oakleaves

I like it and it makes total sense to me.
 
Getting clients to see things this way is another matter entirely!!
 

Talking from experience I would have to disagree with that
 
I'd vote Prestashop for single store

Out of those 2 I also think the 2nd is better

Just found an easy solution, it only forces you on your first campaign, so if you create a new one you can choose then.
 
I think that's another little cheeky trick by Google though

Same here, the first one. Not sure if it's because I looked at that one first or what..
 
How far are you on with the development, looks a fun idea.

"cheapest" and "best" rarely go hand in hand.
 
I'm currently with Heart Internet although if I was starting out now I'd probably look at TSOHost or Vidahost.
 
That said I cannot personally fault the support I have received from Heart although other people on this forum have not been so fortunate (there are lots of threads on here about that, no need for me to elaborate). Taking everything into account Heart have been good overall for me - price, support, service, user-interface.

Basically, just busy with too many things! - I've explained to the mods past and present.

Yep, Social Sign-on was suppose to be an effective/modern way of signing up, unfortunately it just made it easy for spammers to register, so we've disabled it until it's developed more/deemed usable. Plus we didn't have as many enforcements in place as we do now.

I bet it was frustrating! - Rest assured we've got great plans going forward now

Cheers Oakleaves

I think this thread ranks highly on their to-do list.. I must read for all wannabe American developers living in India
 
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100113175006AA7IEg9
 
Don't worry guys - I've been spamming their Indian SEO forum with the pseudonym Gubta Singh for months now..

You have an interesting alter-ego - 'Nunley'
 
Wonder how they came up with that?!
 
Roothost is 'Speed' ! do they know something we don't?

Don't like the idea of freelancers having to bid for the work. You should just choose the one who best fits the project requirements and pay them a fair rate.

Right away I want to apologise for the what is going to probably be quite a long post. I want to get as much of the idea/plan/thoughts down as possible so you can give me your proper opinions on it. I hope the length doesn't put anyone off but if you can't be bothered to read it just read the quote below;
 
 

 
---------------------------------
-- The idea/The Ethos/The Intention --
----------------------------------
 
The problem
The current crop of job board/outsourcing websites just.. suck. There really isn't any other way to say it. In my experience their main goal seems to be to churn through massive quantities of jobs, taking their cut along the way, rather than trying to create an environment that is conducive to good quality, legitimate work. Instead they artificially bump people to prominence based on things that bear no relation to their skill or commitment, like how easily you open your wallet.
 
Clients who post work have to base their decision on essentially 2 pieces of information. The ratings left by previous clients through the site and the bid amount. This causes a vicious downward spiral however. It incentivises bidding professionals to game the system, to low-ball and undercut just to get as many bids accepted as possible which they can then complete to a bare minimum standard that would get them positive ratings, increasing their chances of getting more bids accepted ultimately squeezing out what I would consider the good professionals. The professionals who clients might actually want to work with don't get a look in because they either maintain a higher standard or can't drop to the kind of insulting rates you see on these sites.
 
The goal
To create a site that very subtly encourages good behaviour from both the client and the professionals. To create a site where you can bid on a job knowing that although you might not get it you are competing on a level playing field with everyone else. To create a site where clients feel they can place a job and no matter who they choose can be reasonably certain they will be working with a legitimate professional who will deliver quality work and won't suddenly vanish or forget how to type after payment is received.
 
So what will tender.li do differently to make this happen?
I don't think any one thing is the killer feature. It's much more subtle than that. It's about nurturing a community with a certain shared set of ideals who encourages each other to raise their game. A community that thinks professionalism and ethics are important, who think doing the best job they can for their clients is more important than just getting the job done and moving on.
 
Firstly, there has to be some kind of fair metric by which to judge or rank professionals. Although client reviews are good for things like customer service they aren't so good at properly rating your proficiency with PHP. So you mix in their average bidding price, you mix in elements of peer review, of moderation and other secret sauce. If done right you should come up with something approaching a fair representation of that professional in relation to others.
 
