[kwlug-disc] Hosts....

[unsolicited]

Joe Wennechuk wrote, On 03/27/2010 2:05 PM:
> Thanks a lot. Your wisdom, and insight are very helpful. Hopefully I 
> will keep this job long enough to get everything working.

Khalid makes many good points. Especially the simplicity of having 
only a single platform. However, I wonder if this is an opportunity 
for you to begin migrating to FOSS? It seems that you have a number of 
functional points that, as Khalid pointed out, aren't particularly or 
necessarily interdependent. e.g. ASP vs. FrontPage vs. autoresponder. 
And from your comments, at least some of these functional points are 
new additions or enhancements, and again, not necessarily related to 
what's currently present. Aside from the hosting company issue, which, 
like Khalid I will leave to others, I do wonder about your inability 
to change your own permissions, and your lack of comprehension of 
their maintenance (upload/download) procedures - which is to say I'm 
surprised that the hosting company's provided documentation doesn't 
spell this all out explicitly for you. I would have expected them to 
do so merely to protect themselves for their own liability exposure.

Is this an opportunity, particularly if your hosting company will give 
you a vm, to implement the new functionality on a FOSS/vm, with the 
expectation, unstated to your boss, that over some period, probably 
years, that everything will get migrated over?

Nothing stays the same. As Khalid points out, API's and other stuff 
changes. If you and/or your boss can speculate that in 5 years 
everything will be replaced, the next question to answer is how you're 
going to get there, and over what time frame.

If you can reasonably expect to evolve, is this the time to start?

I get that going to a CMS is too massive a change to contemplate at 
the moment - you must shoehorn in <whatever> to the current 
environment. However, if you consider a long term migration strategy, 
which is to say FOSS (i.e. stability and non-moving target/platform), 
is this an opportunity to begin. Even if it means changing hosting 
companies where you gain comprehension, control, and a vm. [i.e. You 
would pick up / put down the current site on another host, to keep 
current operations going, and gain additional flexibility as you move 
forward.]

Arguably, you should already have internal development / production 
test servers or vms before uploading to the host - can you show and 
tell internally? e.g. See, here's a vbox vm running lamp, providing 
the autoresponder functionality, while remaining (database) secure 
because of it's one step removal from the front lines.