Is there a document that exists that explains the different types of licenses that can be used with Sites for authentication?  

What are the limits of the new Authenticated Sites user?   Can you access standard objects?   

Thank you,

Jeremy

I am thinking about developing an Ecommerce site using sites, however I am running to some economic issues. First being costs.   If I have an ecommerce application, which would get millions of hits a month, the cost to host it per month is going to be north of 3k.   Then when I add customers that want to check thier accounts, I understand that I need a customer portal license as well.   So if I have 20k customers, I am looking at 20K per month in portal fees, yet maybe only 200 or 300 users will log in to thier portal each month.    

I am wondering if I am missing anything here?   I have tried to talk to sales about this, but I haven't heard back.

Thanks

I've been looking for a way to conveniently send text messages from Salesforce to a predefined group of Contacts, or other phone-releated objects.  I've seen scant discussion on the boards.  One seemingly useful Appexchange application I found seemed pretty defunct.

Is anyone doing this?  I certainly could put something together, but I don't want to reinvent the wheel.   I'd be surprised is this is not a common task.   Please let me know of your experiences.

One option would be to blast emails to a (HTTP contactable) SMS exchange, but a connector would be so much cooler.

jason 

Hello All,

I'm in the process of trying to learn as much as I can as quickly as I can about development on the Force.com platform.  I've found a number of resources to look at on the Force.com site, including the incredibly intimidating 2400+ page "How to be Successful with Salesforce" eBook.  There is a huge amount of documentation, and I've found it difficult to tell where to start really, since there are so many eBooks they have available for download, each of which is anywhere from 200 to 600 pages in length

If cost were no object, I'd be signing up for the developer courses offered by Salesforce.com:

1. Dev 401 ($4,000)
2. Dev 501 ($4,000)
3. Dev 502 ($2,400)
4. Dev 531 ($4,000)

That is so far beyond my training budget as an independent developer that it's just not even an option.  I got all excited when I saw that perhaps the 401 & 501 classes could be downloaded (for free, no less) as a podcast from the iTunes Music store... but it became quickly apparent that significant chunks of the hands-on coding part of the class are not there, making things difficult to really follow along with from a very early point in the series.  They're still a great source of information, but they seem more like a preview/teaser to the class than a suitable substitute.  I would gladly pay for some sort of online version of the course that was (a lot) less expensive than the in-person class, but no such thing seems to exist.  I would sign up for 3rd party training if it seemed to be of sufficient quality, and again, was affordable... but so far, I've not found anything useful.

Can anyone recommend or point me in the direction of some resources I can use to gain the equivalent experience one might get from the courses Salesforce.com provides, without the accompanying bankruptcy forms I'd probably have to fill out if I took those courses?

Thanks in advance for any tips, hints or pointers!

Cheers,

Jon