Table of Contents
If you still have not recovered from the travails of setting up your own PC and the very idea of establishing a server yourself is giving you nightmares, you can have someone else set up and run your Gopher, WWW, or WAIS server--and it can be quite inexpensive. This chapter goes over the reasons to hire out and tells you what to expect in such a situation. You'll also find profiles of a cross-section of consultants and companies that provide Internet publishing services. These are by no means the only companies offering these services. This is a fast-growing field, and the options are expanding daily. Read the sidebar to this chapter, Finding and Selecting an Internet Service Provider, if you need a better connection to the Internet or just to learn about some of the network connection issues that will affect you.
There are a lot of reasons not to do the work of publishing on the Internet yourself. You might not be at all sure of what you're doing (despite reading this book), and you don't want to risk your company or organization's reputation while you experiment. Or perhaps placing your Web pages on someone else's server for a few dollars a month is the quickest and easiest method to get your material online. This chapter discusses other reasons for not doing all the work yourself.
Providing a part-time Internet publishing service doesn't make any sense because this is truly an international medium that requires 24-hour access. A site available during only certain hours would provoke a great deal of frustration among potential users. If you don't have an Internet connection 24 hours a day, you will want to weigh the costs of running such a connection yourself against the costs of hiring out the service. Internet connection rates differ considerably, so you'll have to shop around the Internet providers in your area.
You may already have a 24-hour Internet connection, but Internet publishing can add quite a bit to the load on your computer. It's essential to think about the load your Internet connection can tolerate. Connections can handle only a certain quantity of material at any given time. A Gopher, Web, or WAIS server that becomes popular might quickly overwhelm all the other traffic you send via that link. Upgrading the link might be too expensive for you. That's when it might make more sense to use someone else's service, and let the provider worry about handling the load.
One good reason to hire out your Internet publishing is to make sure that the computing power available on your Gopher, Web, or WAIS server matches the demand you expect. If the load you expect will overburden your computer, it might make a great deal of sense to hire out your Internet publishing venture to some place with a much more powerful computer.
At the very least you need a computer and an Internet connection to run your own Gopher, WWW, or WAIS server. But you can become an Internet publisher for as little as a $10 set-up fee and an e-mail account if you use First Virtual's InfoHaus service. Other Internet providers offer similarly inexpensive plans. These options might be ideal for an artist, writer, computer programmer, or small business or organization that wants to establish an Internet presence with minimal upfront costs. This allows you to have your own home page without owning a computer. But shop around, because the amount of material you can store on the server without incurring additional charges varies considerably.
Obtaining expertise is one of the most popular reasons to hire out the work of establishing and running a server. Paying the right consultants to do the work can be a safe and efficient method of ensuring a professional looking result. In addition to the design issues is the matter of running the system. UNIX servers are among the most powerful machines for running a Net site, but they demand a great deal of attention and experience to manage. It's safe to say that you'll spend more time managing the UNIX operating system than the Gopher, Web, or WAIS servers.
If security concerns are paramount in your organization, the safest way to limit your vulnerability is to run your service on someone else's machine. Your computers can stay entirely out of the loop, with no link back for hackers to follow.
Publishing on the Internet is a new field, and it's tempting to hand the responsibility to a consulting firm or marketing agency that sounds or looks good. But charges vary widely, and the impression you make on the Internet can have little correlation to the amount of money invested. Know what you're paying for, and decide what is really best done in-house. Because Internet publishing is such a new area, you'll find it's fairly flexible. But it's important to know what you're paying for so you don't get overcharged.
First and foremost, you are paying for someone else's 24-hour
Internet connection. However, connections provide various capacities,
so learn what type of connection your provider has, and get the
provider to estimate how many users and how much data its computers
can support comfortably. Ask about guarantees so that you don't
get stuck. Pity the folks who shared Penthouse Magazine's
Internet provider. Their services came to a stop because the traffic
for Penthouse's Web server overloaded the service provider's
connection.
Paying for an Internet consultant or service provider's expertise is reasonable. But ask the consultants or providers to describe that expertise and experience, and be sure it's appropriate for you. Be sure to determine whether they have graphic designers on staff, and ask for samples of their work. Marketing is an especially big field these days, but be wary of promises of tremendous financial gains. Whether the Internet will become the shopping center of the future is not at all certain. What is certain is that it provides an unprecedented level of interactive communication on an international level. Your money is best spent on people who can find creative ways to use that communication to support your goals.
Obviously, you'll be paying for a portion of whatever computer system and server software your outside provider is running. Know the limitations of that hardware and software. What is its capacity in terms of connections per second? Is it mirrored? If it is not mirrored, how is it backed up? Is there any regular downtime or maintenance period during which your server would be unavailable? What kinds of software tools does the provider make available to help you load your data? How much backup support does the provider have for its hardware and software?
