Like Greg said, if you can find someone willing to do this for a flat fee, then I'd love to hear more about it. As far as I can tell, there are far too many variables to make it possible to estimate accurately up front. If I were trying to figure out a fixed price I'd personally try to think about what the highest possible price could be, and then charge that price. Otherwise, you are asking the consultant to take a considerable financial risk.<br>
<br>As Khalid mentioned, many shops that handle scaling will offer you more of a fixed price if they control the servers, which seems reasonable. <br><br>I, for one, think that you are seriously undervaluing server and general LAMP stack support, but maybe I'm not understanding what you are looking for. What do you mean by, for example, "Load Balancing"? That makes it seem to me that you are talking about scaling a site that requires more than one server, but given the budgets you seem to be working with, that doesn't seem like a good assumption (someone who requires more than one server should be able to afford to pay market rates to get it done correctly). <br>
<br>So, my question is: what exactly are the problems that you are facing that require a server/scaling specialist?<br><br clear="all">--<br>Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg<br>ZivTech, LLC<br><a href="http://zivtech.com">http://zivtech.com</a><br>
<a href="mailto:alex@zivtech.com">alex@zivtech.com</a><br>office: (267) 940-7737<br>cell: (215) 866-8956<br>skype: zivtech<br>aim: zivtech<br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 11:34 AM, Sam Cohen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sam@samcohen.com">sam@samcohen.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Thanks Greg,<br><br>I understand there are a lot of firms offering this service, but what I'm really hoping for is someone who had a deep understanding of server and performance issues and can spend a couple of hours analyzing a site and making adjustments. <br>
<br>I'm not looking for a large shop that will charge thousands of dollars for this service, but a consultant who has expertise in this area and would charge fair market value for a few hours of their time. <br><br>
By flat rate, I mean a willingness to give a price upfront based on the site specs and hosting situation. <br>
<br>Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems that someone with this expertise, might be charging somewhere in $50 to $100 an hour range, and in just a couple of hours they should be able to accomplish quite a lot for a site. <br>
<br>This would be a really valuable service for those of us in the biz who might be very knowledgeable in other areas but don't know much about servers, bottlenecks, load balance, etc -- and don't really want to learn either. <br>
<br>Thanks,<br><font color="#888888">Sam</font><div><div></div><div class="h5"><br><br><br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Sat, Apr 25, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Greg Knaddison <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Greg@growingventuresolutions.com" target="_blank">Greg@growingventuresolutions.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">We hit this topic less than a month ago -<br>
<a href="http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/2009-March/003088.html" target="_blank">http://lists.drupal.org/pipermail/consulting/2009-March/003088.html</a><br>
<br>
And read the followups as well.<br>
<br>
Also, charging for performance tuning as a flat rate is pretty<br>
interesting. If you find anyone who takes that arrangement please<br>
write back to the list about the experience.<br>
<br>
Regards,<br>
Greg<br>
<div><div></div><div><br>
<br>
<br>
On Fri, Apr 24, 2009 at 8:17 AM, Sam Cohen <<a href="mailto:sam@samcohen.com" target="_blank">sam@samcohen.com</a>> wrote:<br>
> Does anyone out there offer a Drupal performance site and server tuning<br>
> service -- for a flat rate?<br>
><br>
> Ideally this would include analyzing a site, making changes to the site and<br>
> server as needed in order to improve performance.<br>
><br>
> I think this service would probably be useful to a lot of us, but I<br>
> understand there's that concern about sharing rates over an email list, so<br>
> please email me privately with what you would include and what you would<br>
> charge for such a service.<br>
><br>
<br>
<br>
</div></div><font color="#888888">--<br>
Greg Knaddison<br>
<a href="http://knaddison.com" target="_blank">http://knaddison.com</a> | 303-800-5623 | <a href="http://growingventuresolutions.com" target="_blank">http://growingventuresolutions.com</a><br>
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