Informed Networker Blog

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Google does a good job at almost everything it sets its hand to (excluding Lively - their new 3D world). We already use Google Analytics to monitor our traffic and now we have just added Google Mail as our official mail host. So when you send emails to an @informednetworker.com address you know its hitting Google’s servers.

Why use Gmail? Well, the reasons are quite simple:

• We don’t have to install a pop3/imap server on any of our servers, reducing server load.
• We don’t have the additional surface area created by mail servers for hackers to exploit.
• We don’t have the additional knowledge curve or maintenance time required to maintain the server.
• We can use our own domain name (e.g. @informednetworker.com) while receiving all the benefits of Google’s email service.
• Its massively redundant and distributed.
• Its free (okay, the premium isn’t, but who needs the premium?).

We do use sendmail on our servers. Why? Well, simply put PHP’s mail() function just doesn’t like much else. Yes, you can install Postfix, etc. but you can’t just bounce the emails directly off remote servers (e.g. Google). So, we do have to have sendmail…But it just sends emails.

On the same topic, we also implemented reverse DNS records for our sendmail server and added SPF records to handle all of the various servers that may send email for us.

Additionally, we will soon be evaluating another Google product - their Ad Manager. We currently use the open source OpenX, but once again - if you can outsource it why run it in house? The usual advantages apply (smaller surface area, less server load, highly distributed). We haven’t been particularly happy with OpenX anyways:

• Its awfully big for ad management.
• Its interface isn’t the most intuitive.
• It sometimes seems to get confused on stats.
• Upgrades are a pain in the posterior.

If we can let go of OpenX, we will gladly do so…but that time is yet to come. We’ll start running some test campaigns utilizing Ad Manager.

Finally, if anyone has suggestions on how to do things better than using mail() and sendmail or an alternative to OpenX (or why we should stick w/OpenX), we’d love to hear from you!

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This idea seems so obvious to me that I imagine someone somewhere must have already written it. But thus far I haven’t stumbled across this application - so I figured I’d throw the idea out there. Perhaps someone will pick it up, or if not, perhaps there is already an application as I will describe out there (if so, please let me know).

Here’s the dilemma. Lets say for some reason you aren’t using version control for your team (we are). Let’s say JonDoe uploads file1.php. Now, lets say that JaneDoe wants to make sure she has all the latest files. If they aren’t using version control there is no easy way to quickly pull down the latest files from the FTP server. What JaneDoe can do is download the entire site and then perform a WinMerge on the resultant directory and her local copy to find differences - but ahh, this is a pain.

The solution? Well, yes, version control. But let’s say there are instances where one may still need to sync up what is actually on the live ftp server with what is on your local machine (for example, a dynamic page file creation utility). In this instance we need an application that checks the CRC of each file on the FTP server against those of the local machine and uses a WinMerge-like interface to resolve conflicts. See how beautiful that would be?

Over the next few weeks I’ll be spattering in posts on our marketing efforts. Hopefully we can help others make intelligent decisions on who to utilize - especially for PPC efforts. Our main marketing efforts currently are pointed towards: 7Search, Google Adsense, StumbleUpon Ads, Facebook Ads, Microsoft adCenter, SearchFeed, Findology, Clicksor and Snap. Those who didn’t make our primary list include Miva, Kanoodle, GoClick, Lycos, Looksmart, Yahoo Ads, Search123, ABCSearch, AdOn Network, and Ask. This was for various reasons namely (a) some were too expensive, (b) some where convoluted or lacked features, and (c) we had too many ad providers already and wanted to only deal with a manageable number. Our ad budget is far outweighed by the traffic available.

Today I want to discuss Findology. Findology servers over 2 billion queries per month through its own search and a network of member services. Their interface is fairly straightforward, signing up is easy, they have a $25 minimum account deposit. The first issue we encountered was that we had a coupon for a $50 signup bonus but never saw a place to enter it during the signup process (maybe we are just blind).

The second issue we ran into was the lack of a keyword suggestion tool. While there are third-party tools available, the provider having one is ideal as they can offer insight into the exact numbers of queries available for a given keyword on a monthly basis and the average cost per position for queries.

