5/30/07Alex Loddengaard1 Taking a Website Live Alex Loddengaard

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard2 Outline About Me Technical Details Revenue Models Marketing Cellarspot Case Study Overflow (time permitting)

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard3 About Me Previously a CSE 143/190L TA Took 403 with Marty a year ago Part-time product manager at Redfin Built with some help: Cellarspot.com BestSeattleBars.com Helpd.org Timedex.org

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard4 Technical Details Goal: launch

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard5 Hosting Domain Registration (~$10/year) Don’t use Network Solutions Use godaddy.com, wingsix.com, dreamhost.com, etc Marty recommends DreamHost Web hosting Web space Virtual server Colocated rack mount

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard6 Hosting: Web Space Pros: Cheap and simple (~$5 - $25/month) Standard technology pre-installed MySQL, Rails, PHP, etc Cons: Not scalable Limiting (often no shell) Share CPU cycles with others Godaddy.com, wingsix.com, dreamhost.com, etc Marty recommends DreamHost

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard7 Hosting: Virtual Servers Pros: Relatively cheap and simple (~$20 - $50/month) Standard technology pre-installed MySQL, Rails, PHP, etc More control (you get root) Cons: Not scalable Share CPU cycles with others Amazon EC2, spry.com, etc

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard8 Hosting: Colocated Rack Mount Pros: As much control as you want (could be a con?) Scalable (pay for amps, Gigabits of transfer, and rack space in Us) Awesome Cons: Expensive (~$1k-3k for a server, ~$100 - $250 / month) More responsibility (backups, hardware malfunctions, etc) Adtaq.com, adhost.com, etc

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard9 Useful Services Google Analytics Incredible statistics about your site Setup is easy - install one Javascript

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard10 Useful Services (cont.) Google Webmaster Tools Useful information about your site in Google’s search engine

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard11 Useful Services (cont.) FeedBurner Statistics about RSS feeds

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard12 Revenue Models Goal: make some money

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard13 Advertisements on Your Site Google AdSense Automatically displays relevant ads Paid per click (usually ~$ ) Customizable look and feel Free to setup

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard14 Referrals Website owner gets commission from referred sale Many e-commerce sites offer this Amazon.com, Bestbuy.com, etc Commission ranges between 5-10% Look for “Join Associates” on Amazon.com

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard15 Marketing Goal: market your site and get users onboard

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard16 Marketing Your Site Google AdWords You can produce ads that show up as Google AdSense ads on relevant websites Keywords can be purchased that make you the “sponsored link” on the Google search page Cost per Click (CPC ~$ )

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard17 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) This is absolutely vital Everyone uses search engines Include the appropriate tags Description, keywords, etc Use a descriptive such as “Marty Stepp.com - Always a Good Time” See each search engines’ recommendations Yes, they specify them

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard18 SEO (cont.) Content structure Make the core of your website easily accessible

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard19 SEO (cont.) URL Structure Human readable, keyworded URLs are HUGE Cellarspot.com/ instead of Cellarspot.com/bottle.php?id=5 Rich content Lots of descriptive text Get sites to link to you This is the most important Google page rank is most influenced by link analysis

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard20 Cellarspot Case Study My story about a (failed?) social network

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard21 Cellarspot Background Social network for wine lovers Taste notes, bottle reviews, ratings, etc Got the idea because my dad loves wine Pursued it in 403 last year Launched expecting to make millions I’ve made $30 in almost a year

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard22 The UI Sucks (Maybe?)

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard23 Issue: Didn’t Consider Landing Pages Users visit Cellarspot from Google They typically land on a page other than the front page Will they know what the site is about on each landing page? For Cellarspot, the answer is no.

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard24 Issue: Didn’t Define Use Cases I thought to myself, “Users will just talk about wine through taste notes and blogs.” I should have been more specific “What do users want to do when they write a taste note? What about when they read a taste note?” Define your use cases, otherwise you might solve an imaginary problem Learn about use cases by researching, not by making assumptions You should never support your use cases with, “I think …” Support them with, “Our customer thinks …” Run focus groups, surveys, and ask good questions

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard25 Issue: Make Economic Decisions Don’t colocate a rack mount unless you’re really, really excited about it

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard26 Did Cellarspot Fail? Averages 12 unique visits a day Averages $2/month of revenue Costs $97/month + $2400 1U Dell server I use it in resumes and in interviews It’s helped me get jobs I learned a lot about good code practices I learned a lot about websites Failure? As a business, yes; As an experience, no

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard27 Overflow

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard28 Pursue Your Website In Academics Cellarspot Pursued in 4 different classes (15 credits) CSE Software Engineering (4 credits) Took the class with Marty Launched the site shortly after ENTRE 475/476 - Planning a Business 4 credits each Contact John Castle if interested Absolutely recommended CSE 490H - Distributed Systems (3 credits) Wrote an information extraction app to bootstrap our data

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard29 Software Engineering Sometimes it’s better to write good code Maintainability, expandability, etc You learn good programming practices Sometimes it’s better to write inline code Allows for quick prototyping You won’t waste much time if the site is unsuccessful

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard30 Apache Webserver Key Features Rewrites (mod_rewrite) You can setup RewriteRules to forward users from a certain URL to a new URL Very, very powerful Virtual Hosts Allows you to run many different websites on one Apache instance on one IP address Cellarspot machine runs 10 different websites, each with different domains

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard31 Privacy Be upfront with your user Specify your privacy policy in a “Terms and Conditions” page Facebook’s “Terms and Conditions” page is ~8 pages

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard32 Copyright Don’t violate it Don’t use someone else’s Images Code snippets Unless the license agreement says you can Any other data on any website Copyrights don’t need to be specified They are implicit

5/30/07Alex Loddengaard33 Protect Yourself As an individual running a website, your private assets are not protected Protect your private assets by either Registering a Limited Liability Company Becoming incorporated Or starting a non-profit Dependent on the state you operate in This probably isn’t necessary unless you’re doing something that might be borderline illegal