Really intro level hosting question

[Duane Morin]

On Sat, 21 Jun 2003, Scott Prive wrote:
> You have two stages here... "prototype" and "business". For prototype, I
> wouldn't hesitate on my suggestion.

Good point.  I suppose there's nothing stopping me from whipping up some 
stuff on my existing server.

> I suspect part of your motivation here is to have an environment where you
> can learn and manage a Jakarta application as it's a very useful skill. The

Well, I have that on my current home site.  I'm looking to see if I can do 
it for somebody else in such a way that I can get paid for it.  As my 
original introduction to this post said, I'm getting sick of having friends come up to me, who know 
less than zero about the web, and asking me for help because they are 
building a web site for somebody and getting paid for it.  These people 
basically use FrontPage to whip up some HTML and then ftp it onto a box 
someplace.  I figure, if I'm ever going to do a web site for somebody, I 
want the option of giving them a backend.
 
> big question for you and your clients is: can you find the app-serving
> technology you prefer (Jakarta) and at a price your customer wants? If
> either of these are no then what compromises can be made?

That's a good question. I'm no PHP expert (I know what it is and could 
cobble things together) but would I want to do that for somebody?  I 
dunno.  Not really :).  Funny, I was about to write "Why should I be 
forced to use technology X, when I know I can do a better job in Y, just 
because X is available and cheaper..." but then I stopped writing an 
realized that this is a fundamental part of economics.

Duane