Category Archives: Software

First WordCamp

This weekend, I attended my first WordCamp in Boston.   Two days, 3 tracks, hundreds of attendees, most arriving last minute and creating a shortage of food.

What I liked this year (in order of appearance on the schedule)

Day 1

  • How Much Can I Charge? Pricing Isn’t Just a Number, by Adam Juda
    • Particularly the points made about clients asking for a discount and how to handle that sticky and uncomfortable situation
  • Agile Contracting presentation by Mike Toppa
    • Turns out I’ve been doing some integral parts of the Agile phylosophy since I started 6 years ago.
    • Also explains why I am deeply regretting working on a fixed priced contract this spring, into summer, and it will probably drag into fall…
  • Mission-based WordPress by Michael McWilliams
    • Blew me away – very charismatic, lively and engaging speaker.
    • Obviously knows a lot about website development and requirements for the non-profit world.
    • Best piece of advice I overheard him say: don’t build a free website for a nonprofit.  I’m starting to learn that the hard way.
  • A Better Individual Experience by Jesse Friedman
    • I would see Jesse Friedman present even if he was discussing the benefits of one tweed fabric over another. He’s an engaging, enigmatic speaker.
    • Knew the technical aspects of what he was doing, but could easily explain them to the rest of us humans.
    • He’s proposing a great shift from the information overloaded websites we currently build to cleaner content focused websites.  He makes great fun of restaurants in his talks, esp whose annoying PDF menus.

Day 2 – Sunday

  • Keynote: Smaller, Faster Websites by Mat Marquis
    • Where do I start on this?  Mat is funny, comfortable in front of large crowds, commands a room, does not get flustered by accidental shooting from his microphone or laser shootings from the audience.
    • Mat builds furniture and you can see from his presentation that he’s just as precise about his furniture building as he is about his code.
    • Typical presentations that include code turn into an eye sight exercise but Mat’s was easy to read and to the point on what he wants to teach.
  • The Final 20% by Jeremy Green
    • Cycling back to the 80/20 principal, inspirational talk to get us to move away from the 80% of our project time that is not impactful.
    • I thought of him as I was manually deleting 40 old WordPress themes in my blog install, and went back to FTP and hit a big delete button.  10 minutes saved already.

What topics I would like to see next year

  • Security – I’d love a whole track on security.  Everyone is thinking about it, but most people don’t do enough to their WordPress installs to protect them, so please, tell us how to do it for every kind of website – from 5 page static sites to gargantuan blogs with lots of comments.  I cannot image that this topic will ever get old, so you can really keep this going every year.
  • Design – a presentation or two on design elements essential to a WordPress website and how to think about design when working with a WP framework.  This is a large topic in itself, but I think it can be parsed into manageable section.
    • I sadly missed Mel Choyce’s presentation about WP design trends.  I think design can be a whole track, also.

Testing Google Inbox

Inbox by GmailThe other day, I got an invitation from Gmail to try out the new Gmail Inbox product.  “Sweet!” I thought.    This is going to be great!  And it was, for a little bit until I got to my ritual weekly chore of stuffing messages into their respective folders and deleting extraneous messages,

Let’s start at the beginning.  With the INBOX product, Google attempts to bring order to chaos that is currently email.  As someone juggling several clients and schedules at the same time, more order is always welcome.  I also like things bundled and organized, which is I believe the intent behind this product.

Inbox integrates features such as reminders and snoozing into the inbox flow, which is a plus.  My reminders (which used to be tasks and languished in their own ether somewhere) are included into my email stream making them more prominent and more likely that I will see them.  Now, if I could just get them to show up on Google Calendar, we’d really be in business!

What annoys me is that there is still no way to schedule when you want an email to go out.  I often need this because I wind up working in off times – for example, at 9pm or 6am and I don’t want to build the expectation that I’m available round the clock, so I would love to schedule the email to be sent during regular working hours.

Another big frustration – and this is a mistake made a few versions back on the GMAIL Android App that was later corrected – is the lack of the delete button when you select an email. I get that Google wants you to keep your email messages for all eternity so they can know that many years ago you were looking for Tickle Me Elmo for your kids, but really, the world is over it and it’s time to be able to delete those messages quickly.  I have to click on the menu (circle with vertical dots) to see Trash, which really should be right there with Pin, Snooze and Done.

Screenshot of Google Inbox

Next problem – sorting into folders/labels, etc. whatever you want to call them.

I create lots of subfolders within each client folder: Invoices, Design, Business Cards, Website, Content, are some examples of folders almost every client needs.  The trouble is I can’t see them when I try to move a message to the subfolder.  Complete failure!  Check this out:

Snapshot of Gmail Inbox Move To option

How can I tell which subfolder is which?  There is no way to scroll to the right, type is not recognized, and there is no way to expand this box.  Also, holding the cursor over the words does not get the full name to show up.

I like Inbox for it’s effort to bring more order to the chaos that is email, but without these three big corrections – delete button, Move functionality, and scheduling outbound messages – it’s really not that much better than Gmail.

Transferring WordPress

Last week, I had the pleasure of signing up a client for Dreamhost.  I am an affiliate and I love it when my clients switch to Dreamhost because it makes my life managing their website and files much easier.  Also, I have found that a lot of what Dreamhost does, unlimited domains on one hosting plan, for example, give me great flexibility to build the sites the way I want to.

The only downside of switching hosts is moving the WordPress installation.  For some reason, I thought surely WordPress would have a very simple one click button to do this, but alas, not all things are so simple.  I searched which turned up quite a few methods.  Let me save you time reading the WordPress page on this because it does not help.  My saving page is from Cranium Storm.  Carefully follow directions and you too will become a database altering ninja!

A great tool for creating online forms: MachForm

You know the problem: a great user-interactive website or blog requires forms.  Inbound marketing requires forms.  I needed a solutions that I could install on a client server, thus they would own the info.  Here is what I found: MachForm.  First time around, it took me only 30 minutes to copy the form folder to the server and install. The first form took about 30 minutes to setup: that’s 15 minutes to get the template setup to match the site colors and another 15 minutes to create the actual form.  With the template and software in place, it will take only about 15 minutes to setup simple contact or lead generation forms.

Here are the features of MachForm v.3 that I like:

  1. It’s installed on your own server so you control the responses and the privacy of those responses.
  2. Easy setup and installation – create a database (most hosts will automatically do this for you), upload the folder to your site and run the installer.
  3. Templates – the template is quick and easy to create, contains all the necessary design attributes, can be applied to any form, modified and the changes reflect in all the forms without any updates or re-uploads.
  4. Integration – The form integrates seamlessly into a webpage, including a redirect upon submission or response text into that same page
  5. The control panel keeps track of responses and lets you sort people by their submitted information.
  6. The form can send email notifications to you and a “receipt email” to the person who submitted the form.

Try it out for yourself form the MachForm website.

P.S.  This is not an endorsement of their software and I do not get anything from the post above.