Secondly, you moderate. It's a tricky line to walk and many of the digital industries being creative in nature, therefor subjective, you run the very real risk of being accused of removing good professionals simply because you don't agree with their style. Unfortunately there is really nothing much that can be done about this. To maintain the good environment the bad eggs have to be removed, there has be at least some element of elitism otherwise you get a free for all and we are back to square one.
 
Thirdly, you listen and you act on what the community has to say. You build features they might actually want to use, you encourage behaviour that benefits them and you incentivise doing good.
 
So what features have you got that make this happen?
1.) There is no pay-to-get-ahead feature. You don't get a bigger profile, put to the top of the list or any features at-all for opening your wallet. Every single person is treated exactly the same, has access to the same opportunities and the same data. It's down to you to convince the client you are better than everyone else. The same is true for clients, you make your pitch and it's shown to everyone. That's it. Nice and simple, nice and fair.
 
2.) There is no 'escrow' system. It's not a monetary middle man, it doesn't take a cut. It's your business, it's your contract. It simply facilitates the introduction and initial agreement of two parties. After that it's all on you, it becomes just a normal client/professional relationship and you have them sign your contracts, go on your books etc. Then when it's done you both come back and tell us how it went.
 
3.) There is a site wide automatic flagging of 'bad' behaviour. I won't go into too much detail, because that would make it less effective.. but things are flagged up and queued for moderators to check if they don't meet certain standards, standards that will be constantly evolving with community feedback and expectations. Flagged content still appears, it doesn't get hidden or anything.. it just points a mod towards it to have a look.
 
4.) Optional Detail Verification. Again to encourage a certain level of legitimacy you can have your profile details checked by a moderator. If they are satisfied you are being truthful you get 'verified' status. This effectively locks your account, in that any changes made to your profile after then removes the verification.
 
 
----------------
-- The Progress --
----------------
 
That's the general overarching idea, why I'm making this and how I plan to make something you might actually want to use dealt with. So let's move on to actually defining where I am in this process, what's not finished, what I'd like you to do etc.
 
Right now I would consider it in alpha. There are 3 fundamental functions that have to be in and working for the site to have any kind of purpose and being able to put it into a beta you guys can play with. I'd say I am roughly about 40% of the way there right now.
 

User system (90% complete - Only lacks changing of password & deleting account)
Tender system (40% complete)
Discussion/Messaging system (0% complete)

 
I have a very long list of other features but those 3 things are core to to the functionality of site.
 
----------------------------
-- What I would like you to do --
----------------------------
 
1.) If you like the concept and want to register your interest then head to tender.li and give me your email address. This help me properly see how many people are at least intrigued.
 
2.) Follow the twitter account @tenderdotli
 
3.) Ask me questions
 
4.) Suggest features
 
5.) Tell me what you don't like about current freelance/job board sites
 
5.) Give me your thoughts of the following specific things that I'm not entirely certain on.
 
First, a metric to rank users based on lots of useful criteria. I'm pretty positive this is a good idea to be used internally, a way to give some kind of indication to moderators what users aren't providing the standard we want to upkeep. However part of me is interested in the idea of making it public. The problem I see for a lot of freelancers is one of reputation, there is no real way to prove it..so why can't tender.li serve as a kind of defacto professional standards body? Why not let people embed their 'tender.li score' on their own websites as a way to show that they are approved of by people who know about that sort of thing.
 
The two drawbacks I have come with for this idea is that A) It would encourage people to game it rather than just accepting it as a passive reflection of their actions and B it hinges on both being able to produce a metric that is legitimately fair. C) it artificially punishes people who don't use the site at-all (but shouldn't punish less active users if it's done right and takes that into consideration).
 
 
Secondly. Moderators. They'll have access to much more information than regular professionals but they will probably be professionals themselves, competing for tenders. Would you prefer this was out in the open (Professionals who moderate are flagged as such and their actions made public) or would you prefer separate moderator accounts who's actions are still made public but perhaps you wouldn't know if they have professional accounts on the site too?
 
