2011
Server – $0 (you can use hosting for your new web venture)
Software Licenses (Operating System, Web Server, App Server, etc)- FREE** (open source)
Internet Connection (T1) – hosting ($5/month)
TOTAL – $0 (one time) / $5 (per month)


This is more proof that building the NEXT BIG THING on the web is JUST ABOUT the IDEA!!! and just like the commerical says…


What’s the cost of a great web idea…- Priceless


Let me know what you think,
Luis
415-722-3786 (mobile)
luis@luisphpmysql.com




* Windows NT, IIS 3.0, NetDynamics 3.0
** Linux, PHP/MySQL, Drupal, Joomla, Magento, etc. all open source and useable for FREE!

Wanna create a money machine? Combine Drupal and Saleforce.com together.

Salesforce.com is the leading CRM (Customer Relationship Mangement) tool, capable of managing customer relationships for organizations of all sizes. Everyday I see large Fortune 500 companies (Genentech, Oracle, Dell, etc) and startups alike use it. Schools and universities (UC Berkeley, Stanford), government agencies (state, county, city governments), non-profits, all use it, as well. Everyone knows how important CRM is these days.

Drupal is the leading open source content management system, capable of creating any kind of web portal, tailored to YOUR business, for use by YOUR cutomers. Its architecture and community are world class and what makes Drupal unique. (See my recent work to give you an idea of the types of sites you can create with Drupal. See my blog post on Drupal Bay Area to see all the different types of organizations using Drupal.)

Put the two together…and voila! You have your MONEY MACHINE!!!

Here’s how the machine works. Salesforce.com’s prospecting tools drive new visitors to your site and turn them into registered users. Marketing campaigns can turn registered users into purchasing users, purchasing users into upgrade/renewal purchasers, and so on. A custom interface can be build between Drupal and Salesforce.com to work as a feedback mechanism so as Drupal moves your customers through your pipeline, Salesforce.com is triggered to kick off the next marketing campaign. You can do this for every product, program or service your company offers.

My prediction is, with the internet’s reach, the cost of developing websites going down and CRM becoming mainstream, these money machines will be how ALL BUSINESSES will compete in the future.

Wanna build one for your company? I want to help you. Call me.

Best,
Luis
415-722-3786
luis@luisphpmysql.com

P.S. What do you think of this posting, feel free to comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Top 10 Open Source Scripts of 2011
- Drupal (#1)
- Joomla (#2)
- WordPress (tied #2)
- SugarCRM (tied for #3)
- Saleforce.com (though not open source, used along side open source scripts – tied for #3)
- Magento eCommerce (#4)
- MediaWiki (#5)
- Mambo (#6)
- phpBB2 (#7)
- Dolphin (#8)
- Bugzilla (#9)
- PHPauction (#10)

Honorable Mention
- osCommerce
- Xoops
- ViPER Guestbook
- TYPO3
- SMF
- PHP-Nuke
- Gallery2
- FAQMasterFlex
- Coppermine Photo Gallery
- dotProject
- PHPList
- phpFormgenerator

Top 25 (Drupal) Contributed Modules (version 6.x)
* for complete list of modules/themes available (in Drupal) see right nav – FREE “Cheat Sheets”

- Views
- Content Construction Kit (CCK)
- Token
- Pathauto
- Administration menu
- FileField
- ImageAPI
- ImageField
- ImageCache
- Date
- Google Analytics
- Wysiwyg
- IMCE
- Webform
- Chaos tool suite
- jQuery UI
- CAPTCHA
- Poormanscron
- Advanced Help
- Nodewords
- Link
- Lightbox2
- Image
- Backup and Migrate
- jQuery Update

Happy New Year!!!
Luis
415-722-3786
luis@luisphpmysql.com

Help me…help you… -Jerry McGuire Thru my ads (go Craigslist!) I get a lot of requests for quotes to build the next NEXT BIG THING (the NEXT facebook, youtube, myspace, etc.) Most folks have really great ideas but are not sure how to articulate their ideas to engage developers, get accurate time/cost estimates, find investors, build a team, etc.

Here’s an example of an email I recently received…

‘Hey Luis, great CL ad. I want to build a website that does everything youtube does, but instead of videos, I want people to enter their music. How much?’

Yikes!

If you have a web idea (even if you are not a web programmer) you need to have a good spec to get everyone on your team on the ‘same page’ (literally!) In Hollywood, to make a movie, you need a good script. During the dot-com era, to build a dot-com, you needed a good business plan. In today’s Web 2.0 era, where it’s all about the IDEA (not necessarily the amount of money you invest, can you say Twitter…), you need a good spec!