One way to spend more money is to have someone else prepare all your documents and data for you. And in the beginning that might be exactly what you want to do, if only to get started right and get your staff trained and up to speed. But don't lock yourself into a situation in which you must continue to pay for consulting in addition to the server and storage costs.
Also, find out what kind of tools the experts provide to help you assemble and publish your data. Can you upload the files to the server yourself? Can you write your own scripts, or do your experts provide scripts and programs for most common functions, such as online forms and collecting users' comments?
How much storage space are you getting for your money? What happens if your needs exceed that amount? Is there a charge for how much is actually delivered to users as well as for storing your documents and data? Although you may not expect large amounts of data to accumulate, it's always wise to leave room for expansion.
If at all possible, make sure that your site's link is short, easy to remember, and contains the name of your company or organization. Until recently, companies that wanted their name in their URL were told by their Internet providers that it wasn't possible. But now at least one commercial Web server has the ability to respond as if it were multiple servers (as many as 256), each with a different name and IP address. The advantages are clear. It is much easier to remember a short URL than a long one, and why not advertise your company or organization's name instead of the Internet provider's?
When you are told that your Web site has had 1,000 connections per day, don't be too impressed. That number may have no relation to the number of people who came for a visit. Each inline (embedded) image in an HTML page counts for one connection. So if your organization's home page has nine inline images plus the home page text itself, each user will show up as 10 connections in the logs. Much more useful is monitoring key documents and asking for statistics on how often they are downloaded.
If you're convinced you need to hire out your Internet publishing, and you know what to look for and watch out for, it's time to consider what's available. Remember that geography isn't an issue on the Internet. Assuming you are comfortable with communicating via e-mail, fax, and phone, your Internet consultant or service could be on the other side of the world as easily as right next door. In fact, when dealing with localization to different languages or cultures, contracting with someone in the country you wish to reach might be only sensible.
Because this field is expanding so rapidly, it makes sense to search the Internet itself for information about services and consultants. One excellent resource is Open Market's Commercial Sites Index <http://www.directory.net/>. Open Market lists companies that offer Web (and other) services. In May 1995 Open Market listed more than 370 companies that are in the business of creating a presence on the Internet for other organizations. Also check <http://union.ncsa.uinc.edu/HyperNews/get/www/leasing.html>.
Another way to find services and consultants is to look at the Internet sites you like. Web sites in particular usually provide a link to the company or person responsible for that site. If the site is maintained by an Internet publishing service or consultant, it almost always will have a link to its own site or information on how to contact it.
Internet publishing consultants are increasingly a cottage industry. Their one- and two-person shops offer services ranging from planning your Internet strategy to writing HTML pages and CGI scripts to installing software and hardware at your site. They might have a site of their own with enough capacity to rent space, but often they don't.
Internet publishing services on the other hand, are usually large organizations with a dedicated Internet connection and powerful computer of their own. In addition to helping you plan your Internet strategy and develop your content, they offer a site with storage (and sometimes usage) fees. Some services specialize in certain markets with certain prescribed services. For example, an Internet shopping center might offer "storefronts" with leasing costs pegged to the amount of material or "space" provided. Other services are more oriented to the marketing or advertising segments of Internet publishing. They will advise you on publicizing your site to reach the most people possible. Still other services offer traditional book- and magazine-publishing services in an online context.
The next section briefly profiles eight companies that offer some form of Internet publishing service. There are hundreds more to pick from, but these will give you some idea of what is available.
Cyber Publishing, Inc., <http://www.travelweb.com/thisco/cyber/cyber.html> (see Figure 8-1), based in Phoenix, specializes in consulting and constructing World-Wide Web pages and sites. Cyber Publishing did all the pages for the TravelWeb site <http://www.travelweb.com/>, including electronic brochures for Hyatt Resorts and Best Western International. Bruce Covill, president of Cyber Publishing, Inc., e-mails that
The biggest danger is companies or individuals spending time or money building Web pages or Web sites with little or no real idea of to whom they are talking nor what real business those people can or will do with these pages. The mad rush to build pages--and the mad rush of individuals and companies to sop up the money they perceive is out there waiting for someone to offer to build these pages--is creating a glut of sometimes colorful but mainly useless Web pages and sites that really serve no larger purpose than the vanity of a decision-maker in the sponsoring company.
Later this year [1995], I expect a tremendous negative reaction in the press based on reaction from many of these companies now shelling out $25,000-$100,000 to "pioneer" on the Web, but who will receive no real business or other tangible benefit from their Web investment. I sincerely hope there are enough serious, "industrial strength" Web sites such as TravelWeb in existence by that time to ward off the negative publicity from the thousands of disenchanted companies that have invested in "vanity" sites.
