Thanks for the thoughts. I think as Steven said, it's hard to give specific recommendations without understanding the nature of the software being distributed. I didn't mention it before because I didn't want to bore anyone but I'll take that chance now.
So the web server module that I'm wanting to distribute is secondary to the primary software. The primary software is at frontalcode.com (still in somewhat pre-launch mode) and is something we've written that can be thought of as HTML and Javascript for Flash. The idea is to use a markup language to develop rich media sites. One of the bonuses of using Frontal is that if you have an HTML-like description of your rich media app then it's possible to transform that into an actual HTML version that can be indexed by Google and the other search engines - a general problem with Flash content. This then is where this secondary software comes in. You plug this module (the SEO Module) into your web server and it looks at each requests it gets, finds the files that will satisfy it, searches them for Frontal content, converts that content to HTML and inserts that into the result. So, given that product offering, the thought is that we would be plugging into someone's existing infrastructure. That is, our customers would likely already have a website/cms/etc. that they would be loathe to part from but that they might be convinced to add a layer to. That means that building our own stack wouldn't really work for us - imagine that a page is being served by Krang for example and the result has Frontal content in it. Next, I think the price point we're looking at for this software ($500) prevents us from being able to spend too much time with each customer getting them set up. In other words, doing an install for each sale seems contrary to the business model especially since I want my developers focused on Flash development rather than Apache administration. I think that last point, that this is secondary software and that we don't want to be Perl experts makes building RPMs and installable Perl bundles kind of unattractive. I think then that the most attractive option is to write an installation manual that says, "install mod_perl, install these modules, put software here..." and then leaves it to the purchaser to accomplish those steps. If they have in-house IT (which is probably not far-fetched for the scenarios I'm imagining) then this isn't unreasonable. And then if they don't have in-house IT, we refer them to a pool of mod_perl and Apache savvy consultants who could follow those sketchy steps. So, is there a pool of mod_perl and Apache savvy consultants out there available for tapping? Google gives results but if anyone wants to recommend a group then I'd be happy to hear from them. (BTW, you can't even buy the SEO module at the moment so this is about preparations.) Thanks again, Mike Mike Barborak Technical Director barbo...@basikgroup.com ------------------------------------ BASIK GROUP 1201 Broadway, #704 New York, NY 10001 office: 646 201 9347 cell: 646 263 7029 www.basikgroup.com On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 11:37 AM, Perrin Harkins <phark...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Thu, Sep 10, 2009 at 9:55 AM, Mike Barborak <barbo...@basikgroup.com> > wrote: >> So, can anyone point me at other software with these requirements and >> their solution to this problem? > > You can look at the installer for Krang (http://krangcms.com) which > builds the whole stack. There are also several approaches on CPAN, > like Shipwright. > > - Perrin >