We watched over the next few days the traffic we received from Findology. The quantity was good - 1,016 visitors in a relatively short period. But the time spend per stay (around 11 seconds) and the bounce rate (number of people who left after viewing one page) was pretty high - around 90.75%, compared to a site average of 62.66% - around a 30% increase. This is compared to a campaign run with StumbleUpon that resulted in 1,108 visits, average stay of 30 seconds, and a bounce rate of 81.50%. Granted, the price per vistor from StumbleUpon was higher. One average we spent $.03 per visitor with Findology and $.05 per visitor with StumbleUpon.

We’ve discontinued our campaign with Findology and have contacted them requesting guidance on improving our retention rate with them. Depending on their response will determine our future utilization of their services. At this juncture we are happy with the quantity of traffic they are able to deliver but the jury is out on the quality and the lack of a built-in keyword suggestion tool is significant.

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Informed Networker has a two pronged goal: (1) to offer IT Professionals ever increasing value through centralized and summarized knowledge dispersal and (2) to make money. Neither goal is exclusive to the other. It is my (David Mackey) philosophy that a business is most effective in driving revenue when it most effectively services its target audience. Business is about a symbiotic relationship - a win-win situation.

That said, I want to talk to you about one of the ways we intend to increase the value of Informed Networker to IT Professionals - a goal that is within our two week timeline to complete before August 1st (thus far we are on track with our goals).  At the same time I want to note that our other heavy emphasis is recruiting advertisers - not because revenue is our primary concern but because it is of equal concern. We cannot offer a service to you without revenue. But, there isn’t much interesting to talk about generating revenue, so we’ll focus on the topic of increasing value.

One of the ways we intend to increase value for you - our target audience - is by implementing a related stories system. The concept is relatively simple - though implementation is not and with each phase of the release requires greater complexity and automation. Our target is to release Phase 1 by August 1st.

• Phase 1: Editors will be able to note relationships between stories. We will utilize the concept of a master/child relationship similar to that used by Techmeme. This will reduce redundancy in our story headlines while still providing depth. Instead of child stories appearing as separate entities they will appear underneath the master story in a smaller font and with only their title being displayed - this will be true on both the story summary pages and the story details page.
• Phase 2: Users will be allowed to create relationships between stories. This will operate on a two-function model. First, a user may recommend a relationship between a story and an editor may approve the relationship. Secondly, if enough users recommend a relationship the relationship will be automatically formed without need for manual intervention by a editor.
• Phase 3: We’ll be creating a tag cloud visible to both editors and the general user populace. It will display “clouds” of similar story activity. One will be able to utilize AJAX functionality to drag and drop stories into relationships - quickly and effectively affirming the server’s automatic analysis of story content.

We are excited about this new functionality - though it is only one of many new features we intend to bring to Informed Networker over the upcoming weeks and months. We hope you will continue to support us as we push forward in this endeavor.

Thanks: We’d like to take a moment to thank Andrew Vogel (voglabv) for his early recommendation of this feature and continued insistence upon its necessity. Andrew has played a key role throughout the development of Informed Networker.

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We’ve discussed in previous posts the cloud-based infrastructure of Informed Networker and some of the details of our system architecture. In this post we will focus on another aspect of Informed Networker’s infrastructure - the client side. We’ll look at the various applications that make up a regular portion of my day.

Microsoft Windows Vista SP1.

I’m running Windows Vista SP1 on both my desktop and laptop. As a Network Engineer I decided to switch to Vista nearly as soon as it was released. I knew eventually I would be responsible for migrating users to Vista and it seemed wise to dogfood Vista to myself first. The first few months were difficult - and until SP1 was released I couldn’t recommend Vista. But now I’m fairly happy with the OS and surprised at all the continued mumbling (perhaps sometime soon I’ll respond to some of this grumbling).

MP Software’s phpDesigner 2008.

I looked at a wide variety of PHP IDE’s before settling on MP Software’s phpDesigner. I chose MP Software for a number of reasons - featureset, price, and usability. phpDesigner is intuitive. My only complaint currently is the inability to collapse portions of code (something which the author acknowledges but at this time doesn’t intend to rectify).

