Re: [cobalt-users] They want FTP access

[Kris Dahl <krislists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

on 4/26/00 10:07 PM, Jeff Lasman at jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:

> Kris Dahl wrote:
> 
>> 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.
> 
> I make changes every day on high-profile sites.  In fact that's why I've
> been so busy lately; one site I make changes on has been profiled on
> ABC-TV for over a week now, and it's been taking a lot of my time.
> 
> But I charge an awful lot of money for doing it.

Surely, you see the benefits of running a test/qa/staging server?  I am not
aware of any really major sites that don't use a three-tier system.
 
> My hosting customers get to ftp their own changes to their sites.  When
> they make mistakes, they make their own.  Sorry, but for a few dollars a
> month I will NOT take the responsibility for uploading.

This is why I don't want anything to do with that market--just not worth the
few bucks a month to do *anything*, let alone gaurente uptime, etc.

I've got mantra: "There can only be one lowest cost provider, and I don't
want to be it." 

> There really isn't much risk in letting someone ftp their own content,
> except to their own site.  To those of you who upload your customers'
> sites for them:  Do you have good errors and omissions insurance, or are
> you risking your entire company every time you click on "upload" from
> your ftp client?

Oh, I don't upload their stuff for them.  We develop the site on our
development server, put it on a test server, have the clients evaluate the
site, test, etc.  We post changes.  On the live date, I don't typically FTP
directly to the live site.  When I am ready to transfer to a production
server, I throw the contents into a staging folder(s), and then manually
move the content or write a script to do it all.  This reduces downtime and
problems associated with uploading large sites to a live site (it can take a
a while to upload a site sometimes).

Once its online, they submit major changes requests to us, and manage much
of the content thru the management interfaces we've built.

Incidently, I'm not real comfortable with large scale web sites and multiple
people uploading from this program or that program on a production server.
Honestly, its too easy to make a mistake.  A three tier system is the only
way to go.

-k