Ricky’s Online Business Blog

A customer often needs to share files for his clients.  The clients need to see the photos of his products before deciding to buy.  The photo files are often large in file size.

He has been using File Transfer Protocol (FTP) software for this purpose.  He created a specific directory on his web server, uploads the files into that directory, and asks clients to download from that directory.

While this has been working for his purpose so far, it is not a very good way for file sharing.  For one, non-technical users may not know how to download files using FTP.  Either they need to know what to type on the address bar in Windows Explorer (such as ftp://user@ftp.domain.com), or they need to install and use some FTP software to download the files.  Worse, some companies do not allow employees to install new program without proper authorization.

Also, if the files are to be shared among more than one client, a client who can access the directory can often see the files shared to other clients.  Of course, my customer can create different directories for different clients.  But it’s simply more work.

Also, his clients just want to look at the photos.  By using FTP, they need to first download the files in order to view the photos.  But download wastes time, especially for large files.

FTP as its name suggests, is used for “file transfer”, that is to upload and download files from and to a server.  It is not really meant for “file sharing”, which is to share files between and among more than one user.

Since my customer needs to share photos, instead of using the more technical FTP, why not use Flickr instead?  Just upload the photos to Flickr, decide who can view the photos, and share the web address which contains the photos to the clients.  The clients will be able to view the photos without needing to download.

I was called in by a company to attend a meeting together with their outsource web designer.  My job was to give advice on their server hosting requirements.  But as I followed their conversation, I found something that may indicate how some people perceive web designers.

The customer saw web design as a lowly job.  It seems they considered a web designer nothing more than someone who get paid to simply put up their company photos online and finish her job.

They insisted a whole Flash-only web site to be done up for less than RM1,000.  But I think the market rate is at least RM5,000 if not more!

But what surprised me most was that, the pitiful freelance part-time web designer, though obviously being looked down on, accepted the job at such dirt-cheap rate!  I don’t know what quality of work she is going to deliver.

Are the web designers out there doing work just to “cari makan” (earn a little money here and there to feed stomach)?  Good and passionate web designers like Danny Foo will be the first to disagree.  Nowadays web designers are not just designers.  They are artists, engineers, strategists, marketeers and business consultants!  The good designers are in for long-term business.

Unfortunately how the market perceive web designers may not be so noble.  This maybe something for web designers to ponder on.  Why such a bad reputation?

For me I don’t see web design as a lowly job.  I know web design in general, though it’s not my choice for business.  I know the time and effort a dedicated web designer put in to show up a quality work, though not well recognized and appreciated by others.

Not everyday is perfect day and problems can come up anytime. Sometimes I have to put up with a bad hair day too. So I wonder whether it would be better to turn bald when I get old so that I don’t have to worry about my hair any more!

Anyway, sometimes my hosting customers too can encounter problems in their Internet connection to our server.  I normally ask them to check their connection to server and send me report generated by a software called PingPlotter.  Customer support by phone and email is a full-time job.  So I might as well post here and refer them to this article.

So are you reading this because you can’t connect to our server, or any web site?  Download PingPlotter (free version) at http://www.pingplotter.com to find out what’s wrong. Install and run the program as usual.

As you can see above, there is a little text box at the top left.  Just type your server address there and hit Enter.  The server address depends on what you want to check.  It could be mail.yourdomain.com or pop.yourdomain.com for mail server, webmail.yourdomain.com for webmail, www.yourdomain.com or simply yourdomain.com for your web site.

A little graph will be generated on the right hand side every few seconds.  It shows what happened along the way from your PC to our server.  If the graph is mostly in green, you are having good connection.  If there is some yellow or red color, there might be some bottleneck or network problem somewhere halfway.

To churn out the report, click Edit menu, then Copy As Image.  You can then start and paste the copied image into your graphic software, such as Paint.  Then save the image and send to me at ricky [at] rickysoo.com.

Any question or comments? Welcome to comment below.