Great Web programmers are important if you have E-commerce on your Website.
I was just asked if Jose [Diaz] knows ZenCart as a program for a winery’s online store. My new member to the Oregon Pinot Gris marketing group, Susanne of Christoper Bridge Cellars & Satori Springs Estate was telling me about an experience she had where her programmer just eloped, and hasn’t been heard from since. I laughed and wrote back to her “What a great story.” She got back to me and basically let me know she was being facetious.
It’s so hard to find great help with Websites. What it takes is someone who’s so devoted that he or she gives up a lot of private time. It’s like being an on-call doctor. Morning, noon, and night the calls come in when someone’s site is down, understandably so. (I go nuts when mine’s down, too.)
I found myself writing the following to my friend. It defines Jose Diaz, my friend, life partner, husband. And, I thought I’d share it with you, so you get to understand my support unit. The following for me defines a great wine Webmaster… It’s the kind of mind that it takes, and the kind of devotion that one would have, to making others successful… humby placing himself below all others, as their needs are more important. Some would call him a workaholic; others would call him devoted. I’m in the latter category, because I know that it’s a man’s calling to define himself by what he does, while a woman defines herself by who she loves.
I know Jose works with wine stores for many clients. I’m not sure about Zencart, though. He’s got a programmer (who lives and works in Sacramento) who’s a programming whiz. Together they set up programs for stores. He also uses existing programs, that’s why I’m not sure. They’ve set up some huge site stores together. Suhir works for mega companies as a programmer. The fact that they met is a wonder to me, and I know that the gods sent us an angel. He and Jose get along really well, so we’re covered with helping clients when their individual needs arise. They’re also very responsive when anyone (including me) needs them. I’m not sure of Suhir’s educational background, except to know that he came from India to study, and has stayed here. Jose went to Bowdoin in Maine on a full scholarship, giving up his acceptance to MIT, Columbia, New York University, etc.…. There’s about 20 colleges (he had a great guidance counselor who wanted to see how far he could go). Only Princeton put him on a waiting list. Jose’s brilliant, but still does dumb things (common sense stuff) and cracks me up that way. He’s so attentive to our clients, and they adore him… putting tech into his hands, because it’s hard to compete with his comprehension of that world. I don’t even try to keep up. Why bother. I defer to him, mostly… although, I’ve taken web programming at the college level, just so I could talk to him. He doesn’t talk down to anyone, ever. That’s the best part of this man I’m crazy about. He’s so humble.
Who doesn’t adore a great Webmaster, if you have a Website that needs someone on the back end of it, making sure it works correctly. Also, imagine not having to be the one on the phone with IT people. It’s a different world, a different language, and not one that I yearn for, when I’ve got something this brilliant in my day-to-day life. He loves getting to the bottom of problems and fixing them. It’s so wonderful to have this advantage in life.
Just how often is your site down? And why? In this day and age, it’s unimaginable to me that anyone would have a web site that has regular outages. This is well-understood technology at this point.
Mike,
Yes, in this day and age you’d think that sites going down would be an anomaly. We don’t see it with the big buys, because they’ve got IT people on staff, 24-7-365. We did see how fragile it can be, though, when a snag gets thrown into the mix like Bank of American had when they posted that they were going to be changing for using ATM cards. It takes something that big to overthrow that kind of a system.
Smaller systems, smaller businesses can tell you that it happens more than you’re able to imagine.
Having my blog for the last six years, I can’t even begin to tell you how many times my site’s gone down, for one reason or another; but, I can tell you that it always comes back to the server not being as secure as we’d want, expect, or paid for it to be. For the money we pay for hosting, it’s very, very frustrating… “we” being both Jose and myself. I can’t begin to tell him how many times I’ve gotten him out of bed, first thing in the morning, when I’ve wanted to write on my blog only to find it offline.
I can also tell you that it’s not just my site. We have a good handful of clients, for which Jose is responsible for their sites, too. Jose is on call 24-7-365, and many of our clients will tell you that they’re in my same boat.
So, you would then say, “Well, why don’t you change your server?” Been there, done that, at least a half dozen times in six years with big companies. I’m not sure if you’re a Webmaster or not, Mike… You could be with your tech skills, so if you are, I don’t have to tell you about moving a Website from one server to another. If you’re not in that loop, imaging giving up your weekend every time this has to happen… the big move, I mean. Now, multiply that times 12 sites, and you’ve given up three months a year, just for that function.
These servers that we’ve been using are all credible, so it’s not that it’s bad choices, either. Jose lives on tech support lines, calling customer service more hours than I’d care to count.
It’s exhausting, but he’s an IT man, and there’s the skill that I’d not want to have to be doing… He loves IT, is very patient, and always comes up with the answer. A good IT man is hard to find. I’m so happy that I’ve got one close by. If you’ve not needed one… wow, you’ve got great karma… 😉
I love Jose – He redid my website so it looks professional AND beautiful – until I get my hands on it and think I’m doing something useful. : ) Trust him – he’s great to work with.
Here’s a great example of another small company experiencing what we all must…. In this day and age of internet advancements:
http://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/chocolate-chip-salted-caramel-cookie-bars/
The site owner writes: “Saturday was a rough day. Long story, but we have been having problems with our hosting company so we decided to switch to a new company. Well, the transition didn’t go too smoothly. We spent the majority of the weekend on the phone trying to figure things out. Sorry to anyone who tried to access our site and got an error message. We really appreciate your patience. We finally got our site up and running, but it was a stressful day. I owe Josh a huge thank you for the long hours he spent working on our site. I also owe a huge thank you to these Chocolate Chip Salted Caramel Cookie Bars. They were a lifesaver. I don’t deal well with tech issues, so I decided to bake. Baking always cheers me up, especially when the end result is a sweet and salty cookie bar.”