

How 5 years of reading HN enabled me to build the website for my business - czstrong
http://czstrong.com/how-5-years-of-reading-hacker-news-enabled-me-to-build-the-website-for-my-business/

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polshaw
The site looks very good, but $122 monthly costs for getting your site to 'a
few hundred' visitors (mostly friends) is crazy.

Of course, the site works and looks good (all that really matters to the end
users), if you are getting a large income (and you got to that point quicker
because of this outlay) then it may not be worth it to care, but that doesn't
seem to be the case.

Personally I'm more interested in how you got a tech consultant position at
deloitte (which i'm guessing is quite well paid?) given your lack of technical
skills.. or, in what area are you skilled relating to this?

Also 'cpuStorage'.. i can't not think about a processor.

~~~
tg3
The tech consultant position is more of a "business technology" consultant,
which really means consulting on the business side of giant enterprise
software installs, like Oracle. Deep technical skills are helpful, but not
really necessary.

Not to mention the technical skills needed to get a website up and running are
totally different than those required to build an enterprise software
solution.

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IsaacL
I do think Wordpress, big hairy pile of PHP that it is, is actually a much
better way to learn to code than CodeAcademy or equivalent. In fact, it's
because working with WP involves so much hacking and kludges that it's such a
good way to learn.

CodeAcademy seems to follow the Dijkstra school of CS teaching... start people
off with the fundamental principles. Sounds like the logical way to learn, but
maybe it's not the most effective.

There seems to be a gulf between "I know how for loops and functions work" and
"I know how to use HTML, CSS, PHP and an FTP account to get a website
working". People also complain that CodeAcademy spoonfeeds you too much -
those of us who had to claw our coding knowledge out of shitty w3schools and
tizag tutorials might actually have been more fortunate.

That's why I like Wordpress, or similar platforms. I've known a few people who
accidentally taught themselves to code this way: they install Wordpress, then
install a theme, then decide they want to tweak the theme and end up
accidentally learning HTML and CSS. Then they start installing plugins, decide
they want to tweak the plugins and accidentally learn Javascript and PHP.

~~~
nicholas73
I don't think the two ways are mutually exclusive... in fact I'd say both are
needed. I started out trying to throw up a quick website in Wordpress and
Drupal, and found out I couldn't set it up the way I liked. So I taught myself
to code with resources including CodeAcademy. Now I can build a site pretty
much from scratch, hosted on my own server or GAE.

Without my struggles with CMS or frameworks, I wouldn't have known what to
code. But without the likes of Udacity and CA, I wouldn't have known how to
code it. But, I can now write a functioning webapp after half a year, while
working full time. I doubt that would have happened with just books/tutorials
or even a university course.

For what it is, these are great learning tools. I can't fault them for not
being designed to make you into a full stack developer, yet.

Though I still couldn't have done it without StackOverflow :)

~~~
ahulak
I could not agree with you more.

I think it is absolutely crucial that you have a real world project to work on
- something that makes you actually write some code and solve some problems in
a production environment. That being said, supplemental education that focuses
on fundamentals can drastically speed up the learning process.

It's almost like practicing a sport. There are drills you need to run in order
to improve specific skills, but without taking those skills and applying them
in a real game situation you never actually connect all the dots that lead to
self improvement. On the flip side, its not enough to just play games -
sometimes it helps to go the batting cages and practice on a specific skill
set. I treat my learning the same way.

------
powertower
If you stopped reading HN, you could have done it in about 24 hours.

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AlexMuir
I learnt to code when I set up almost exactly the same business ten years ago
- <http://www.thebigspace.co.uk>

I built it in PHP and MySQL and there was no MVC for me. It was a mess. It's
been completely rewritten at least three times, and is due another rewrite.

For about the first five of those years, the hosting cost £10 per year, and
£2.50 for the domain name. I believe the site now uses a small part of a
Linode $20/month VPS.

It's a fun business, but virtually impossible to scale. Good luck.

~~~
keithpeter
Neato

How do the students estimate the number of items?

