How 5 years of reading HN enabled me to build the website for my business
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: How 5 years of reading HN enabled me to build the website for my business
#2If 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.
Re: How 5 years of reading HN enabled me to build the website for my business
#3If you stopped reading HN, you could have done it in about 24 hours.
Re: How 5 years of reading HN enabled me to build the website for my business
#4If 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.
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.
Re: How 5 years of reading HN enabled me to build the website for my business
#5I 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
Re: How 5 years of reading HN enabled me to build the website for my business
#6Congrats 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.
Re: How 5 years of reading HN enabled me to build the website for my business
#7The 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.
Re: How 5 years of reading HN enabled me to build the website for my business
#8Compelling 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.
Re: How 5 years of reading HN enabled me to build the website for my business
#9I'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!
Re: How 5 years of reading HN enabled me to build the website for my business
#10I 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.