 
..... That's me done, I think. Oh damn it did turn out pretty long. Sorry

Nah just Mike thinks he knows everything about everything
 
Between me and you I do intend to bring it back again soon.

^ what he said

Maybe something like this with a more bold font?
 

 
Not 100% sure of the orange on that one, also it might be a bit old for you.
 
This one is a bit more modern..
 

I used brisa for the main font, you might be able to download it free can't remember
 
Then district thin for the other although another similar thin font should work
 
 
symbol? This sort of thing usually works. Although it might be too much altogether with the text
 

Seems sensible enough to me. Heart's core competency is hosting, which they can do from any properly-designed network infrastructure. I don't see any more reason why they'd need to own the buildings, generators, ducts and AC systems than another business would need to own rather than renting office space.
 
Datacentre management and infrastructure are a different business, so it's likely that a company or comanies who specialise in that will be able to provide colo for Heart and turn a profit for themselves in exactly the same budget as it would take Heart to do it for themselves.
 
95% of hosting is virtualised these days due to the computing density of modern equipment - a typical 4u server can have 32 cores and umpteen terabytes of disk, hosting anywhere from one to 32 virtual machines (with guaranteed CPU). Any of those VMs can be copied across the network and run perfectly on a host machine which could be running a completely different OS, with no hardware compatibility headaches. It's only specialized applications that require anythig out of the ordinary in terms of servers (check out this blog post from Backblaze for one such application, and the follow-up). The point is, aside from these specialist applications, colocation and server hardware are a commodity product - so no, it doesn't bother me.

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Hi the bad news is it does like a bit dated and not quite as slick as googles latest offerings. The good news is I believe you could get that up to par fairly easily.
 
You need to look at adding CSS3 styling and tone down that blue and thick blue borders
 
There is potential here though. Typography needs work too.

What's new with Freemly: me. That's right, I'm back for the third time (damn public betas) so if you want to join me and the rest of the cool kids, Freemly's the place to be.

Yeah /%postname%/
 
 
..unless somebody can give me a better way and explanation for it

Can I offer a piece of advice?
 
It might be better if it displayed the users username around the site rather than the users real name as they might not want that shown.

Hi Oakleaves, did not mean to step on your toes here, I consider your (innitial) freemly concept to be great.
 
I know these sites do not create themselves and a lot of work goes into it.
 
I also understand that it is your creation and you can do whatever you want with it, I just saw more potential in the initial concept, especially the collaboration part.
 
This is not an attack on your work, it just seems a big change from the Freemly site a few weeks ago.
 
Again, I might just miss the point, and I am not here to create a "lets diss freemly" thread either.
 
I see that you removed my profile, as I requested, but my question also showed the need for an "unregister" option.
 
As I am not an established web developer and my skills are very limited, I am not going to be of any help to the members of Freemly and I thought that a list full of non-active members should be prevented.
 
But I will keep on checking the Freemly site cause I am interested in how people deal with projects like this.
 
Good luck
 
P.H.

I think it's a great, commendable idea, but like any community site, it will need a huge amount of work and attention, not just by Oak but by all the members.
 
I've some reservations about the design and the Buddypress basing too. I'm thinking the main page should be a grouping of projects, but it's an activity feed. Why do we need an activity feed fro a collaboration tool, except on a per project basis?
 
IMHO, the main page should be something similar to Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/discover
 
A lovely list of projects that people can dive into and get stuck into. To be honest, the sites function can be very similar to Kickstarter to I think that site could serve as great inspiration.
 
Absolutely not stepping on your toes here either Oak - it's just my two cents.
 

I second Brighton's idea. For people to use it, there needs to be a clear goal; collab'ing with others.
 
I think a rep system would be good so people can see who is in the top of their field on the website. a list of projects that have been created. Project proposal's on the side so people can sign up to them or discuss more about them (similar to the groups section) either public (anyoen can join) or private (request access)

Good idea. Would be good if members can up and down vote others suggestions and comment on them. Really get the community involved.