Charlie Arehart's ColdFusion Consulting Services

ColdFusion Troubleshooting Services

If you're a CF shop with any challenges, do you ever feel alone and stumped to resolve the problems?

Would you like someone to look over your shoulder (either on-site or remotely), who can solve many common CF server problems in less than an hour, with your satisfaction guaranteed or you don't pay? Charlie is available and interested in helping. (If you're at all uncomfortable about remote support, please see the discussion below.)

ColdFusion Consulting - Short-term, Long-term, Beginner/Advanced

With 12+ years experience working with ColdFusion shops and developers helping solve nagging problems, Charlie Arehart can help :

solve nagging crashes, restarts, etc
tune poorly performing systems
install, administer, and/or configure servers
troubleshoot code
recommend coding techniques
help developers work more productively with editors, other resources, and more

Bottom line: if you have a problem related to CF (or Railo, BlueDragon, etc.), Charlie may be able to help, quickly, or perhaps can point you to someone else or other resources to get you going.

Charlie's available for short-term (hours, days) problem-solving at the rate below, or he can be hired on retainer with a pre-set budget you can determine. Contact him for a initial referral session to determine how he can help solve your most pressing challenges. Often he can be available to begin helping right away, via a secure, unintrusive remote connection. (He's open to completing whatever confidentiality/NDA agreements you may have.)

He can also help with training, whether custom or packaged, including Adobe CF training and more, as discussed elsewhere.

Finally, he also welcomes occasional email questions directly and will answer them without charge as he can, as time permits and if the question can be answered quickly. (He also contributes his time to many mailing lists, forums, and user groups.)

Remote Consulting: Looking Over Your Shoulder

While Charlie's available for on-site, it's generally more economical to have him assist you remotely. You may be suspicious or even reluctant about remote consulting. If he's to help you look at your problem over the web, "does that mean we need to open firewall holes/ports on the server or create an account, as for remote desktop or VNC-type sessions?" No! You don't need to open any ports or create any login for him. Instead, we'll use Acrobat Connect, which works over any browser and uses standard HTTP ports.

"Do we have to install any software?" No, Connect is browser-based and uses Flash, which is already installed on most computers. You may be thinking, "well it's not installed on our servers". That's ok: you can remote into your servers from your desktop and have the Connect sesion on your desktop.

"But he's remoting/logging into our servers, right?" No, he does not need to "remote into" nor obtain any authentication information for your servers in order to look over your shoulder while use work on those servers. You will login into your machines (remoting in if needed), and he will just watch over the web as you do that. This is about working together, all with the goal of helping you help yourself and become more self-sufficient. (Of course, if there's some situation where you just want to give Charlie some responsibility to take care of something for you, which may involve remoting into your machine, that's an option as well.)

"Well, still, can Charlie see something on the server we don't want him to during a shared desktop session?" He sees only what you choose to let him see during a shared desktop session. If you do show him something confidential, or give him access to your servers, of course he will keep that information completely confidential. Again, he's happy to complete an NDA agreement as well if you'd like.

"OK, but what about security of the channel of communications?" The Connect session is SSL-enabled, so communications are encrypted. Only Charlie can see what's being shown on your screen.

"How will we talk?" After connecting via Connect (join Charlie when scheduled at carehart.org/help to do the screen sharing), we can speak by phone (Charlie is happy to call you, or can provide a number for you to call him if you prefer) or via Skype calling, Google Talk, etc. And it's no problem to have multiple folks on your end join in from different offices, locations (and you're free to record the session if you"d like.)

Rates

Charlie's rates for consulting are US $175/hr, or US $1,500 for a pre-paid 10-hour block¹ (which may be used for up to six months).

That may seem high compared to the cost of contract developers, but consider that he's helping solve a problem in an immediate (and generally very short) term. Also, where many troublehsooting consultants require a minimum number of hours (if not days), and development consultants tend to work for weeks or months, Charlie's happy to help in as little time as is needed, with a 15 minute initial minimum, and he tends to be available within 4 hours of your request to start, if not sooner. Most important, his goal is to help make you self-sufficient, so he is doing as much sharing and educating in addition to solving your problem, so he tends to work himself out of the situations where he's brought in.

Combine the above with the fact that his expertise in solving problems helps him generally solve problems in far less time than folks who don't spend their days doing so (generally in less than an hour for most problems), and the rate actually becomes very good value. More important, keep in mind that since the approach used it to work with you, you're always in control of the time spent. No surprises.

Satisfaction Guaranteed: Most important, know also that Charlie won't take your money if you don't feel that the time with him was well spent and worth it. You can indicate that during the call (again, controlling how much time is spent on any topic) or even after the fact. Indeed, if Charlie feels that he can't help with a certain problem, he won't hesitate to admit it and can perhaps recommend others to help.

Payment: As for payment, Charlie's happy to invoice for services rendered on a monthly basis (or more often if desired), or can take a credit card for immediate payment if desired.

What if we need help and are in another country?

Your being in another country should not be a hindrance from Charlie helping (in fact, if your exchange rate is favorable you will find that paying Charlie in US dollars is a bargain for you, such as in England where the Dollar tends to be worth half the Pound.)

Also, as for talking with each other, besides traditional phone calls, we can use either the Voice over IP solutions in the shared desktop solutions discussed above, or we can use something like Skype or Google Talk, if you'd like.

While Charlie is in the US Eastern time zone (GMT -5 most of the year), he's flexible in making arrangements (in advance) to work with you during what would be an odd hour for him.

Technical Background

If you've just found this site and are not familiar with Charlie, his 12+ years of ColdFusion experience and accomplishments are listed elsewhere here. You can also search the web for his name (charlie arehart coldfusion), or ask about him from folks in the community. Finally, he offers quoted references from past and current customers, and can provide contact information for you to speak with still other customers.

Contact Details

Email: charlie (at) carehart.org
Phone: (1) 678 358-3046
Address: 405 Red Jacket Way, Alpharetta GA 30005

You can also find Charlie on:

¹Regarding the 10-hour pre-paid time block discussed above, the 10 hours must be used within six months of purchase. Telephone conversations are tracked in 15-minute minimum intervals toward the 10-hour block. Similarly, email exchanges are tracked as a minimum of 15-minutes per day (and will be tracked commensurate to the time involved for longer emails).