I just moved this blog from a WordPress.com site to a site hosted on the Rackspace Cloud (Cloudsites). AND I’m amazed how easy it was! The steps I followed: Set up the site on Rackspace Cloudsites. Select Linux as your OS. PHP as the language and set up a MySQL database. Remember/write down the MySQL Database for future use. Go…
Category: web site
Best Laid Plans
“The best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.” – Robert Burns Well, here we are 34 hours from New Year’s. And neither of my projects are ready to launch. On the work front (the re-launch of www.buytough.com), we’ve had quite a bit go astray: First, the designer delivered the finished design about 6 weeks behind schedule. She’s…
Rekindling the flame: the love of startups.
This weekend I took time off from my “side project” to participate in the Atlanta Startup Weekend. For those of you unfamiliar with the event. It was essentially 100+ entrepreneurs with varying skills (technical, marketing, design) getting together to see how many “startups” they could start in a weekend – 54 hours (Friday 6pm – Sunday 9pm). I signed up…
Building a Blueprint – Development Plan
“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” – Alan Lakein Just because I am not going to write a full business plan, does not mean I am not going to have a plan. In fact, I’m going to have a plan for both the development of the site and the marketing site. First, the development plan. If I was developing…
To plan or not to plan.
So, do you need a Business Plan? If you’ve been following this blog and my advice, you’ve done some of the necessary research to start your Business Plan. But, do you need one? I’ve written more than my fair share of business plans, and I do believe they are a beneficial exercise. That being said, I NEVER intend to write…
Vetting the idea – Financial Analysis
OK, so you have an idea. It’s keeping you up at night. You understand the competitive landscape. But, does it make sense financially? I have to be honest, at this point, if the idea is keeping me up at night, this step is more about figuring out what it’s going to cost me to build it, launch it, market it;…
Vetting the idea – Competitive Analysis
Once an idea is keeping me up at night, the next step is to do a competitive analysis. And yes, no matter how great your idea, you do have competitors. For a website you might consider a competitor any one that is in your space (ie. search, social media, blogging, etc.) or you might consider it as any site that…
Hello world!
Launch is about taking an idea for a web site or web application and making it a reality. I am currently working on two ideas: the re-launch of www.buytough.com as a next generation ecommerce site. the launch of an idea I’ve been playing with for a new social networking / dating site. This blog will chronicle the steps I take to…