Back when I was a student (we used to chase geese to get feathers to make pens
in those days) my most difficult to manage possessions were books. Several
hundred of them.

~~~
AlexMuir
They just order what they reckon and are usually 10-15% under what they
thought. We charged for what we actually stored so it worked out fine.

Books and clothes are now the core of the business. When we started people all
had hifis, 14" TVs, VCRs/DVD players, desktop computers, CRT monitors, boxes
of CDs and DVDs - all that has gone now. And books will probably be largely
gone in five years.

~~~
keithpeter
Sorry, the Web form only allows 15 items max. Do books count as a single item
or lots of items?

Note: I teach maths to teenagers. This business could form a nice interesting
project for them, one that they could actually understand the logic of. I live
at least 5 degrees of latitude below Dundee!

~~~
AlexMuir
Books go in a box. Choose the size of box to accomodate the books. Don't do
what everyone does and put all the heavy books in one box and all the bedding
in the remaining five.

~~~
keithpeter
Even better: here is a box. How many 'average' library books can you fit into
it.

Seriously, put a 'functional skills maths ideas' page up there and you'll get
tonnes of teachers linking to the page.

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smspence
I love stories like this, because it shows what can be accomplished when you
focus on something and just get shit done.

He didn't mess around, he just said "I want to build a website", so he started
building a website. When he came across a problem, he searched for a solution
until it worked. Sounds simple, but there are so many people who won't/can't
do this.

Instead of hemming and hawing, and posting on forums asking "what is the best
programming language to start with", or "is WordPress the best blah blah
blah", or "what is the best tool for this", and pulling his hair out while
people argue over Vim vs. Emacs, Ruby vs. Python, etc. He just picked some
tools and got shit done. Brilliant. Keep up the good work!!!

Reminds me of what Sam Soffes said on his blog here: <http://soff.es/how-to-
learn>

------
bio4m
I'd suggest the next step is looking into setting it up on your own host; say
an AWS micro instance. Will cut your costs considerably, since an Micro
instance runs about $15 a month + bandwidth. Theres plenty of guides available
on how to set up and secure your own web host. Either way, all the best with
your endeavour, hope it works out!

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lazyjones
This (HN post) is a good marketing attempt, but perhaps the best way to grow
your business is to add some sort of referral bonus (refer a friend and get
$10 discount). Word-of-mouth is powerful, more powerful than posting on HN.
;-)

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desigooner
If costs are burning a hole in your pocket, I'd suggest you revisit your WP
hosting solution. I think one of the shared hosting providers would suit your
needs just fine if you enable caching on your site.

~~~
byoung2
True...$29/month for 25,000 visits/month is pretty pricy. You could get the
same performance from a $6/month shared hosting plan with a WordPress caching
plugin and an Amazon CloudFront distribution.

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gregwong410
Compelling read to get beginners to actually take action. I'm in somewhat of
the same situation and found it highly relatable.

Agreed on the previous comment, cpuStorage makes me think of a processor.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I recommend reading old school text files than this method though. :)

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habosa
First of all, the site looks great.

Second of all, your home page says "Instragram" instead of "Instagram". Sorry
to be _that guy_ but I figured you'd like to know.

~~~
Ecio78
also it is Patrick McKenzie not McKennie (aka patio11) :)

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systemtrigger
Congrats on launching. CPUStorage seems a smart startup idea. Compelling web
site, thoughtful writeup, good luck to you. I lived in Lincoln Park after
college, by DePaul, and concur with your premise that the Chicago market is
rich enough to warrant such a business. Flyers in dorms, flyers at el
stations, flyers everywhere. Facebook page, viral liking. School newspapers
might help distribute your story. Stay tenacious.

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Concours
As for the form, you should take a look at <http://www.jotform.com> , (not
affiliate with them, just a happy customer) , they are less expensive and have
a 50 % yearly discount during this period, that could be a place to start to
bring your spending down

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jessaustin
There are definitely cheaper ways to get SSL. The simplest might be a
CloudFlare Pro account, since you won't have to migrate to a different host.
(It wasn't clear how much of the $99 WPE charge was hosting and how much was
an SSL surcharge. It's my impression that these surcharges vary quite a bit.)

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xordon
I read the website several times and one question that I just never found an
answer to is, "Where is this service available?"

I am not from the US so one of the first things I need to know is, can I
actually use this?

