One aspect about the IT cost

michael's picture

Forums: 

Yes, a professional content management system is much more expensive than a flat filesystem.

But it would be a hard work to add the 250 to 350 new labels each month at the right position. You can not really manage 33,800 labels and 7,600 catalog entries manually. This is no fun and I would avoid doing it. And the results of all the work would be ugly. I have never seen a catalog with a significant number of objects that does look nice in a cheap environment. My aim is not only to collect pictures of all known banana labels but also to present them the best way.

There is no comparison between a small file based solution and what we have here. But the disadvantages in sence of cost are significant. We need a huge 1.3GB database at a second computer, maximum main memory, 12GB of disc space for our 150,000 files (i.g. pictures) and a managed service to monitor all the components. And sometimes I need external help with some IT issues. This days for example I had to pay 238€ extra for a professional Drupal consultant to find the bug with a new PHP version that causes the missing field data.

To be clear: For me this technology is the best choice, I would not go with a cheap solution. The only choice from my point of view is this catalog or no catalog. And I know there will never be an equal share of the IT cost. It will end up losing my money. It is not possible to define a price that is valid for all collectors in the world. But I would expect that the community of collectors help individually as much as possible. You can do in participating at the IT cost and / or sending some nice banana labels for my collection.