Originally Posted by vangogh

Michel I'll take you word for it that operating in a French culture is different than operating in other cultures. And since you've never really told us outright how your business operates we can only guess a little here and there.

But if your business is so specific I have to ask why have a completely public website? It sounds like you only want a very small group of people entering and that most of those people will only come to the site after you've made them aware of it through an offline promotion.

Why not have the whole site behind some form of password protection? The simple truth is if you make pages accessible publicly then you're not going to be able to control where people enter.

You really are trying to force non internet concepts on the internet.

This once again comes down to FRANCE.

In France advertising your business in something as simple as a local newspaper can often be "difficult"
There are mulitple sets of "rules" depending on what publication you use, what city it is located in and what my company is trying to sell.

For example.
As a photographer trying to find just a model for a shared photo shoot. (non-paid)

I can advertise in the Paname weekly for a few euro and the only "security"
they require will be my "fixed land line telephone number" must be one listed in ad.
(Pretty simple)

But if this is a paid photo shoot.
I have to supply my siret number, the price can drastically increase. (Same section of publication
but businesses pay different rate) They may require a photocopy of paperwork. At a minimum I
may have to pay additional for the publication of my siret number and perhaps the publication of the
capital amount.

You can then add to this that...
I may not be allowed to pay cash and it must be Carte Blue or direct bank transfer.
If you're trying to pay with a source outside of France there is 50% chance your
ad won't be run at the last minute and you need to wait 6 months for a refund.

I can literally make a huge list of the problems.
The problems with French business are well documented
(I need to hire 2 new employees but I won't do it !
Once I hire them, I am stuck with them. Even if they steal and burn my office down
that might not be sufficient reason to get rid of them)

For many like me...
The Internet becomes one method to avoid the problemes.

But on that note...
If you look at most french websites they are garbage.
I woud estimate most are hosted on free services.
Credit card processing is limited to mainly allopass. (UK company pretending to be french)
And they either look ugly or over use flash and art.

-------
For me I am inviting the public.
But it is not the "general" public but only a "specific" section of the public.

And if my business did not have to depend of french rebursements. I would open to the
general public and gladly take American money. Sadly the American money is now nothing
and the volume I would need to sell would require I stop everything else.

And the British pound is good but even the richest UK company does not have much buying
strength. So in europe for most affairs...
It is France or nothing. (And Germans buy French too)

Again I won't argue with you about what people are like in France. I've never been there as much as I would like to visit. But not having been there obviously leaves me lacking in experience about the culture.

But if part of why you're online is to escape some of these problems I would think there are many others like you. It comes across like your approach to the site is not to cater to these people, but rather the people who simply shrug their shoulders at the problem. Maybe that's just my interpretation, but it's how it comes across.

I have a question or two. Are you saying that Americans and British and Swiss and Japanese and etc and etc can't buy from your site? Are you saying they wouldn't be interested in what you're selling so they're not in your target market?

Originally Posted by vangogh

I have a question or two. Are you saying that Americans and British and Swiss and Japanese and etc and etc can't buy from your site? Are you saying they wouldn't be interested in what you're selling so they're not in your target market?

Yes they can't buy from my site.
I hope by what I'm about to say is construed as being ant-french or ant-american or anti-anyrace.

French beaucracy is a creature of its own kind. Even people that are born and raised many
generations in this nation will say it's absolutely oppressive.

There are many reasons why I won't sell outside of France and most is based on Money.

At the end of the day when my ledgers are totaled up the gouvernment here might
as well be shooting me in for each non-French sale.
It is literally pages of documents and explanations and photocopying.
Plus a level of chasing back and forth that demonstrate hat somehow France is not
practicing protectionism or subsidizing me. But somehow the results are just that.

Not only that but...
The claims that the money might be "black" because it came from an outside
source make
my life hell. When I did sell to the United States I got asked 4 times to see the
prefecture of the police in one year. The issue was who were these people that were
buying my products and where were they getting the money. And when I got
almost a dozen chargebacks due to an Internet scam.. Oh LA LA. I thought for sure
I was going to be in jail.

This is sooo bad that this year I moved my business registration to Cyprus and my
banks to Swiss. (Doing this caused other problems but I won't discuss that)
So I don't have to constantly prove my innocence but I still have the same tax problems
because I'm based in France.

As everything else...
I would sell to anyone in a heartbeat because I am a capitalist. But my hands are tied up.

I think our friend has a geo-IP block so that only people in France can access the site?

Originally Posted by ForrestCroce

I think our friend has a geo-IP block so that only people in France can access the site?

Yup..
I got my hands on a script with a cookie solution.

I know everyone kind of things I'm a crazy person with my facons.
But I know my industry and the challenges it gives.

When I lived in the United States a college once said to me a story about the Missipi river.

The river could be really hard to navigate and was often dangerous.
In the past there was often more than one captin.
Each responsible for a seperate section of the river voyage.

And each captin did what he did best.
Worry only about his section and not the next man's.

This works for me. It is early to make a definitive "yes this is the solution" call.
But my phone has been ringing more since the script was installed.

Michel I'm not thinking you're crazy at all. I think it's more a case that we don't really know your site and so are missing details of some of these issues.