You can contact Cyber Publishing and Bruce Covill by telephone at 602-912-8822 or by e-mail at bcovill@cyberpub.com.
EINet Corporation of Austin, Texas, provides consulting and planning services to help companies use the Internet to achieve their business goals (see Figure 8-2). EINet, known for its Web site, EINet Galaxy, specializes in the integration of Internet technologies with industry-specific applications. The EINet staff provides the technology, services, and labor necessary to meet clients' objectives using Macintosh, IBM PC, or UNIX platforms. Pricing is determined on a client-by-client basis.
Staff members have been working on electronic commerce and security solutions for the Internet since 1992. Their free Internet directory, EINet Galaxy, is one of the leading directory services on the Internet today. They also have an interesting concept, the Virtual Private Internet, which uses cryptographic techniques and firewalls to allow businesses to create a private set of resources across the Internet.
For information on the EINet's service offerings send e-mail to info@einet.net; voice 800-844-4638 (U.S.), 512-338-3544 (outside the U.S.). EINet's Web site is <http://www.einet.net/>.
Innovative Concepts Network (ICNet) offers what it calls its Virtual Host Service (see Figure 8-3). You can establish your own FTP, Gopher, or WWW server on Virtual Host Service's machines for $200 per month, including support, plus $200 in set-up fees. You don't have to buy a machine or lease a line. Virtual Host Service means that you get your own URL and IP address, which you do not share with anyone else. Virtual Host Service also offers mailing list services.
Virtual Host Service's servers are mostly Pentiums running BSDI UNIX with customized NCSA HTTPD for Web services and GN for Gopher services. You can add anything you want, including a back-end database (the server looks up answers to questions in a separate database and sends the results to the user). You have complete control of your server. The company is only the platform provider and does no publishing of its own. <http://www.ic.net>
Virtual Host Service is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan; voice 313-998-0090; e-mail support@ic.net.
Internet Distribution Services, Inc., develops and implements electronic storefronts or catalogs for organizations that want to market their products and services on the Internet (see Figure 8-4). Each customer of Internet Distribution's has an independent presence on the Internet. Since January 1994 Internet Distribution Services, <http://www.service.com/>, has created more than 40 servers for a variety of large and small organizations, including
Ziff-Davis Expositions Siemens Rolm Communications, Inc. Silicon Graphics Country Fare Restaurant Palo Alto Weekly CareerMosaic Syntex DIALOG Information Services Science Television Center for Software Development NEC Informix National Semiconductor Bay City News (Wire Service) Shopping 2000 CyberCash
Costs consist of fixed-price set-ups and monthly operation fees if Internet Distribution Services provides space on one of its Internet servers. Set-ups have been running $10,000 to $25,000, including all consulting, design, graphic generation, forms, domain registration, and document translation. Monthly hosting costs have been running $1,000 to $2,500 per month.
For more information contact Marc Fleischmann at 415-856-8265 (voice) or e-mail marcf@netcom.com.
Liberty Hill Cyberwerks is a one-person shop, based in San Francisco and run by Eric Theise, an academic-turned-Internet-educator, consultant, and writer (see Figure 8-5). A long-time Internet educator (in academia, online forums such as the WELL's Internet conference, public spaces, and in-house settings), Theise began running Internet servers for clients in early 1993 when Gopher was still the information space of choice.
Clients include Circle International (global logistics), digital://threads (Web strategy and marketing consultants), Hearts of Space Radio/Records, New Albion Records, Project Inform (national AIDS treatment information clearing house), online newsletters such as Brock N. Meeks's CyberWire Dispatch and DataLine--The Glass Ceiling, and local organizations such as the Bay Area Internet Users Group, the Virtual Reality Education Foundation, Radio Valencia (a cafe/performance space Theise frequents), and others.
Cyberwerks prices its work on a per-project basis, with server set-ups thus far ranging from $1,000 to $7,000 and monthly maintenance fees ranging from $200 to $800. Theise favors a configuration that dedicates a computer to each client; he finds this offers the greatest flexibility in configuration and the option to simply relocate the computer should the client decide to bring its Internet connection in-house. But he is now offering "virtual host" services as well--a single server masquerades under multiple domain names in a way that is largely invisible to the outside world.
Theise describes Liberty Hill Cyberwerks's mission as twofold:
Liberty Hill Cyberwerks's connection to the Internet is a T-1 line through a regional provider, the Little Garden at <http://www.tlg.net>. Most production servers are Intel-based machines, ranging from 386/16s to 486/66s, and run BSD/OS UNIX <http://www.bsdi.com>. Cyberwerks's development machines include Macintosh, Windows, DOS, and NeXT platforms. A color scanner, Apple QuickTake 150 digital camera, and Adobe Photoshop form the core of the in-house design tools.