What does a good spec have?
You can go crazy with specs. In a prior life, I worked for a large insurance company’s IT department, where the specs were so big and thick, (as a developer) I couldn’t tell what they were trying to build sometimes. It got lost in the pages. You don’t need to have a big thick spec to get your idea across, it just needs to have three things that are well thought out:

1) Site Map – a sitemap is a spreadsheet, word document, even a piece of paper with all the pages on your site and how they link from the Home page. It should look like a HIERARCHY with the home page on the top, all the pages the home page links to on the second level, all the pages from those pages on the next level on so. This is important because it tells you (and everyone you need to support your web idea) how many pages your site has and how they are linked to each other. Here’s an example:

2) Page “Wireframes” – for each page in your site map, you need to have some kind of a drawing that describes VISUALLY, what’s on that page. If you know how to use a graphic program like Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator, great!…use that. If you don’t, you can also use MS Word, Excel or even a paper and pencil (use a ruler and write neatly) to draw up the page. Don’t worry about colors, fonts, etc. What’s more important, it needs to have all the components of the page in a visual. Here’s an example:

3) Page Narrative – for each wireframe, write a short NARRATIVE description (bullets okay) of what the page does. Don’t be technical! This should be an easy to read description, so that everyone can understand what the page does. It can be brief but needs to be complete.

How many pages?
Budget one or two pages for the site map, a page for each mockup and a page for each narrative. In other words a 10 page site should have a little more than 10 pages.


“User Stories”
Test your spec by writing down a complete list of scenarios of how people will be using your new site. These are called “user stories” in some software development methodologies (scrum, agile, etc), “use cases” in others. Here are examples of user stories:

- New user registering for account
- Existing user updating their information on the account
- New user purchasing something
- Existing user purchasing something
- Existing user returning something
- etc…

For each user story, walk thru your wireframes and make sure all the pages, entry fields, links, buttons your users will need to complete the story is in your spec.


No lose ends!
Final step, tie up all lose ends. The common thing about bad movie scripts, bad business plans and bad specs is they have lose ends. In a spec that means, features that are inconsistent with other features, features that are mentioned but not detailed out, etc. Tie up those lose ends and you’ll have a great spec that anyone can work with!


Need help with this? I have examples, just email me. Also need someone to do this for you? I write specs too!


What do you think about my definition of a good spec? Send me your comments.

Best,
Luis
415-722-3786
luis@luisphpmysql.com

*sorry about the top subheading…Jerry McGuire is difficult not to quote…

I’m a web freelancer with an MBA (GO BEARS!!! see About Luis). That was many moons ago but it’s amazing to me how many things, they taught me in business school, apply to the web development business today — a business, mind you, that didn’t exist back then (were there even websites back then?)

For instance, Marketing 101 taught me about market segmentation and how it can be used as a strategy to grow a business by expanding its market base. Take the GAP as a case study, they have three types of stores–Old Navy, GAP and Banana Republic even though they basically the same type of product, i.e. you could take any product from one store, display it in another and you probably won’t be able to tell the difference.

What GAP differentiated is the “look and feel” of each type of store – how they appeal to different “segments” of their market. Old Navy appeals to the lower end markets (teenagers and their parents, etc), GAP-the middle markets (college students and the 20′s set, etc.) and Banana Republic -the high end market (young professionals, 30 something set, etc.)

GAP (the parent company) became one of the most successful companies in the world by breaking the overall market of their products, into these three segments, and then grew these segments accordingly.

Microportal Strategy -The market segmentation strategy GAP employed with their stores can be applied to your website by creating different portals (microportals) that appeal to different segments of your market and grow your business.

Til now, the cost of setting up different websites/portals (microportals) to cater to different markets has been prohibitively expensive. So a microportal strategy was not really practical for all but the biggest companies. Only over the last couple of years, with the advent of open source, that even the smallest of startups can create a portfolio of micorportals that serve totally different markets.

With open source (translate FREE!) development platforms like Drupal, you can create full featured websites at a fraction of the cost. Drupal’s theming infrastructure allows you to create different branding for each microportal so it appeals to its target audience. Drupal modules allow you to add robust functionality like user registration, shopping cart, blogging, discussion forums, etc. for free.

Want to learn more? Call me.

Best,
Luis
415-722-3786
luis@luisphpmysql.com

You’ll see new specialized versions of Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn (i.e “facebook/LinkedIn” for doctors, lawyers, golfers, plumbers, etc). You’ll see new innovative web ventures — the “next groupon”. You’ll see community websites go mainstream. Businesses, large and small, will want their websites to evolve from electronic brochures to dynamic web communities.

What is the best way to build a Community (Social Networking) website?
Open source (translation – “FREE”) CMS (content management system) scripts are not just good for managing “static” content, they also have all the “community plumbing” you’ll need to build any type of community (social networking) website.

 Drupal, for instance, has built into its core version:

• User Registration
• Customized Profile pages
• Allows users to create posts, create blogs and contribute to forums
• Allows users to comment on posts and forums
• Supports posts that contain different types of media (video, audio podcasts, etc.)
• Allows for sophisticated searches of members, posts, etc.

With Drupal’s contributed modules you can:

• Monetize your community site
• Support organic groups
• Form buddy lists
• Facebook style pages
• Subscriptions
• and so much more… (click here to see some other modules)

You too should build one and and get in on the action. Social media is in its infancy and there is room for many, many more success stories. I want to help you. Call me today.

