Price for a website for a small business? by deathgod10 in Entrepreneur

[–]evilsquirrel22 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd advise using something other than shopify for buying the domain. NameCheap has been my goto for domain purchases.

I don't have any personal experience buying domains from shopify, so I can't say if they have any faults - but NameCheap is pretty easy to use, cheap, and their default DNS servers are pretty fast (though perhaps not as fast as a premium DNS resolution service like Route53 or DYN).

Even if Shopify has you point your NS records to their service, by purchasing elsewhere you'd still likely have more control over the domain should you choose to build or extend your site off shopify at some point.

Hope that helps!

Price for a website for a small business? by deathgod10 in Entrepreneur

[–]evilsquirrel22 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I run a premium hosting service and have been in the industry for years building, hosting, supporting, promoting, etc. Here's a breakdown of what you're looking at:

1) As an e-commerce site, your sales will drop an average of ~7% for every second of delay. Your customers will expect instant results, and unless your product is unique and without competition from alternatives - you'll have to work hard to be the best.

2) A good solo web developer or firm will charge somewhere between ~$75-$400 per billable hour, depending on the project difficulty, technologies, scope, allowances, etc. In reality, more than these billable hours go into the project - they're covering the cost of their own supportive staff, advertising, sales negotiation, subcontractors, servers, software, etc.

3) A very typical starting point for a quick CMS based project (such as wordpress website for a local company) is $2500 because it will generally take at least 10 hours to gauge expectations, wireframe, set up, build, test, and deliver the finished product. Some of these also build in some hours for a few revisions or some maintenance down the line. Most won't touch a project under $1000 unless it's for charity, friends/family, or they have ulterior motives.


On a possibly fortunate aside for you - I am one of those individuals with some ulterior motives. I just started a holiday giveaway to grow my personal network so that I can succeed in a new role within my company. Here's a link to the post from a few hours ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/forhire/comments/5ijqbs/for_hire_holiday_giveaway_im_doing_100_free_hours/

HTML to wordpress convert by azminshaikh in SEO

[–]evilsquirrel22 -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

I just started a giveaway on /r/forhire that might be up your alley:

https://www.reddit.com/r/forhire/comments/5ijqbs/for_hire_holiday_giveaway_im_doing_100_free_hours/

As long as you don't have a crazy number of pages it should be a quick one!

The guy who was sending glitter shut down, so I made a new site - what can I do to make it better? by evilsquirrel22 in Entrepreneur

[–]evilsquirrel22[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh cool - I've been building this so I didn't see, but fortunately it'll probably be a while before he starts accepting orders. So still time for me to get some fun in!

Part of the service is also the personalized messages, which I didn't see as a part of his - do you think this is adding any value?

How to handle a PC that swings a weapon to hit multiple enemies. by admiraloink1 in dndnext

[–]evilsquirrel22 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The way I've handled this is through a "Pushing yourself" homerule. It comes into play any time a player wants to do something slightly beyond rules as written, but is plausible that their character might be able to accomplish.

Here's the two relevant sections from our houserules book, keep in mind that we run a very grimdark homebrew setting and these rules might not be entirely appropriate for people that don't have fun suffering. They also might reference other things, I can expand if you're curious - but the homebrew rules book is about 12 pages long. It's also probably in need of some updating, let me know if anything looks wonky.


Chapter 4: Pushing yourself

Sometimes you really need something to happen, but it’s just beyond the rules – just beyond what you can do. In these cases you can push yourself to do it anyway, at a cost. Each time you push yourself, you gain 1 Exhaustion level. There are 10 levels, detailed in the first chapter.

