Many open source companies have partner programs. Companies that become partners demonstrate a commitment to the open source software.

Partnership does not guarentee qualification or competency. Before allowing partnership to influence your selection of a company, the following factors should be considered.

In most cases, companies purchase partnerships in an attempt to gain referrals and to access support resources. One may assume that purchasing a partnership to gain referrals indicates marketing difficulties or sales problems. Access to support resources is more difficult to assess, because companies that are pushing the envelope definitely need support occassionally, but support may also mean inexperience.

Companies that claim to be active participants in an open source community should provide links to their contributions. Contributions may range from bug fixes, extensions, themes, sample code, documentation, forum support, and donations. If a company can’t quickly show how they have contributed, their claim may not be honest.

The number of sites developed with an open source application can be a good indicator of experience level, assuming the team has the maturity to strive to improve their skills on every project. Any company that claims to be an expert with a product should have at least ten sites using the application. No two projects are the same. No two clients are the same. An expert company should have experience with enough different projects that they should have learned how to best resolve the most common issues.

A company should also state clearly what their specialty is with the application. No web company is good at everything. Some are stronger in design, some are better at integrating applications, some build excellent custom applications. Any company that doesn’t clearly state what they do best, and who can benefit most from their services may not have a real strength. They may be competent in many areas, but their solutions may not be as good as other companies.

Open source service providers may only work with one application. In that case, if you have already chosen the application, and you are sure that you want to use it, the company may be a good fit. However, if you don’t have a clear understanding of the available options, selecting a company that really only works with one application is likely to force your decision to fit their skill set. For a very large project, it may be better to invest some time in researching the requirements and the best path toward meeting them, prior to choosing a provider. Single product providers may also have a more limited skillset, due to the reduced exposure. The more applications you work with, the more you learn.

Never forget that open source applications are available for everyone. Check the resumes of the people who will be working on your project. Consider the level of education and the years of experience. Ensure they are inline with your expectations. Do the engineers have Computer Science degrees? Do the designers have Graphic Design or Art degrees? How many years of experience do they have? Do their titles match their education and experience?

Remember that a company that is very comfortable with a product, has a strong team that needs little support, and delivers quality work on time and under budget has little need for partnership agreements. They can stand on their own.

Link: https://www.getconcrete5.com/get_started/

Concrete5 (http://www.concrete5.org/) offers a great way to create a site quickly, and be able to customize it later.

This is a valuable service, because many people start with a simple site, and then want to extend it. Concrete5 gives you all the access you need, so that when you are ready to extend the site, in any way, you are ready. This also means you can start with their hosted solution, then move gracefully to your own server.

They have a great collection of themes/skins/designs to choose from: http://www.concrete5.org/index.php?cID=614

This solution allows you to run a very powerful system without the help of an expensive web development firm. They handle the hosting, application upgrades, and security.

You may need help setting up email, but you can contact them or a hosting company. The prices are excellent.

Check it out.

Horizontal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_market

• Web sites
• Intranets
• ecommerce
• Live support
• Social networking / web 2.0
• Blogs
• Flash
• RSS / aggregation
• SEO
• Internet Marketing

Vertical

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_market

• Application development, including RIAs
• email management
• Server management
• Licensing
• Toolkit / Framework development
• Technical support
• Product support
• Open source customization
• Content Delivery Networks

Internet services (building web sites and applications) used to be a black box type of service, the client requested a solution, a web company developed one, and then client relied on the service provider for all related work.

Times have changed.

• Web sites are now perceived as vital communications connections. Clients want the content to be current, and fresh, to engage site visitors. This requires frequent updages and many clients want to manage their content themselves. This improves the response time and reduces the cost. It also requires a mechanism to allow them to maintain the content - usually a blog or content management system. Impact: web companies must be able to integrate designs with applications instead of building standalone pages and sites.
• Everyone knows more about the web than before. They know many powerful software packages are available at no cost. They know a good team can make changes quickly. Impact: Expectations are higher, and response time is expected to be lower.
• Web technology has exploded in every direction. Sites must be faster, more attractive, and more sophisiticated than before. Impact: Web professionals must continue learning and pushing the envelope at every opportunity. Web companies must hire the very best people they can afford.
• Malicious netizens are a constant threat. Impact: Web companies must comply with all the appropriate rules and regulations to protect site visitors, and their servers. Everything, from server configuration, web application firewalls, HTTPS/SSL/SSH/SFTP access must be carefully considered. Application security issues must be identified and addressed quickly.
• Most companies already have a web site. Impact: There may be a significant investment in content and code. Protecting the investment, while reengineering the system in a cost effective manner may be difficult.
• Many clients are facing difficult financial choices. The impact of a web site can be difficult to estimate in terms of revenue. Impact: A key opportunity for web companies is providing measurable benefits for clients. Although it may be difficult to illustrate revenue impacts, clear reduction in service costs should be offered. This requires that the web company be able to deliver services in a very streamlined manner.
• Clients need to know what makes a web company a good fit for their project. Most are more concerned with what they want done, than work a company did for others. Impact: Displaying a portfolio of work done is less valuable than providing an interactive guide to assist a client in understanding the types of services (and possibly the costs) they need.

This rewrite rule allows CSS requests to run through css.php, which can substitute color attritubes on the fly to allow a single application to be supported by multiple skins, and have greater immunity to cross-site scripting attacks.

Code:

Key considerations:

• sed may be the best substitution strategy, instead of PHP, because it is probably faster, and little to no development would be required
• Caching should be done carefully to ensure the files are not recreated unnecessarily, and files that don’t exist should be created. If the source .css file has changed, the recolored one must be updated.
• One may use the REQUEST_URI to select the .css files
• Backend management of the .css file identifiers will be required if they are dynamic. This implies the ability of a user to be able to select colors and store the scheme. If they are fixed, it is simpler.
• This is not really intended for individual user customization and user experience, but to allow a single installation of an application to support multiple skins. With that in mind, it is assumed there would be a fixed set of .css files, with a default used in the event of an invalid file request, and the .css files would be managed manually by the design/engineering team.