Best,
Luis
415-722-3786
luis@luisphpmysql.com

* I want to hear from you about this post. Please comment below.
]]> http://luisphpmysql.wordpress.com/2011/03/06/2011-year-of-the-community-social-networking-website/feed/ 1 luisphpmysql http://luisphpmysql.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/2010s-list-of-top-open-source-scripts/ http://luisphpmysql.wordpress.com/2010/12/27/2010s-list-of-top-open-source-scripts/#comments Mon, 27 Dec 2010 15:42:08 +0000 admin http://luisphpmysql.wordpress.com/?p=1111 ]]> Here is my list of top PHP/MySQL scripts that I was asked most often about during 2010 (in the order of how often I’m asked about them). Wanna compare these scripts? Click here.

Top 10 Open Source Scripts of 2010
- Drupal (tied for #1)
- Joomla (tied for #1)
- WordPress (close #2)
- SugarCRM (tied for #3)
- Saleforce.com (though not open source, used along side open source scripts – tied for #3)
- Magento eCommerce (#4)
- MediaWiki (#5)
- Mambo (#6)
- phpBB2 (#7)
- Dolphin (#8)
- Bugzilla (#9)
- PHPauction (#10)

Honorable Mention
- osCommerce
- Xoops
- ViPER Guestbook
- TYPO3
- SMF
- PHP-Nuke
- Gallery2
- FAQMasterFlex
- Coppermine Photo Gallery
- dotProject
- PHPList
- phpFormgenerator

Happy New Year!!!
Luis
415-722-3786
luis@luisphpmysql.com

P.S. Comment on my list

From left to right – What everyday looks like in downtown Tokyo (Japan), Mumbai (India), Shanghai (China)

What recession? I just came back from Tokyo and if you want to feel like we’re out of this recession, just visit any city in Asia. It’s not hard to find your next set of customers. They’re all out on the streets everyday in these cities. Best of all, they’re now like any customer in the U.S. with their iPods, cell phones, laptops, use of the internet, etc. And with the emerging Asian economies stronger than the U.S. economy, as of late, they have money to spend on your products and services!

How do you grow your business in this new millenium? GO GLOBAL!

With the internet, it’s never been easier for any size business to GO GLOBAL. Here are some of the reasons why:

• The internet allows anyone, any company in the U.S. to reach any market in the world.
• Open source website platforms like Drupal (with its multi language capabilities) allows you to build a website with multiple language versions to serve any market around the world.
• Search engines, social networking sites, ad sites (Craigslist) allow you to reach those markets, just like you would in the U.S.
• eCommerce allows you to transact business (Paypal, Visa, MC, Amex).
• Fedex/UPS makes shipping globally easier than ever.

What does this mean? A small bakery in Sacramento, California can compete with all the the pastry stalls in Daimaru Department Store in Tokyo Station, Japan. That’s your new market place!

Want to find out more about going global? Call me.

Let me know what you think of this blog posting. Feel free to comment.

Best,
Luis
415-722-3786
luis@luisphpmysql.com

DrupalCon 2010 came to town last week and I attended it and it was a great conference! Thanks to all the volunteers who put that great event together. One thing wonderful about living downtown San Francisco and working in technology is the proximity to Moscone Center, where many technology conferences make their stops (MacWorld, Oracle OpenWorld, and now Drupal)

As a freelancer I try to stay neutral with the technologies I use, preferring instead to offer what I feel is the best technology solution for a given client’s needs. Having said that, I couldn’t help but come away impressed with Drupal and its community.

Here is a list of things to like about Drupal:

Open Source - translation 100% Free!!! Drupal’s latest version 7.0 due to release in a few weeks will remain 100% free. Version 5 and 6 are free also.

Super powerful – over 4000 modules to build shopping carts, chat rooms, wikis, blogs, etc. into your site – all 100% FREE!!!

Great community – an open source project is only as good as its community and there is strong loyalty and dedication to Drupal. In the conference, there were 3000 attendees in the conference and every break out session I attended had over 100 attendees some more that 300. There were 3000 people in one room listening to Dries Buytaert (Drupal’s “key dude”) give his key note speech. Record crowds this year and next year they predict even bigger crowds with Drupal 7.0 releasing soon.

Lightweight/Extensible – Drupal is a lot more light weight than its competing scripts when you install the core Drupal application. You control what functionality you want to add with its module architecture which I like very much. The fact that it starts out so lightweight means you can build almost anything with it from a simple website to the most sophisticated Web 2.0 venture (great platform to give a jumpstart to your web venture idea).

High Performance/Bulletproof – many high profile/high volume sites use Drupal which give you a sense of comfort in your Drupal site’s ability to scale. (examples: Warner Bros, The Emmys, ABC, Beyonce, Avril Lavigne, Eric Clapton, Jennifer Lopez, MTV, BBC, Greenpeace, Nasa, Popular Science, FastCompany, Fedex, Linux Foundation, Nokia, Harvard, New York Observer, Recovery.gov (Bay Area: Yahoo!Research, Macworld Conference and Expo, Sun Microsystems, Novell, Siebel Scholars, InfoWorld, The Onion) ** Click here for more examples.

From the conference I found out that even the White House is using Drupal for its website. I guess, if it’s good enough for Barak…

What do you think of this post? Let me know.

Best,
Luis
415-722-3786
luis@luisphpmysql.com