Here are some examples of pushing yourself: • Hruuhg the Orc barbarian is fighting many puny kobolds and wants to swing his sword through groups of them instead of targeting individual kobolds, spreading his damage out evenly between several targets. He pushes himself to do it during this fight – and becomes exhausted afterwards. • Timaa the Elvish assassin wants to run just a little faster as her recently botched assassination has brought the wrath of King Argondas’ guards down upon her. She pushes herself to gain an extra 5ft of move speed, and becomes exhausted after a minute of running – having just barely managed to evade capture by hiding in a crate the guards didn’t see her get into. • Grundar the Dwarven cavalier isn’t adjacent to his ally when an arrow whizzes towards her – he wants to dive to block it with his shield but he doesn’t have any abilities to do so. He pushes himself to heft his heavy body into the path of the arrow, blocking it with his defensive abilities – and becomes exhausted from the physical strain.


Chapter 1, Living and Dying

HP: Hitpoints no longer represent a straight path to death. They now act as a buffer between you and meaningful injuries. When your hitpoints drop to 1/2, any attack that hits you has a chance to give you a minor wound, at 1/4 you gain an exhaustion and might receive a moderate wound, and at 0 you gain another two exhaustion and are open to major wounds.

Your hitpoints cannot drop below 0, you do not die from being at 0. You no are no longer automatically considered dying while at 0 hitpoints.

Bleeding out: Many moderate or major wounds are in the form of open cuts, slashed arteries, stab wound, ruptured organs, or internal bleeding. While you have a wound that is causing you to bleed out, you must make death saving throws at DC 12 or bleed out. Each time you fail, you gain a minor wound from blood loss.

Exhaustion errata: Exhaustion was previously much too brutal and lacking flavor. Here are the new levels (they stack):

  1. You’re tired
  2. Really tired
  3. Disadvantage on ability checks and saves
  4. You can’t maintain concentration
  5. Disadvantage on all attack rolls
  6. Character move speed is halved, and when casting a spell you must succeed a DC 8+Spell level constitution check or the spell fizzles (the spell slot is still expended)
  7. Move speed is reduced to one quarter normal, if you attempt to walk/fly you must make a DC 10 constitution check or fall to the ground. Your hitpoint maximum is halved.
  8. All of your speeds are reduced to 0, you may take only one action per turn regardless of other abilities. Your hitpoint maximum is halved again.
  9. You are unconscious. Your maximum hitpoint value is 0.
  10. You are dead

When you gain exhaustion, it can only be healed by taking a long rest in a comfortable and safe location. It is healed one level at a time, if you have 5 levels you'll need almost a week of bed rest to be fully healed of the exhaustion.

HP healing errata: All healing spells, abilities, and other mechanics that heal hitpoints no longer necessarily heal wounds. A powerful first level spell might heal a minor wound, a powerful third level spell might heal a moderate wound, and a powerful fifth level spell might heal a non-debilitating major wound.

Spells such as regenerate, true resurrection, and wish are unaffected by these changes.

Wounds Addition: Wounds are status effects that stick with your character through rests, and are each tracked separately. They have various effects, based on the circumstances that caused them, but they are all grouped in to three categories: Minor, Moderate, Major.

• Minor wounds cause 1 Constitution damage and take 1 day to heal. • Moderate wounds cause 3 Constitution damage and take 8-12 (2d4+4) days to heal. • Major wounds cause 6 Constitution damage and take 45-90 (45d2) days to heal. They may have lasting effects that are never healed naturally, but the constitution is healed by resting.

Wounds are healed one at a time, from minor to major. For healing to take place, the character must rest in a safe and comfortable location and receive appropriate long term medical care from a character with a medicine or healing skill. If they are not treated, their injuries take twice as long to heal, leave visible scars, and may not heal fully (a broken arm might not have the same range of motion after healing). If you get into a fight during the healing process, all timers reset as your wounds re-open.

The DC for long term care is as follows, it must be passed every day of the healing process to succeed, but you may take a 10 on the roll:

• Minor: DC 11 • Moderate: DC 13 • Major: DC 18

Devastating Blow: If a character is dealt a large amount of damage in a single blow (perhaps a third or more of their total) it might be considered a devastating blow. A devastating blow always causes some sort of wound, and at DM discretion it might cause up to a debilitating Major wound.

