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This is advance notification of an upcoming maintenance window provided to us from one of our backbone uplinks.

Location: Los Angeles Datacenter
Provider: SAVVIS
Date(s): January 26th, 27th, 28th
Timeframe: 12AM PST – 7AM PST
Level of Impact: Sporadic Latency/Packet Loss

Work to be performed (as provided by Savvis):
“In this window, engineers will be performing maintenance that will affect IP peering in the Los Angeles region between 0001 and 0700 MST on consecutive nights Jan 26, 27, and 28.

During this time, traffic may be exposed to increases in latency to and from the peer network.”

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I will not go into great detail on the personal circumstances behind these changes, except to say that my youngest child has exhibited  developmental delays that have become a concern for us and her pediatrician.  Her initial screening seems to point toward a spectrum of autism, though it is not conclusive and her full diagnosis will not be made until the end of January.  As a minimum, we know at this point that she requires speech therapy and a greater amount of one-on-one interaction to encourage interpersonal relationships & communication.

Because my greatest priority at this point is focusing on whatever is needed to improve her development, I have decided that it would be best for me to temporarily cut back my Veda Designs workload so I can spend more time with her.  Our hope is that an early and aggressive intervention will give her the greatest chance of catching up developmentally so she can still start preschool on schedule next fall.

I have outlined below in more detail on the specifics of these changes. Because I will be working about half of what I do currently, some of these changes require adopting more strict policies relating to client updates and new projects than what I’m entirely comfortable with.   I want to apologize in advance for whatever inconvenience these changes cause.  Cutting back on my business was a difficult decision to make and not one I’ve made lightly.

Changes for New Clients…

Schedule and Availability
I will be scheduling no more than 2 or 3 new projects a month, which is about half of what I currently take on.  Unfortunately, this means I may end up having a longer waiting line for new projects, but I’m hoping the reduced workload will mean I can finish up projects sooner because of not having to multitask as much.

Fees & Maintenance
Unlike previous years, I will not be raising my rates in 2010.  However – because VedaCMS allows you to do all of the basic editing you need to your website (text, gallery photos, calendar, etc), I will no longer be offering 6 months of free basic maintenance with my standard design fee.  I will still assist with questions or bug-fixes of course – but any website changes (photos swapped out in the design, pages added or renamed, etc) would be charged for at my standard maintenance rate.

Development
Development time-lines and scope will remain the same, though I will be more firm about insisting companions are available for regular correspondence after stage 1 of development so it will be possible to finalize their design in a more timely fashion.  I’ve had too many projects in the later half of 2009 take 2 or more months to complete because of slow communication on finalizing the design (though, in their defense – I was much more laid back about waiting, as I had a high workload and plenty of other projects to work on).

Because there have been too many scheduling delays relating to photos, I will not schedule a start date unless you are certain your photos will be ready for me to work with by that date. If your photos are more than 3 days late in arriving, I’m still happy to work with you, but your project will lose it’s place on my calendar and it will be necessary to reschedule at the end of my queue.

Changes for Existing Clients…

Fees
No changes in hosting services or fees

Client Updates
Non-critical client updates will still be performed Mondays and Fridays, though I will be adopting a more strict update process in that all new update requests will need to go through the ticketing system available within my billing center.  The reason for this is that it automatically orders tickets by the date received, which saves me time in having to manage an update queue separately.

Emergency support tickets will still be handled as soon as I see them, though again – I will ask that they are sent through the ticketing system so I can keep everything in one place.  Support requests sent directly to tara@vedadesigns.net will take longer to process – as I’ll have to manually create a ticket for you (or I’ll ask that you create your own ticket).

Additionally, I will no longer perform updates that clients are able to do themselves through the CMS.  If you run into a problem or are confused about how to do something, I will walk you through through the process step-by-step, but you will be asked to do it yourself.  Because all basic updates can be made through your CMS (text changes, gallery page, calendar, blog, etc),  I am no longer offering six months of free basic maintenance.  This does not apply to bug fixes or questions on how to use the CMS.  However any website changes (swapping design photos, adding pages, renaming menu items, etc) will be charged for at my standard maintenance rate.  I’ll be revamping and adding to my online knowledgebase while I’m on holiday break, so there will be much clearer usage instructions and troubleshooters available after the new year.

Working Hours
The specifics are not established yet, but I’m hoping to adopt more standard day-time working hours so I can reserve 5pm and later for time with my family.  Until now, I’ve generally just worked on and off from the moment I get up in the morning until I go to bed at night.  Although this has worked well for me in terms of having to multitask motherhood with my job, it’s caused some stress in my family dynamic because everyone in my household complains that I’m ‘always working’.

To alleviate this, I’m going to experiment with having an official end of my work day at 5pm (CST).  I’m sure there will be exceptions to this, but for the most part – clients should be aware that my availability will generally run from 9am-5pm, four days a week. I will still be taking weekends off for time with my family as well as one day during the week that will be needed for whatever program my daughter is enrolled in.  My ultimate goal with Veda Designs is to maintain a 25-30 hour work week, which is about half of what I typically work now.

