Show HN: Changeforge – $150 handcrafted sites for nonprofits • Hacker News Board

Re: Show HN: Changeforge – $150 handcrafted sites for nonprofits

#11

Post by ctvo » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 3:51 PM UTC

fiatjaf wrote: post #10

grimmfang wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really shocked at these types of comments (which I'll note have only appeared from HN) but it's worth addressing. Nonprofits have limited resources and thus need to be able to update their own website with a tool like Wordpress or another CMS. Static templates are sometimes okay but are not an end-all solution. So far in our first three weeks since launch we have had 25 applicants - half of which require a featur…

GitHub can work as a CMS for most use cases. At least in most of the cases where the nonprofits wouldn't have the money to waste on expensive hosting services every month, or to deal with CMS systems bugs. It would have been much better if you made websites static by default and only in the cases in which the nonprofits would really need a hosted solution you would do that. Doesn't make sense to do the expensive/slow…

"Expensive" used here is defined as a shared hosting provider that's available all over the internet for 1-10 USD a month, correct?

And "trapped forever" is defined as the inability to copy / paste the output source of the CMS into a static file HTML, correct?

Re: Show HN: Changeforge – $150 handcrafted sites for nonprofits

#12

Post by grimmfang » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 8:43 PM UTC

ctvo wrote: post #11

fiatjaf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub can work as a CMS for most use cases. At least in most of the cases where the nonprofits wouldn't have the money to waste on expensive hosting services every month, or to deal with CMS systems bugs. It would have been much better if you made websites static by default and only in the cases in which the nonprofits would really need a hosted solution you would do that. Doesn't make sense to do the expensive/slow…

"Expensive" used here is defined as a shared hosting provider that's available all over the internet for 1-10 USD a month, correct? And "trapped forever" is defined as the inability to copy / paste the output source of the CMS into a static file HTML, correct?

What he defines as "expensive" is ~$1-2 a month when all the websites are hosted on the same box.

My understanding of his argument is that CMS software traps the nonprofit while quite the opposite is true. CMS software actually gives a nontechnical user many more options to get work done on their site outside of the programmer community. Anyone can hire a cheap Wordpress guy.

This whole idea that we are trapping anyone or locking them into some expensive solution is laughable. One of our customers who is 70+ years old owns a nonprofit doing 1MM+ revenue/yr. He's been paying $5000 a month for their Wordpress site hosting. That means when he switched to us he saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in the grand scheme. This is an extreme case but many of our users have been overpaying for things they really don't need.

I just don't understand how anyone can criticize what we are doing as harming nonprofits. He's living in a fantasy if he thinks the average nonprofit can even understand what "static site" means.

Re: Show HN: Changeforge – $150 handcrafted sites for nonprofits

#13

Post by fiatjaf » Sun, Mar 20, 2016, 10:18 PM UTC

grimmfang wrote: post #12

ctvo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Expensive" used here is defined as a shared hosting provider that's available all over the internet for 1-10 USD a month, correct? And "trapped forever" is defined as the inability to copy / paste the output source of the CMS into a static file HTML, correct?

What he defines as "expensive" is ~$1-2 a month when all the websites are hosted on the same box. My understanding of his argument is that CMS software traps the nonprofit while quite the opposite is true. CMS software actually gives a nontechnical user many more options to get work done on their site outside of the programmer community. Anyone can hire a cheap Wordpress guy. This whole idea that we are trapping anyo…

Does the average nonprofit earn 1MM revenue?