TortoiseSVN.

A great little open source/free subversion client. It integrates into Windows Explorer and makes utilizing Subversion intuitive. For those who aren’t familiar with Subversion, it is for source control. It allows one to keep multiple versions of files, move back to old versions of files, leave notes on enhancements, merge code, etc. Another bonus with TortoiseSVN is that it integrates seamlessly with phpDesigner.

webYog’s SQLyog Enterprise.

A great application that handles a wide variety of SQL management tasks. Besides basic query management it includes the ability to create and schedule regular sql backups and the ability to synchronize data and schemas between databases (e.g. a development and live environment). Not free, but not too expensive either.

FileZilla.

An open source FTP client developed by Tim Kosse and faithfully maintained over a number of years. An FTP client allows one to upload/download files to/from a remote server.

Pidgin.

Pidgin is an open source (notice a theme?) instant messaging client. It allows one to talk on a number of different networks all at once - e.g. AOL, Yahoo, and Google. This makes it a must have when you are working in a distributed workforce environment.

PuTTY.

This little nifty application is only at version 0.60 but reflects the open source culture of conservative versioning. If it was a commercial application it would be in its second or third version. PuTTY includes several separate applications including an SSH/Telnet client (allowing one to remotely connect to a server as if at the command-line), a SCP/SFTP client, etc.

Mozilla Thunderbird.

While I once used Pegasus, I now use Mozilla Thunderbird - and have for several years. Thunderbird is the lesser-known sibling of Mozilla Firefox. Thunderbird is an email client - and once you install the Lightning add-on it also becomes a calendaring application. Yeah, I could use a web-based GUI, but I prefer the desktop client. I have thousands of emails categorized and sub-categorized with hundreds of new emails arriving every day (thanks master spammers for the steady flow of garbage…don’t worry, I pass all your great viagra ads and don’t i want to meet you in person ads immediately off to Knujon).

WinMerge.

Merging code is a constant task. One of the ways I keep updated on what the developers are doing is by merging the code they give me with my existing codebase (they also post it to the svn). This allows me to watch how the code changes. Its also useful when the underlying open source applications are upgraded and I have to merge the now somewhat differentiated code together. WinMerge is a great application that allows one to quickly see the differences between two files - or two directories.

OpenOffice.org and Google Docs.

I use the software application OpenOffice.org as an office suite instead of Microsoft Office. It includes a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and database application - and can save in Microsoft’s formats. What else could I need? Docs is nice when doing light editing. I’d love to see some better synchronization tools between the two (there are some, just none I’ve been impressed by).

Well, thats a long enough list already - but for honorable mention I’ll just note Opera, Paint.NET, Safari, Jungle Disk, Firefox, Internet Explorer, Notepad++, RescueTime, Skype, TUGZip, FeedReader, and VMWare Server.

Dave spends most of his time on the floor. Not that he doesn’t have a desk, he just prefers the floor. More working room. He shifts from pose to pose every half-hour. Sometimes stretches and walks around. Most of his time is spent in his small, but ample home office.

At midnight the day begins. His developers in India are arriving at their offices and its time to coordinate the days projects. Conversation occurs mainly through Instant Messenger. Demos are provided and occasional emails augment the conversation. Then its time for some sleep.

While Dave is asleep some of his editors - including Margaret - continue typing away. In the morning there are more stories, spam has been squashed, and the developers have advanced on their projects. Dave reviews the mornings projects, helps deploy code, and troubleshoot any outstanding issues.

Most of Dave’s other editors are awake now as well, and much of the work begins in earnest. Andrew, Jon, Sajid, Paul, and Martha all submit stories throughout the day - ensuring a steady stream of fresh news and interacting with the site’s visitors. Dave takes part in the story submission and conversation process as well.

Emails and instant messages shoot back and forth. Communication and motivation are key to continued success. Editors give continuous feedback and Dave fixes many of the smaller bugs or adds feature enhancements himself, while major projects are handed off to the India developers.

Each day generally has a theme. One day focuses on marketing, another on advertising sales, another on fresh content or seo, another on preparing the viral video campaign. No one task ever dominates a day - Dave shifts gears, but the emphasis is defined.

