Web services for synagogues

[phil at 1918.com (Phil Buckley)]

I ran into some of the same problems with my desire to help, and my desire to live up to the old saying, "only a sucker works for free". So I have found a way to try to do both. Let me explain...

Why not ask your synagogue if you could also have a crack at making a competitive site for them, for free... wait, hear me out. Work with them closely, and try to make it something that they really like, and you would be proud to have leading your portfolio of work.

When it's done, and they are thoroughly amazed at how they could have ever even thought of anyone but you, then ask them if they think other synagogues might be interested in using this fabulous new website (which of course you built to contain multiple cities and states right from the get go) for a small fee. Of course they'll say yes, and when enough interest is rolling in, you could even throw it on a dedicated server serving up hundreds, no... thousands.... wait... all of the synagogues and their info! Then you will be on the cover of Time Magazine as the guy who saved the synagogues in the US..... or something like that.

If nothing else, it will keep you busy until someone hires you ;-)

In the end, something done from passion can always be used to make a living.

Just my 2 cents worth,
Phil

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR  ***********

On 12/14/2001 at 2:37 PM Seth Gordon wrote:

>Yes it does. :-) This is going a little OT form Linux, but here goes 
>   anyway. I've always thought there should be a drop-in package that
>churches 
>   or similar organizations could install to get "instant" websites w/
>contact 
>   info, calendars, mailing list, etc. I knew a guy in NC who had done it
>for 
>   his church, and it was really slick, but simple. And it all ran off
>text 
>   files, so no DB was needed. I like databases, but it's cool to not have
>to 
>   rely on having one.
>
>There's a guy who started a service called "shuls.net" for providing
>just this kind of functionality to synagogues.  My synagogue,
>Kadimah-Toras Moshe (ktm.shuls.net), was the first customer.  The
>system runs under ColdFusion, so the ISP's hosting fee alone is
>something like $50/month.  (I don't know how much the whole package
>normally costs; since we were the first customer, they let us buy the
>service for just the hosting fee.)
>
>When I was told about the cost, I felt (a) shocked that someone was
>taking so much money for the service, since I had friends who had
>implemented all the same functionality for their synagogue using Perl
>scripts and ran it on Hostway for $10/month, and using ColdFusion for
>this kind of thing seemed like overkill; (b) irked that someone had
>spent all this time arranging for the design of a synagogue Web site
>without mentioning it to any of the Web-savvy synagogue members.
>
>However, then I realized that if I wasn't responsible for writing and
>maintaining those scripts, then I didn't have to field a stream of
>complaints about how the Web site looked and questions about "why
>can't we do it *this* way?..."
>
>-- 
>"Virtue has its own reward, but has no sale at the box office."  --Mae West
>== Seth Gordon == sethg at ropine.com == http://ropine.com/ == std.
>disclaimer ==
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