I will email clients privately before I go on holiday break with more information on these changes.  However, with exception to a few possible adjustments or additions – the information above gives a relatively clear idea of what to expect.  As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

So there is really no purpose to this entry except to say that the blog is active and live again.  As mentioned briefly above, there will be some changes to my service after the new year, which I’ll expand on in a future post.

So although I probably won’t be making regular entries for awhile, I wanted to make the official announcement here relating to the recent increase of my design fees and changes in services.  As of January 1st, 2009 – my standard design fee has increased to $1000 for independent companion web sites and $1400 for agency web sites.  The price difference is due to the custom Agency-specific CMS now available and the significant amount of development that went into it.  There are more details about VedaAgency on the new Software page of my web site, though in summary – it allows the dynamic addition and removal of complete escort profiles on an agency web site.  This also includes separate photo galleries for each companion.

I’ve also started selling my VedaCMS and VedaAgency CMS software as a standalone application for use on those web sites I have not designed.  Again, details can be found on my software page.  I’m currently offering it under a leased license agreement with no 3rd party install option (eg: This means I would need to install it instead of someone of your own choosing).

Also, I just wanted to say thank you to all of my design clients – for whom I owe the success of my business.  It is, and continues to be, a privilege to work with you all.

Read the story: The other prostitution scandal….

On another note, I have temporarily removed my portfolio due to unwanted attention from the media relating to the Spitzer scandal. Apparently they were trying to discover if someone I designed a website for was the very same ‘Kristen’ as indicated in that story.

As they’ve now identified this woman and posted photos, I can say outright that she is not one of my design clients. However, because I’m still being contacted with general questions about the industry, I have taken down my portfolio to prevent my design clients from being harassed with similar-minded questions about their chosen profession.

Also, to avoid confusion as to what I do, I would like to state for the record that I provide web design and hosting services to escorts. I think the media and public has forgotten (or chooses to ignore) that escorting is a perfectly legal and legitimate business. Whether or not a companion conducts her business within the legal parameters of the profession is irrelevant in terms of the website dynamic itself. It is a choice she must make and not one I have any participation, knowledge or interest in.

If a companion I host were to be prosecuted for prostitution, I would be forced to remove her website from my server. Not because I personally believe she has done anything wrong or that it is the right thing to do, but because I could be held liable for knowingly assisting a business indulging in illicit activities.

However, until that is proven to be the case, every woman I host or design a website for is an escort.� I will not tolerate or respond to emails and blog comments that imply otherwise.� I will not discuss, expose or share information about any of my clients.� These women already have to deal with enough ignorance and judgement from society.� Let them conduct their business in peace.

Web Design Services:

• Standard fee will increase from $750 to $800
• Secure SSL Form Processing will now be available to everyone at no additional cost
• Hosting is now provided on a private, dedicated server owned by Veda Designs
• VedaCMS, which allows companions to update text, photos and maintain a simple availability calendar has been completely rewritten and unified into one secure location.
• Everything else that was previously included

Hosting Renewal Fees*

• 1 Year Renewal: $120
• 6 Month Renwal: $90 (previously unavailable)
• Month-to-Month: $20 (previously unavailable)

* Existing Veda clients that have paid for the next year of hosting will not need to worry about the new hosting fees until their next renewal term.

Rather than get cranky and stressed with everyone at home when I’m busy with work …. I’ve decided to just accept the fact that I need to adjust my project completion time-lines to accommodate my new schedule & lifestyle.

With that said, I am adopting a new ‘official’ policy of having the first working draft ready within two weeks…with a public launch within one week of that (give or take a few days depending on feedback to the initial design and what needs to be changed).

This doesn’t necessarily mean it will actually take me two weeks to launch the first draft…but I would rather err on the side of caution than disappoint new clients with an unfinished draft in the first week.

Also launched are the upgraded versions of my CMS tools – VedaCMS and VedaGallery.

VedaCMS now allows you to edit page titles & META Tags (what search engines use to index your website) and VedaGallery has been completely rewritten with an entirely new upload schema. Instead of adding photos individually (previously, five at at time) – you can now add as many photos as you like to a ‘queue’, which can then be uploaded at once. I’ll also be adding a demo page for the new VedaCalendar some time in the near future. I found that some ladies don’t need or want this – so I will just be offering it as an optional (and free) add-on.

Because I still need to tweak a few things with the site design, don’t be alarmed if you notice a few display bugs this week. On the other hand, if you come across any broken links or a page which is clearly not working properly, please don’t hesitate to drop me an email about it.

For those who were wondering – I gave birth to a beautiful 9lb 12oz baby girl (yes…big baby) and aside from a relatively difficult labor (aren’t they all…), everything went fine and she is healthy and perfect.

Unfortunately, I’m still not entirely caught up on emails – though because I am finishing up a couple of new projects, I expect to devote a solid afternoon to my inbox this week. My apologies to those receiving a late reply.

I will be making some changes to my website this week and adding an availability calendar as an included feature with my standard design package. Will write more on that in a future entry.