Breaks are taken. Food is eaten. An hour or two for relaxation. More emails to answer, more contacts to generate, more visitors to interact with. Bills to pay, updates to apply, software to deploy, systems to scale. Then its midnight again and time to start the process over again.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t spend all day in front of the computer. There is sleep. And yes, my wonderful wife Charity ensures I spend some time socializing with others (and her). I’m involved in a number of external activities but for the safe of my privacy and security I won’t delve into them here (yes, I know you want to stalk me).

Image by Matalyn via Flickr.
NO THIS ISN’T OUR NETWORK!!

Introduction:
Today I’m going to take a few minutes to walk you through the network infrastructure that underlies Informed Networker, as well as some of our near-future plans for expansions.

DNS:
In order to for visitors to reach your website via a domain name (e.g. informednetworker.com) you need to have DNS records. DNS is similar to a phone book. Look up a name and you find a telephone number. With DNS you look up a name and find an IP address (e.g. x.x.x.x - 64.233.167.99). This all happens transparently to the end user - but there is critical work to be done by those providing the website.

In our case we chose not to host our DNS servers internally. We made this decision for several reasons:

• We didn’t want to have to be experts in DNS.
• We like separate servers for each role and this would have required additional hardware if we ran the DNS ourselves.
• Out-sourced services can provide globally distributed and redundant services.

We utilize a service called DNSMadeEasy. There are other alternatives (UltraDNS), but none as inexpensive - and DNSMadeEasy offers the same featureset as these other services.

Servers:
I really love Dell PowerEdge 2950’s. While many guys admire a beautiful car, I could care less about cars - but can describe in detail the features I love about Dell’s 2950. When I was looking at the future of Informed Networker I wanted to buy a 2950, but I couldn’t justify the price for our business model. With the opportunity to move entirely cloud-based, going with a 2950 just didn’t make sense. Here are a few of the factors that weighed into this decision:

• I couldn’t just buy one server. For redundancy purposes I would need at least two servers. While I could run virtual instances to avoid purchasing an additional server for every role, I’d still eventually be purchasing additional equipment.
• I’d need to rent a rack at a colocation facility. Even the least expensive of these would cost more than a cloud-based solution.
• I’d need to assure 100% uptime (or five-nine’s) - something which while possible would require significant time dedication on my part - something I felt could be better directed in other pursuits for the business.

Granted, I could have bough a single server, attached it to the FiOS at my house (till Verizon would shut me down), and hoped for the best - but we want to run professionally. I have seen too many times when a company compromises on a hack solution to save money or as an interim solution and the paint his can bring.

So where did we end up? With Slicehost. Slicehost is a Linux Virtual Private Server (VPS) environment. Their prices are relatively inexpensive. You can purchase a 256 MB slice with 100 GB of bandwidth and 10 GB of hard drive space for $20/mo. We started with one 256 MB slice and then expanded to two - one for the www server and a separate server for the db. In the near future we’ll expand to four - an additional www and db server for redundancy and load sharing. I prefer to scale out on lower-end VPS’ than to buy one or two really hefty VPS. This allows us to implement the infrastructure at the beginning that will allow for rapid expansion rather than suddenly finding ourselves maxing out one or two fat VPS’ with no systems in place. Once we have these four instances then we will scale up - in fatness. That is, we’ll move to 512 MB, 1024, and eventually 2048 MB as needed. But the infrastructure to scale comes first.

Monitoring/Analytics:

As mentioned in an earlier post, I had used in-house monitoring software in the past but chose to outsource this as well. By doing so I reduced hardware costs and surface area for security attacks. We use Google Analytics to track traffic patterns and Scout App/Mon.itor.us for site/hardware monitoring. We use Slicehost backups to image the servers on a daily basis and also take regular snapshots of the site - including some kept in a cloud-based SVN - as well as dumps of the MySQL databases which are kept off-site from Slicehost.

Upcoming Infrastructure:

Besides scalability improvements as mentioned under the server topic we want to create some Amazon EC2 instances. These won’t run generally - as the cost for an Amazon EC2 instance is significantly more expensive (though it isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison) - instead they’ll exist in the case of a Slicehost system failure. We can boot them up in five minutes and have our DNS (which propagates extremely fast) handle the IP updates almost instantaneously.

