But as Paisano wrote recently, current conditions won’t last forever. Many sites will eventually become fee-based; others will shut down when their funding runs out, or when their owners decide to move in a different direction.

So when I evaluate a product that I’d like to incorporate into my company’s workflow — especially a product that will be visible to clients — I try to consider the product’s feature set, along with the issues raised in Judi’s 2007 WWD post. I also ask the following questions:

• Is the product open? Like a lot of people, I prefer open source projects. But I will consider proprietary systems if I am comfortable with how my data is stored and backed up, and whether the product allows me to do my own backups.
• Does it use standard formats that are easy to import and export? If the product will interface with my existing data, I need to evaluate how much work it will be to prepare the data for use by the new product.
• Can I host the product or software myself? Because my company does web hosting, we have easy access to web servers, bandwidth and backup systems. Therefore, I tend to prefer software that we can host ourselves. Maintaining a web server isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, although most of the major hosting companies make it really easy, as long as you’re willing to keep up with security patches and so on.
• If I can’t host the software myself, how reliable and robust are the product’s servers? Of course, even major services (like Gmail) have occasional outages. Here in Seattle, a fire caused a significant outage for many web sites just a couple of weeks ago. So I need to decide how my company will deal with such outages if we adopt the software.
• How will using this product affect my bottom line? Managing any new product requires investing time and resources to install, set up, maintain and troubleshoot. Proprietary services are priced many different ways, and may require an up-front cost, plus continued license fees or service contracts. And while open source products don’t require license fees, many open source software companies offer service contracts. I need to decide whether I want to invest in such a contract, or whether I think I can rely on the user community. Whether open source or not, it’s always a good idea to look at the complexity and maturity of the product, how likely it is to need support, and how active the user base is.
• What is my exit strategy should the product no longer be available? I need to decide how I will get my data, and plan for alternatives, if the product goes away.
• How likely is it that the service provider will be available in the long run? This one’s tricky, since as a small businessperson, I’m hardly in a position to see, much less analyze, the business plans and financial statements of every producer I consider. But there is a fair amount of public information available, so I need to do what due diligence I can.

It’s never possible to plan for every contingency. I had to scramble to replace my Sunrocket VoIP service when that company ceased operation, and I still have some SyQuest backup disk cartridges somewhere for which no players are now available. But with a little common sense, it’s possible to avoid putting all of our technological eggs in one basket and becoming too dependent on any one service.

How do you evaluate what new services to include in your workflow?

Image by stock.xchng user CraigPJ

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I’ve been on somewhat of an OS X productivity tools kick lately, with posts on EventBox, Mindnode and Manhour. So I’m going to round out that journey with a quick peek at a useful little tool that was recently brought to my attention, Sentinel Design Group’s Serverskine.

You may support any number of web servers for your own projects or for your clients, and keeping track of account names, URLs, passwords, etc. can be tricky. Serverskine provides a notebook for storing your credentials for each account.

The free application groups each server’s credentials into server, FTP, database, hosting provider and domain provider subsets, enabling one-click access to remotely-hosted control panels and suppliers’ web sites, as well as the server in question.

Sadly, the application lacks some essential extensibility. For example, the ability to add groups for commonly installed applications, such as Movable Type, would be welcome.

Serverskine stores its data as binary, SQL or XML files. Somewhat worryingly, the latter pair of formats store passwords in clear text; similarly, there’s no way to secure the entire database with any form of authentication. And Serverskine takes no advantage of being a native OS X application.

Interestingly, the creators of Serverskine — the Sentinel Design Group — developed it as an internal tool for tracking and storing server credentials, recently flipping to a public release to share their creation with the wider world. They may want to consider creating it as an extensible web-based service as a way to overcome its current shortcomings but maintain its utility.

Serverskine is neither clever nor sophisticated, but it is a useful server configurations notebook, and it’s free.

What do you use for managing server credentials?

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Sitemasher

I wasn’t sure what to make of Sitemasher when I first heard of it. With Sitemasher, you can build a web site, manage the content, get analytics, implement basic SEO, and you get managed hosting to boot.

But at $99/month, I felt the kerpow of sticker shock. I knew that I had to think about Sitemasher differently to fully appreciate its value.

So after a demo with the company, here is what I’ve learned.

Web Developers Rule at Sitemasher

Sitemasher is really meant to be a tool for Web developers to help them provide integrated Web services to clients and either hand over the finished site to the client or continue to easily manage the site for the client. There are two views to Sitemasher:

Dashboard View: This is more for the marketer or business owner who wants to have some admin controls such as viewing site analytics, adding some basic SEO code into the site like easy-to-construct meta tags, and set user levels. Depending on a person’s role on the Web site development and maintenance process, their user access can be set up with limitations. The user roles tool allows admin to specify exactly what each person is allowed to do on the site – from edit to approve to publish. Tasks can be created and assigned.

Basically, Sitemasher lets the site admin turn features on and off based on the client’s needs and the workflow everyone wants.

Studio View: This is the heart of the Web developer’s domain. In Studio view, the developer can build the site from the ground up and tweak their development environment to their preferences. There is also a Style Sheet manager and a Database creator. So when a developer creates a form, for example, Sitemasher’s system automatically ties it to a contact database to manage the contact information.

Not being a Web designer myself, I didn’t grasp all the designer speak, however, I got the impression that even someone with my 1990s HTML and Web design skills would be right at home with the easy-to-use site building tools.

Back to the Price

After seeing how robust and feature rich Sitemasher was, I began to think again about the price. Would I, as a site developer, have to pay $99/month to build a site for my client?

The answer is NO. Web developers can use Sitemasher for free as their development tool for multiple clients. Each client gets private access into their site during all stages of development. Then, when the site is ready for debut, the developer triggers the site to publish it live.

Sitemasher analytics

At that point, the $99/month kicks in and this is a cost that the developer can pass on to the client. They could then choose to be done with the project as the CMS, analytics and SEO tools are easy enough for a non-programmer to use so a client could handle the site from then on. Or they can remain on hand – if the client has a capacity issue – and use Sitemasher to manage the site for the client. The client still pays $99/month for their site and all the features while the developer can charge for their time as webmaster.

Breaking down $99/month, I needed to remember that we’re talking about:

• a really powerful site builder (ex: Dreamweaver $399US);
• a detailed analytics tool (ex: Google Analytics which is FREE but something like WebTrends isn’t free);
• basic SEO (this could entail hiring an SEO expert for hundreds of dollars);
• simple CMS (this could be pricey – $1200/year); and
• managed hosting (this could range from $25/month to hundreds of dollars per month).

Frankly, just the CMS alone could make Sitemasher worthwhile to the business owner who doesn’t want to mess with code and also wants a good degree of autonomy from their Web developer.

$99/month is the Basic level where only 2 people can be users (Web developer and customer and then later could be switched to two customer staff members). The next levels, $249/month allows 5 users (with the ability to add), approvals, different user roles, and versioning while the $699/month gives you unlimited users on top of all the features.

NOTE: On October 8, Sitemasher announced the Sitemasher Website Design Contest which runs through March 1, 2009. Find out more about how you can enter. First Prize: $1,000; Second Prize: $500; Third Prize: $250 as well as a one-year subscription to Sitemasher Basic and a few other bennies.

Have you tried Sitemasher yet? What do you think of it? What other multi-featured Web development tool are you using and do you pay for it?

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