Hostek went down a couple of days ago. Wayne was reporting on what was going on. We talked about communication and disaster recovery processes. Who does what and what are steps and responsibilities. We need to more tech support from our hosting companies. We have like 40 servers there at Hostek. Most times they do great. However, if things go wrong and/or bad, we don't get any preferential treatment. We kinda need that.

Anyways, Wayne was doing his own trouble shooting processes and found a few problems. We have a growing need for more documentation for our processes and procedures. We also need to keep some of them super secure. That makes for an interesting mix. There is also a ongoing need for more communications and keeping everybody in the loop that needs to be there.

At some point, we would like to reclaim some of the WordPress stuff on our main site. Sometimes WordPress is a high level target, with tons of plug-ins, themes, and required sequential updates. Once again, we need to get documentation for all of these pieces. The next subject was a statement that everybody needs to give us documentation and architecture layouts. Some people don't like that, don't think like that, and it's worse then torture for them. We have to figure things out and figure out who is going to do what. Everybody has talents, virtues, strengths, and weaknesses. It is tough to require the exact same things from everyone. It will end up being a moving balance.

As a side note, we may end up needing to help certain people do some of those things like documentation, training, and certain communication skills or tasks. There may be a need for a new role to help the devs and get the info out of their heads and into a consumable format. Eventually we have to get documentation on all internal and external dependencies. There is a big difference between knowing what to do and actually doing it. Sometimes we are pushing so hard, it's hard to slow down and virtually clean-up or sweep the floor.

We talked about having a checklist for our developers. We have an old one that Alan and I worked on years ago, but that's all that we have at this point. Some of the developers just can't do the documentation (and sadly, some of them we don't want them to do it). It seems like the next steps are helping to collect and organize the information and documentation. We have some holes that need to be filled. John was commenting that we need to add this into the budgets and project costs. We need to charge more than just the developer's time. Once again, we may be going too fast or running too hard. We are missing a part of the puzzle.

Next, we went into talking about Adobe ColdFusion uptime on hosted platforms. Wayne was reporting to Cory about a survey that he was reading and what it was saying. Cory wanted the guys (Wayne and John) to call and talk with Hostek to see if we could some things changes (service levels and response times). We need to make sure that we have the access and tools that we need. Some of our clients are 24/7 everyday, even holidays.

The new dedicated testing server was the next major topic. We switched over to talking about the data 5 server, capturing documentation, and walking through the project with both Wayne and John. They are working on both training and documentation and so it is taking a bit longer. Making good progress. John has a project that is done that needs to be tested by some outside parties. He and Wayne are setting up and managing the project queue. Cory is helping to coordinate the actual projects and the testing.

Spent some time talking about look and feel and talking about a new version of the internal shopping cart. We know that there is a need there, we are just not sure how deep to jump. We may end up doing things in a couple of rounds. Round one, just look and feel. Round two new settings to toggle on/off certain fields, sections, columns, and features. There may be another round that gets into a smart cart level (deep cart engine logic). In a nutshell, we want to remove things and make it smarter and easier.

We are looking for feedback. Talking about timing on projects, testing, and pushing things all the way until they are live and in production (and fully documented). Shari O. popped in and was asking about insurance and levels of support from Hostek. Sometimes, the lack of support can be a deal breaker. We've seen this even in sales of our system. It's a part of the puzzle that gets overlooked sometimes.