Conclusion:

Cloud-based isn’t the way for everyone to go, and considerations (especially as one grows) need to be made for the inevitable system outages a single provider can experience (e.g. Amazon’s S3). But for systems that are light on storage and looking to keep initial overhead costs low - cloud-based can be an efficient and forward-looking solution. Not to mention one can stamp one’s company as green - considering the significant reduction in power utilization, etc. caused by virtualization and consolidation in a cloud-based scenario.

P.S. Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about the Informed Networker infrastructure.

As I discussed in two previous posts on my experiences raising venture capital - its hard and takes a lot of time. I’m still more than willing to speak with potential investors and will pitch my heart out, but the reality is I’m moving full-time to Informed Networker in around a month and am already working on it significantly part-time. There isn’t time to continue pursuing venture capitalists proactively. “Okay, so that’s great Dave, but how do you expect to keep your home if you don’t secure venture capital?” Great question.

Venture Capitalists like several features in a business: (a) revenue and (b) a significant investment (e.g. $500k+). Advertisers on the other hand want (a) traffic and (b) traffic. This is something Informed Networker is already able to offer. With a decent traffic base and the potential only being up as well as targeted viewers (IT Professionals) - we can offer advertisers exactly what they need. So, as mentioned in an earlier post we are looking to secure around nine “charter advertisers” before August 1st. We’ll be proactively recruiting them. The commitment on their end is relatively minor ($1,500 for one year - breaks down to $125/mo.) and guarantees them a reasonable minimum number of impressions (72,000 impressions - though their ad continues rotating amongst extra inventory even beyond this number), a logo listing on our charter advertiser page, and a in-depth review of their product/service in a blog posting we’ll write thanking them for their support. They also receive the right to lock in this rate for a second year - a significant offer since we expect to be charging much higher rates within a few months as traffic increases and our reputation as a valuable source for focused eyeballs increases. If you are interested in having your company support Informed Networker please let us know. We’re looking forward to working with you!

Securing these nine advertisers would allow us to garner $13,500. This would fund us for the first several months of operation - allowing us to expand personnel (including a part-time, commission based sales force), continue innovative feature development, ramp up story quality and freshness, etc. etc. At the same time, we don’t give away any equity in the company and we hopefully establish long-term mutually beneficial relationships with our advertisers.

Note: Per previous posts, we are not indicating our uninterest in securing venture capital. We are simply stating our inability in a competitive market to rely upon or expend significant effort upon securing venture capital. We will pitch our hearts out to any interested parties with reasonable ability to invest but in the meantime will secure relationships with advertisers and continue to expand the site.

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Informed Networker is looking to recruit local talent (Langhorne/Penndel/Hulmeville/Neshaminy/Etc.) for upcoming sketch comedies that will be used in viral web-based marketing promoting Informed Networker. Here are the details for those interested:

Cast:

• We are looking for actors and actresses. Each skit will have a minimal cast - around five individuals at most. Actors/actresses should have experience in traditional theater/film.
• Actors should be 16 or over. All actors will act as independent contractors - no employer/employee relationship will be established.
• Minimal pay, at least for first few sketches. Depending on success pay will be renegotiated.

Crew:

• Should have own equipment. Will be expected to handle most technical aspects. Will have creative freedom while working from a rough script.
• No employee, employer relationship is established.
• Minimal pay, at least for first few sketches. Depending on success pay will be renegotiated.

We expect to perform each sketch within a matter of hours on a single day. Payment will be made same day. All participants will be required to sign a release.

I’d been working on a business plan for some time - basing it off several examples I’d found on the internet. Eventually I purchased Palo Alto’s Business Plan Pro 11.0 software, a company started by Tim Berry. I found this software exceptionally well-designed and intuitive to use. I spent hours working on my business plan but when it was done I hated it. Not because of Palo Alto’s failure in any way but because I felt like so much of the business plan was redundant, boring crap. Why did I need this book when I could write more concisely and effectively the contents of my plan in ten pages? The purchase of the Business Plan software wasn’t a waste - it included a lot of great calculators and spreadsheets for creating cash flow estimates and items of a similar nature - something that I dreaded. But in the end while I have my official business plan - I don’t want to give it to anyone. I made a new one, one I call the “Informal Plan” but which offers the information needed concisely and hopefully in a interesting manner.

