Forum Moderators: phranque
I use and customize open source CMSs like Joomla and Wordpress rather than build my own (it would seem like re-inventing the wheel to start from scratch these days), so I find myself needing to update the core CMS along with any plugins of all sites I've made for clients very often. Particularly with Wordpress which seems to have an update every 5 minutes.
Most updates are advertised as security patches, so I see them as necessary. But surely this process of updating all sites that use Joomla or Wordpress (and all the headaches of making sure plugins don't break and things look ok in new browsers etc.) becomes a fulltime job if you have enough clients. Do you guys charge for those type of things?
I just see a bit of a storm ahead of me as I take on more work and need to continually update, bug check and lose sleep following site launches...
Any opinions/advice on how not to lose my hair?
Ofcourse. If it is work, it costs. The updates are done to those customers that either pay monthly fee for maintenance or pay for it with hourly rates. Those that don't pay get the instructions on doing those themselves (which I assume most don't follow but that's out of our hands).
That said, some nice bash scripts to take care of updates (on servers on which such can be run) would propably not be all that hard to leave on... Perhaps we'll create such if it seems that there'll be overly much work with those. Has anyone here used those yet?
But well, I mostly do SEO to customers paying monthly anyways so updating wordpress during that isn't a big deal.
Personally, if i were in charge of the company i work, i would charge people a retainer fee which then includes the installation of patches etc for the software i have used.
Ally
If you don't, or you run multiple blogs yourself, search for "Virtual Multiblog for WordPress". No association, I'm just looking to deploy it myself soon, and it seems to be the most straightforward and simple.
You can have a blogger blog ftp'd right to your web server. No need to scrape and republish.
I use and customize open source CMSs like Joomla and Wordpress rather than build my ownso I find myself needing to update the core CMS along with any plugins of all sites I've made for clients very often. Particularly with Wordpress which seems to have an update every 5 minutes.
I have a friend of mine that runs a web development company which is larger than mine and he won't use open source programs for just this reason. His philosophy is that while these programs can be great in terms of functionality that having constant updates and no uniform support options other than reading bulletin boards far out weighs any benefit he might get from using a free program. He said he would rather just pay for a product and know that he will get good support and a reasonable schedule of updates.
I like open source software, but I see his point.
I'd be grateful as I'm in a situation where I'm starting to get more work and I'd prefer to take the route where I can either buy a good system to use with my clients that is well supported, or be able to avoid so many updates...that's not that WP and Joomla aren't well supported, but as your mate said, it's a matter of posting a question and waiting/hoping for a response.
Any ideas appreciated, cheers.
does your friend build his own CMS or does he buy in other products?
I believe he uses a commercial application that he purchased. I am not sure what the name of it is, but I will shoot him a quick email and see if I can find out. As far as other commercial products, I don't really know because personally I don't have a big call for CMS systems, at least so far I haven't, but that may change in the near future.