Because Cybwerks believes in the importance of reaching as many people as possible, it relies heavily on the Web/Gopher capabilities of John Franks's GN server and Brent Chapman's Majordomo mailing list manager. Cyberwerks devotes one machine to virtual Web hosts using Franks's WN server and an experimental server capable of running the NCSA HTTPD and Apache Web servers, University of Minnesota's Gopherd, and Cornell University's audio/videoconferencing reflector software, CU-SeeMe.
Theise says:
For heaven's sake, if you're thinking of "hiring it out," browse through as many of your potential providers' pages as possible, preferably with a couple of different browsers (such as Netscape and Lynx). Have a friend on the other side of the country do it, too. Can you find the content you're interested in? How fast do the graphics load over a modem connection? Can you navigate through the site with graphics turned off? How many visible "under construction" areas are there and how long have they been that way? Does the site have consistency, integrity? Does it have quality? A quick scan around the Web at the multitude of typo-laden pages, painful color schemes, and broken links indicates that there's a new self-proclaimed Internet presence expert coming online every hour.
You can reach Eric S. Theise at 415-552-6543 (voice); e-mail verve@cyberwerks.com; <http://cyberwerks.com> <gopher://cyberwerks.com>, <mailto:info@cyberwerks.com>.
WAIS, Inc., of San Francisco was founded in 1992 by Internet pioneer Brewster Kahle (who helped design the original version of WAIS while at Thinking Machines Corporation). WAIS, Inc., provides products and services for organizations that want to deliver information over the Internet (see Figure 8-6). Using the WAIS, Inc., product WAISserver(TM), organizations such as Dow Jones, Novell, CMP Publications, and Encyclopedia Britannica have given Internet users access to books, magazines, news, product data sheets, technical overviews, company information, and more. WAISserver allows content providers to index and publish large databases on the Internet, where they can be searched from around the world.
WAIS Production Services create turnkey, Internet-based services using WAISserver as the core technology. WAISserver automatically creates HTML documents on the fly as it indexes content databases (databases with textual content). WAIS Production Services can integrate custom modules for user registration and feedback, transaction-based and subscription-based billing, personalized invoicing for online shopping, archive searching for back issues, automatic content expiration, and new content alerting.
You can reach WAIS, Inc., at 415-356-5400 (voice); fax 415-356-5444; e-mail frontdesk@wais.com; <http://www.wais.com/>.
Web Communications offers both FTP and WWW server privileges at $9.95 (personal), $29.95 (business), and $95 (corporate) per month. (Corporate is for companies with more than 15 employees.) This allows for between 5MB (personal and business) to 10MB (corporate) of disk storage per month. Web Communications also offers discounted rates to nonprofit organizations. There are no update charges or per-link charges.
Although WebCom does not allow you to write your own CGI scripts, the company has made it easy to add online forms. Just write up a form in HTML and leave it in your directory. Any responses to that form will be mailed to you. WebCom has a forms processor with sample set-ups for the following purposes:
WebCom also provides mailing list services that are easily set up by filling out online forms.
Your WWW pages are automatically indexed into an Archie database and can be easily added to the ALIWEB index by placing text markers on each Web page. Full-text indexing of your site's materials is provided via Glimpse. Just check this on a form.
The WebCom server runs on an HP9000/series 800 (which is a mid-range work group server designed to service up to 100 simultaneous connections). WebCom runs a Netscape Communications server but will soon have a Netscape Commerce server that will support secure commercial transations. WebCom has a T-1 connection to the Internet (which means a data rate of 1.5Mbps), and company officials say they will upgrade the link as needed.
WebCom is a self-service Web provider (see Figure 8-7). Content is entirely up to you. You have full access to your account and can update using FTP or via a Web browser. WebCom's 450 customers include the U.S. Coast Guard, the Jimi Hendrix Foundation, and Curtis Matheson Scientific. WebCom can be reached at 408-457-9671 (voice) or <http://www.webcom.com>.
It's possible to hire out all or part of the pieces of the Internet publishing process. It can be done inexpensively or you can spend a lot of money, and many different services offer very different plans. Be aware of what you are paying for and shop around, because the disparity in prices is huge.
But even if you want to do all the work yourself, you need to make sure that your Internet connection can handle the load. That means dealing with an Internet service provider on issues of bandwidth, dependability, and technical support.
Creating a presence on the Internet can be as simple as giving some files to a Gopher or Web provider. Or it can consist of marketing campaigns using traditional print and broadcast media in conjunction with a Web site. Whatever you decide to do, be sure that you know what your money is buying in graphics, marketing, and programming expertise, as well as hardware and software.