Meanwhile, I realized just how much work it took to raise capital. More time than I cared to dedicate to this purpose. Like the young man in the previous post informed me - it was practically a full-time job. I wanted to build things, not mess with securing money and giving away significant portions of the business. So I decided to bootstrap it. It wasn’t that I was closed to receiving venture funds (in fact, if you are reading this and want to give me money, please contact me!) but I decided that I could do it without the funds, if need be - it’d just be a bit more scary. See, Informed Networker doesn’t have a lot of costs - I’m only looking for $100,000. A little over half of that would pay my salary for the first year and we would expect to be cash flow positive within seven months of my starting full-time. The reason I wanted the money was for two purposes (a) allow me to focus on Informed Networker without worrying where next month’s mortgage payment is coming from and (b) increase marketing efforts. But the time spent raising money was outweighing the money - so I decided to deal with the stress and move forward.

I secured a $4,000 line of credit with Dell and purchased the two systems I would need - a laptop (my main workstation) and a desktop (for virtual machines, task processing, debugging, etc.). I secured another $4,000 on a credit card for business purchases and began dumping the small cash reservoirs I had available into the business. Kind of scary right? Yeah. Good news is as a Network Engineer I do some freelance consulting on the side - which brings in a slick $100/hr. - so I know that I can always ramp up that business a little should Informed Networker need a little cash infusion…

That said, the great guy who has been my proactive support in raising capital (Dick) has continued to work on finding me possible financers. Something I greatly appreciate and take advantage of to the fullest. Recently he was able to coordinate a meeting for me with Chris Fralic of First Round Capital. While I knew statistically my chances where low and that I’d have to drive a good hour each way to Conshohocken and back I wasn’t going to turn down an opportunity to raise capital. In addition to the “hey, maybe they’ll fund me” thought line I’d also met Chris at the FundingPost event and he seemed like a nice guy. I’d read up on his business background and love a couple of the companies he worked for - so it seemed like a good time investment. So I drove. Chris and one of his associates met with me for a solid hour. Wow. I pitched my heart out. They were friendly and inquisitive. They pulled no punches and pushed me to explain my reasoning in every corner. You can’t call them incomplete. At the end I knew I had failed to convince them. They encouraged me that it might be a nice “lifestyle business” but I saw the money tap wasn’t going to open up for me. Still, come on, when smart guys like this give you the time of day you have to be thankful. Chris also put me in contact with a CTO at a venture First Round did fund - something I appreciated greatly.

So that is where we are at right now. Do I expect to take venture funding? Probably not. Am I running away from this venture? Not a chance in heaven. How do I intend to keep bread on the table? Great question, you’ll have to wait till next time to find out.

Interesting Footnote: The way to Conshohoken has a toll road. I meant to bring quarters but I forgot. By the time I remembered I was too far along to turn back. I hoped I had enough cash in the car to make it - and I did, but there was none for the way back. I’m a plastic guy, I don’t carry cash. My wife has my debit card. I was in Conshohoken without any cash. Sweet. Well, I headed back, wondering what happens when you can’t pay your toll. Did they send you to jail? Detain you till someone came and paid your debt? Charge you a ridiculous amount and shoot you a bill my mail? As I pulled up to the teller it was a young lady. With a sheepish grin I said, “I’m sorry. I have absolutely no cash. What do I do?” She replied, “Its okay, go ahead.” Wow! Whoever you are you made my day.

Footnote to Footnote: I would not recommend trying this. If I had any way around this I would have taken it. I have no clue what official policy is when you can’t pay your toll. Maybe it is a big fine and she paid my toll for me? Perhaps someone can clarify. In any case, don’t do it! I think I’m finally going to sign up for EasyPass. I’d like to say I won’t forget again, but remembering to carry cash is not at the top of my priority list.