Re: [cobalt-users] They want FTP access

[Kris Dahl <krislists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 4/19/00 4:09 PM, Paul Schreiber at cheesefactory@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

> --- Kris Dahl <krislists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> So if someone requests FTP access, I would suggest posing it like this:
>> "Web sites these days are far more complex then they used to be.  This
>> makes
>> it much harder to use 'off the shelf' solutions (such as Dreamweaver, etc)
>> to maintain dynamic web sites, and increases the likelyhood of accidental
>> downtime.  For this reason, we do not offer remote shell or FTP access to
> 
> telling customers they are stupid is a sure way to piss them off.

Oh, I insist that we aren't saying they are stupid.  It just reallly easy to
make a mistake that could take your whole site down.  Is it worth that risk?
I consider myself to be extremely competent, and even *I* am not comfortable
making live changes on high profile sites.

>> our production servers.  As an alternative, we have provided (choose one):
> 
>> 1) An online web interface for you to update constantly changing
>> information.
> 
> this is useful ... if you have a database-backed site, you can make a
> php/perl/python/etc. frontend.
> 
>> 2) A qa/test server for you to 'stage' your website for production
> 
> *this* is a good idea.
>> 3) We will make the changes for you
> 
> They are at the mercy of you.

Well I'd rather have them be at the mercy of me than anybody else. :)

Which is why we provide a front-end for the day-to-day stuff and a
staging/test/qa server for the major changes that we make.

So basically, in order to compete on big sites you have to be able to offer
content management system in combination with a test server.

I still think that clients having direct access to a shared-resource server
is a bad idea for everyone involved.  Essentially they are wanting to have
the cost benefits of a shared server, yet keep the benefits of having their
own dedicated one--you really can only have one or the other.  The only
other option is to host in-house, which is usually not advantageous.