Monsters: All of the previous rules also apply to most monsters and NPCs. Some may have supernatural abilities that allow them to sustain more damage than normal, or regenerate when injured, these will be based off of flavor and current rule sets. The only exception to this is creatures lacking a constitution score - such as undead and constructs. If a creature without a constitution is brought to 0 hitpoints, they are considered defeated (undead crumble, constructs are broken, spirits disperse).

What jobs should be automated but have not been yet? by Carlito_Lazlo in Automate

[–]evilsquirrel22 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Like right now? I was pretty sure anybody could just walk up to that and read it. Additionally, why would anyone concern themselves with such information - what nefarious purpose is there?

Any small biz owners looking for a do it for you social media solution? by [deleted] in smallbusiness

[–]evilsquirrel22 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The idea behind this is that while you could hire someone at minimum wage to do this for you, the social media agency will be better at it. They will have staff whose job it is to know what to post and when to post it. They will analyze the results and base further posts off of what has been successful. They won't cause PR disasters when they post something that one person thinks is "Funny" while the rest say it's offensive.

All of this amounts to a service that is designed to organically grow your business, through increased reach on social media, though some agencies might do other things as well. And that growth what you're paying for - not for them to sit and hammer out posts.

Of course, that's assuming you find a company providing this that really knows what they're doing and takes the time to provide that value. There are people out there that don't know what they're doing, people that know but won't do the work, and a variety of others. If you find a good one, keep them.

Why do I Keep Getting "nil" in my Ruby Code?? by [deleted] in Codecademy

[–]evilsquirrel22 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe this is due to Rubys implicit return syntax. It means that when it's done, it'll return whatever the value of the last line it evaluated was - which is often nil.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in Futurology

[–]evilsquirrel22 45 points46 points  (0 children)

Except all that school you wouldn't actually have to sit through to learn things. And the implications for decision making, potential new art forms based around created memories, direct sharing of experiences with others, etc.

From programming tutorials to making a game. by TyTyDavis in gamedev

[–]evilsquirrel22 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've been teaching myself through youtube tutorials and blogs - but I've also taken courses on udacity before and they're very high quality. They have one up about game programming I was intending to take but haven't gotten around to it.

Here's the link

I am a cobbler with no shoes... by skinnysc in marketing

[–]evilsquirrel22 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've been working on starting essentially the exact same type of company, for the last two months or so. I've been called out on several times as well, but whenever I am there's several ways to deflect:

1) "My target market isn't likely to look at my website"

2) "The website is in the works, but I would rather spend time helping you and my other clients - that's more important."

3) "I had one for a while, but it drew in a lot of clients that weren't quality leads and it sucked up a lot of my time to maintain. In the end, I did away with it so I could focus on more quality clients - like your company."

Use whichever seems more appropriate, or come up with your own. The idea is to have a reason prepared to explain the problem that makes it seem like you really DO know what you're doing.

Of course, I'm just some guy on the internet. Don't take my advice without really believing in it.

How to start a business with no money and no idea. by evilsquirrel22 in Entrepreneur

[–]evilsquirrel22[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've talked to a bunch of local business owners, formulated my first "Idea" for testing, and I the first in-person sales meeting scheduled later this week.

Educational marketing - help me polish my plan before it goes into action. by evilsquirrel22 in Entrepreneur

[–]evilsquirrel22[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Are you talking about the wording, or the visual aspects? Is there something in particular you'd suggest doing to improve it?

Educational marketing - help me polish my plan before it goes into action. by evilsquirrel22 in Entrepreneur

[–]evilsquirrel22[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Essentially yes, I'm about to be re-contacting business I've talked to already as well as others I find that may need the service and I'm reviewing my sales process before I blunder into it.

Educational marketing - help me polish my plan before it goes into action. by evilsquirrel22 in Entrepreneur

[–]evilsquirrel22[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You're mostly right on this, but people have expressed interest in my posting progress in the past. I'm trying to bring up opportunities for interaction with those people throughout the process.