I trust you to know your business more than the rest of us do. It seems to have a very specific way that just seems to go against the common advice you would give for most sites. I realize the site isn't one you can or want to link to here and even if you could most of us wouldn't see it because of that cookie solution.

it does mean at times we'll think you're a bit off with something you're doing, but it doesn't necessarily mean we think your crazy.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Michel I'm not thinking you're crazy at all. I think it's more a case that we don't really know your site and so are missing details of some of these issues.

I trust you to know your business more than the rest of us do. It seems to have a very specific way that just seems to go against the common advice you would give for most sites. I realize the site isn't one you can or want to link to here and even if you could most of us wouldn't see it because of that cookie solution.

it does mean at times we'll think you're a bit off with something you're doing, but it doesn't necessarily mean we think your crazy.

Je suis un fou. Translated in english is I am a crazy person.
But the "sens" of the word fou isn't really all that negatif and often can be playful.
Again just culture and different enviroments. Like british want to drive on what
I call the wrong side of the road. The french will pay more for something if you're
a bit difficult. (Or at least that has always been my exprience)

As for not directly posting my business on here....
I owe everyone an apology and an explanation....

I am sorry.
I don't want to deal with forum politics or gossip.
I get a lot of great advice and there are great people I talk with in this forum.
But the modern internet is famous for trolls and childish game players.
And for every 1 person that posts there are 10 that never post.

And again I am a francophone living in France. All I need is some angry
adolescent that watches Fox news to decide to DOS my site because of
something I said. And it's not as if I am seeking to be controversial or cause
problems. But you never know when meaning well someone takes things the
wrong way.
(Which already happened on here once. Remember the angry response I got about traffic.)

And ultimately this is even why I am on an english forum not a french ones.
I like the peace in my life.

Now I'm confused Michel. Are you crazy or not?

Don't worry about not posting your site at all. It will of course mean we'll being guessing incorrectly at things from time to time, but the threads you've started have been pretty interesting and enjoyable to post in.

It's all good.

Originally Posted by vangogh

Now I'm confused Michel. Are you crazy or not?

Don't worry about not posting your site at all. It will of course mean we'll being guessing incorrectly at things from time to time, but the threads you've started have been pretty interesting and enjoyable to post in.

It's all good.

" fou " closest literal tranduction is " crazy"
However a francophone might say to a child at a birthday party. "Tu es un fou."

It may not mean he is crazy like you put him in an insane hospital.
But he is crazy with joy.

In my approach I think people think I am crazy with strangness. Perhaps a nice person and perhaps smart. (I hope) but my ways of doing things are crazy bizarre.

Having said that....
I have not done anything to increase traffic to my site.
But the direct telephone number on it used to receive 2-5 calls a week.
That number has just jumped to more than 10 for each day since the install.
And one client wants to come in to discuss shooting extra photos, etc so he can have a similar site.

If I do this correctly I may find us doing french webdesign.

We're all a little crazy in our own way Michel.

I think most of us or at least those responding to your threads certainly think your nice and even smart. Like I said because we don't fully understand the nature of your business we'll sometimes have conflicting opinions, but I think the threads have been interesting and have good information in them.

You may not have gotten more traffic, but you've increased the calls you get quite a lot. I'd say that's the better of the two anyway.

Originally Posted by Michel Samuel

JAll I need is some angry
adolescent that watches Fox news to decide to DOS my site because of
something I said.

I would think a Frenchman would call it "faux news." I guess I can see some risk in that, but I think there are enough sites on the internet that we're all relatively obscure.

I'm not sure how you would code this in php, but since you're already looking up geo data by the ip address when someone requests a page from your site, there's a pretty easy way to prevent a dos attack from outside France and Germany.

A web server maintains a thread-pool and devotes a thread to serving up every request. The server can "flood" if you allow it to; when every thread in the pool is busy it will create a new one, so thousands of requests will flood the pool and the server is so busy creating and managing new threads it doesn't have any cycles left to run them, and falls over. You can limit the number or threads to 50 or so, and after that many, requests will queue up. That will slow things down, but not anywhere near as bad.

You can tell the server to yield the current thread's access to the CPU for a full second if the request comes from the US ... a hacker will have a hard time bringing you server down if every request they make tells your box to go serve other peoples' requests.

Finally, you can limit any IP address to 500 requests per day.

Originally Posted by vangogh

We're all a little crazy in our own way Michel.

I think most of us or at least those responding to your threads certainly think your nice and even smart. Like I said because we don't fully understand the nature of your business we'll sometimes have conflicting opinions, but I think the threads have been interesting and have good information in them.

You may not have gotten more traffic, but you've increased the calls you get quite a lot. I'd say that's the better of the two anyway.

We got a big contract today because of the site. So I'm happy.

But having stated this....

I'm going to play the advocat of the devil.

The Internet is predominantly an American venue and secondly an anglophone venue.
I think part of the reason for this is 1) Culture and 2) Expected ways of doing business.

I'm always looking for ways to lock down my sites.
But if you live in france you will find we all have double security codes on our
apartments and we all tend to be suspicious of new people.
So a really locked down site appeals to business people. It says, "Trust us...
We are really secure."

But on that note....
I have credit card processing on the site.
I have electronic contracts.
I have MSN and Email.
But it is the phone number on the site that gets most people.

Even for the most minor purchase they will call.
There is more trust in giving your carte blue over the phone than on the net.