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Suggestions for a Startup Web Company
mochaone asks "I've always admired the Slashdot crew for putting together a great site that has vastly contributed to the internet experience. I have an idea for a website that I think has great potential also. I would like to know how slashdot (or any other webcompanies) got started and what tips they might offer? Should I use webhosting services or provide content on my own computers? What's a typical server setup -- separate boxes for web servers, database, banners, etc? T1 line or T3? How often should I backup data if providing content on my own computers and should I store backups offsite? Any other tips are welcome. More interested in the high-level, architectural issues rather than the "Use Debian over Redhat" or "Use Python over Perl" issues. I think those have been covered in other Ask Slashdot features. "
You need to answer basic business questions 1st.
What is the market you are serving?
Why are customers going to come to you, and keep coming back to you over others?
Does anyone in your group of people understand basic accounting?
Do you know how to run the accounting package you have chosen?
How are you going to link this accoutning package to your business?
And the REALLY big one:
Do you have the money to do this?
Sweat, blood and credit card advances only go so far.
Go to the public library, any of the small business web sites, and even (gasp) the IRS and do some reading. They will tell you ALL kinds of questions you should be asking. Like Insurance, type of business org., etc.
After you have done the above mentioned research *THEN* start wondering about DS1 or DS3, colocation, etc.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
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It's about the content, stupid Ultimately, the growth and popularity of your site is determined by the quality of its content, not its looks. Don't worry about looks until much, much later. Too many people shift too many resources too early into good looks. Remember, you've got finite resources. I've seen many sites fail because they spend all their effort getting the look just right, and never get the content right. Marketing types fret a lot about protraying the right image and all that crap; they have to fret about something because they rarely understand any of the actual details.
All code has bugs This simple law of programming applies to websites. Whatever ideas you have now about your website are not complete. Slashdot is always tweaking its content to create a better user experience. This actually dovetails with the point above: too many sites get customer feedback about things that need to be changed, but cannot because it would break the cool graphics, or the master design. Design your system NOW for constant tweaking, or you won't survive.
KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) People get enamored with the latest technologies and build websites that require the latest browsers with all featuers turned on. If you do this, you'll kill your site. Test with Lynx and make sure it provides an adequate (though not wonderful) user experience, then it'll likely work for everyone else. Cool stuff like Java, plugins, scripting, etc. are nice for sprucing up sites a bit, but if you depend upon them, you'll kill your site.
Focus! This is how marketing departments kill good work. Engineers try to create very focussed products that solve specific needs well, marketing tries to broaden the product's appeal, overloading it with features that end up satisfying no-one. Start broadening your appeal only after you've created a solid user base. For example, our company does business with another company that we have to help figure out very basic issues, because they aren't focusing on the technical problems but the "story" of where they are going. If they don't clean up their act, they will fail.
RAIL Redundent Array of Inexpensive Links. Grab two DSL lines from independent providers; that's all you need for a really popular site. Of course, that's assuming that you've followed the KISS principle above -- a lot of sites have huge graphics that quickly eat up bandwidth. You could easily maintain 20,000 hits/day and not eat up a 384-SDSL link. The chief problem isn't bandwidth by reliability. Even hosting companies like AboveNet and Exodus go down when backhoes take out their backbones. A RAIL solution solves this problem: DSL lines are a lot less reliable, but two DSL lines (from different vendors) are more reliable.
Backups You MUST have offsite backups. Also, assume any machine connected to the Internet will be corrupted (i.e. static content should be kept internally and regularly mirrored out onto the Internet servers).
Hacking um, you WILL be "hacked". Plan for it. I mean it. For example, your servers front-ending your site will easily be hacked, but if you plan on that contigency, you can usually harden your database server against further incursion. Don't believe me? Follow these steps: (1) go to Yahoo and search for "wwwboard passwd". (2)about every other link will be a pointer to an WS_FTP.LOG, which you replace with the file "passwd.txt" (3) run these passwords you get through a 'crack' program (4) poof, you thousands of passwords with only a few hours worth of work. Note: in this example, firewalls don't help.
Platform The underlying platform is irrelevent, in both security and performance. You should strongly consider PERL for dynamic content, only because it is the most used (and consequently, when you hire people to work on your site, this is what they'll know). Geeks like to fight over the most technologically elegant solution, but issues like hiring experienced programmers that can maintain it are far more relevent IRL.
Manage growth You will be too optimistic about growth in the beginning, and too pessimistic at some later date. You'll do a bunch of stuff that you think will drive people to your site, but they will fizzle. Then out of the middle of nowhere something happens and hits shoot up 10 fold. Be ready for both (watch cash flow and don't overspend now, but be ready to upgrade capacity at a moment's notice).
HITS Note that one of the Internet scams is people that promise to drive hits toward your site. This is all crap: all such techniques are publically available, and since this is your core business, you need to learn all of them yourself.
Outsourcing Outsource everything that isn't your core business. This is the Internet baby, you don't have time to build a company. You can't hire people fast enough, and you can't hire good enough people. You also don't want to be giving stock options out to people that don't directly influence the companies growth. For example, don't have a human resources person doing health insurance, outsource it to a consultancy. Many of the .com startups use this approach and have surprisingly few people when they go public. Conversely, the previous section is a good example: when it is your core business, DON'T hire consultants or outsource it -- do it yourself.
There's more, but I think this message is getting long enough.