This new version is essentially an entirely new system that is based on a modified version of MachForm by Appnitro Software.  In addition to secure form processing over SSL, it now  allows companions to build, edit or delete their own booking/contact forms. It also encryptes individual form data and stores it in your own client account database. This feature allows companions to selectively choose which parts of a submission are forwarded to an off-server (and potentially insecure) email address. Full details on how this works can be found at SecureCompanion.com.

Feature Highlights:

• SSL Secured Connection
  Form data is transmitted from your visitor’s browser to the server over an encrypted, SSL secured connection.
• Data Encryption
  All text field data is stored in encrypted format using an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES). Data is only shown in decrypted format when you login to your client portal.  Raw, unencrypted data is never stored on the server.
• Customizable Email Delivery
  Full control over where submission notices are sent for each form and which form fields are included with that email.
• Multiple Forms
  Companions are now able to create as many forms as they need for their business. The system provides the html coded needed to link to or embed that form into your web page.
• Easy Form Editing
  Visual editor that allows you to add, edit or remove fields within your form using a simple drag-n-drop logic. No html knowledge is needed
• Mobile Friendly Version
  When accessed by a mobile device, your visitors will automatically be switched to the mobile-friendly version of your form.

Availability

This service is available and included at no additional cost to my design clients. However, once the system is out of beta, I will be making it available on a fee-based schedule to outside companions who are interested in secure contact form processing for their website. For security and quality control, I will limiting account eligibility to companions who meet the following requirements:

• Independent Companions Only
  You must be an Independent companion or sensual touch provider. SecureForm is currently not available to Agencies.
• Professional Website and Domain
  You must have your own professional website and domain name. Directory listing pages or free websites with a generic domain are ineligible.
• Safe Screening Practices
  You must employ at least one type of screening method when booking new appointments.

If you meet the above eligibility requirements and would like to apply for an account, you can do so by filling out the SSL SecureForm Application.

Costs For Non-Design Clients

This fee schedule only applies to companions whose website I did not design.

There is no cost for the initial two weeks of service.  This provides companions with the option of canceling their SecureForm service before the first billing.

My annual fee for domain name renewals  is increasing from $10/year to $15/year.  The reason for this price increase is that the actual renewal fee I pay to the registrar is usually above the flat $10 I charge to clients.  Also, by acting as a proxy and using my business name for the registration – I end up spending extra time dealing with spam or harassment emails from people who target the administrative contact of a given domain.  This $5 increase covers the full renewal I pay to the registrar and also the extra time I spend on domain management.  Keep in mind that my fee is still less than what you would pay for a domain with privacy service added.

Companions are still welcome to register and maintain their own domain names – but for those who wish me to register a domain on their behalf, this renewal fee increase will be taking place immediately.  This fee increase only applies to renewals after the first year of service.  The initial domain name registration (and first year of service) is still free with my standard design service.

Hosting Renewal: $15/year increase

Due to the additional monthly expenses of the upgraded server hardware, I have decided to increase my annual hosting renewal from $120/year to $135/year.  As it is for the domain name renewal above, this increase only applies to renewal fees after the first free year included with my design fee.

I am also fairly sure that I will be switching to the ticketing system bundled with the new help desk software.  It has many more customization options than the one in my billing system and I like the fact that ladies don’t need to login before opening a ticket.  Between your hosting cPanel, VedaCMS and the client billing area…I know it can be confusing to keep track of so many separate logins.

The new ticketing system would simply email you a ticket ID that you can input to view or update your ticket.  The email also contains a direct link to your ticket so you don’t have to manually type in the ticket ID from the help desk.  If you forget your ticket ID or delete the email…you can simply enter your email address and the system will send you the IDs (and diret links) of any tickets you have open.

I’m going to work on the design over the weekend (I’m customizing so it looks similar to my billing system) and will  probably send out notice of the official switch Monday.   I will also transfer any tickets still open in the billing system to the new ticketing system.  To avoid confusion on where to submit tickets…I’ll be removing the ‘Support’ tab within the client billing area.

All of your accounts will be transferred to a completely new server that has significantly better hardware than what we’re on now.  There is no more than a few minutes of downtime throughout the entire process, as the actual switch is not made until all of your accounts have been copied over to the new server.  Until they actually activate the new server, all of your websites remain online from the old server.

The only real inconvenience with this upgrade is that you can’t make any edits to your website once the migration process begins, as any changes made after your account was already copied over would not be present on the new server once it goes live.

The upgrades were to have taken place yesterday, but were delayed after discovering several accounts with insecure scripts installed.  A couple of these scripts were exploited and allowed a malicious user to upload a folder with dozens of interior junk pages to many accounts on the server.

So I spent from yesterday afternoon until 3AM this morning manually going through each account to clean them up and take an inventory of what scripts were present.  I found several accounts that had uploaded 3rd party scripts that did NOT come through me first.

Please understand that to keep the server secure and stable for everyone, I DO NOT allow 3rd party script uploads unless I have had a chance to review them first.  Although I try provide most features a traditional web host would include, my server is still a private, fully-managed hosting environment.  As posted on my web hosting page, this means that I restrict what type of scripts or 3rd party applications can be installed or uploaded.  I do not have this policy to annoy anyone, but rather, to keep your accounts secure and stable.

If you need to regularly add new scripts or plan to have another developer work extensively on your site, it would be better for you to move to a traditional web host, as they have the manpower to monitor more effectively for script exploits.

Also, if you give someone ftp access to your hosting account, please be sure to reset your cPanel password to something temporary before giving them access.  It’s also a good idea to change your password at least once a month.

As mentioned on my hosting page, I provide web hosting as a convenience and extra layer of security.  My server is intended for more low-key companions who do not want to divulge their real name to a traditional web host.  90% of my hosted clients never use ftp and only access cPanel for webmail or visitor statistics.  These are the types of accounts I would like to host on the server, as they involve far less risk to system stability.

I am still open to allowing occassional 3rd party scripts, but it really is essential that you first send it to me for  review.  If you need a hosting solution with more flexibility than this, I am happy recommend an alternate hosting provider.

Now that all of your accounts have been inventoried and cleaned up, the hardware upgrade will take place some time tonight.  I’m waiting to hear back from the datacenter on the specific timeline – so l post an update to my twitter feed when I know more.  Also, the server has been configured with more strict security measures – which may interfere with some of my editing scripts.  I haven’t had a chance to fully test all versions of the CMS that are still being used – so if you run into quirky behavior while trying to update your website, please open a support ticket and describe the problem.

And finally, with the time spent on unexpected server maintenance yesterday – I’m running a full day behind schedule.  Instead of Friday being my last day before vacation, I’ve decided to work through the weekend so I can catch back up.

Thanks!

Tara

———————————————-

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.”

———————————————

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.

05/05/2010 UPDATE: There is now a $5/year increase on domain name renewals and $15/year increase on web hosting renewals.  Please refer to this post for information.

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 online help desk.  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.