1. We had a 4 letter domain that a good friend gave us.  There are no more 4 letter domains available, so it seemed silly to have it idle in the registrar account without a site.
2. We needed some more portfolio sites for the new Portal Labs contract web development site.
3. We wanted to see how fast we could develop a rails app and launch a site… a competition with ourselves of sorts.
4. I wanted to see how many ways I can say “make shorter” with nonsense made up words.  Shortify, shortalize, shorticated, etc…

The result?  rtxp.com, a simple short URL generating service.  Its simple and free.

All told, it took around 4 hours of work spread out over a week or so to design and code the site. We worked on it when we had a few minutes between jobs in our idle time.

The site is built using Ruby on Rails.  The captcha system is Simple Captcha.  The web2.0hyeah! design is by yours truly :)

No ads, no popups, nothing silly.  Just a simple short URL generator.  Give it a try!

We switched to SupportCenter after having some issues with Kayako. Kayako was great software too, but it’s encoded and required a performance robbing decoder that affected the entire server. That and Kayako’s customer service sucks.

The Support Desk

SupportCenter does just what we need it to do without all the extra fluff. You can tell they really took a Gmail philosophy to UI design with their “less is more” AJAX interface that is clean and easy to use. There is a full featured trouble ticket system complete with escalation rules, multiple cues and notifications, custom data fields, and email piping. We use these features in a couple different ways:

Web Based Tickets-

SupportCenter allows you to insert a ticket submission form anywhere on your website. For us this was key as we wanted to integrate the support form in to our Secure Delivery app and pass user information from Secure Delivery to the help desk system. We set up a few custom data fields for user information that we use in troubleshooting problems customers are having- things like their account email address, customer ID in our system, and account class. Once there were set up we designed the integrated support ticket form to pass these variables for logged in users using simple hidden form fields.

When the tickets come in the are automatically filtered based on the custom fields like account class- tickets from paid accounts go in to a high priority queue while free accounts go in to the regular queue. Using the Support Center notification system I have an alert set up to send me a text message to my cell phone email address for priority paid tickets so even if I’m sipping on burbon in the back yard I’ll know a paying customer needs me.

Email Based Tickets-

Support Center also supports email piping, the must have feature for a serious support solution. Basically what email piping does is parse incoming emails to a specific address, read them, and insert them in to the web based support ticket system. This is important basically two ways-

First, when we reply to a web based ticket (the standard way for SD users to create support requests) the reply is automatically sent to the customer’s email. They can then simply reply to the email in their email reader to update their ticket. Their replies are piped to Support Center, parsed in to the support database, and show up in our web based administration panel automatically. This is far superior to other systems where you have to click on a link to go to a reply web page, enter a ticket ID and password, and then reply.

Second, email piping allows users to create new tickets by simply sending an email to our support@ address without even going to the web site. Although we don’t get the custom field information on the customer such as user ID when they email their support requests in directly, we do store the custom field information within Support Center so if they have ever submitted a ticket through the web form in the past it still shows up with their email. All custom fields have the option to be ticket based (associated with this incident) or user based so that their custom info shows up on every ticket they submit, even through email.

There is great value here for the money, and at $99 as opposed to the $299 Kayako eSupport price its really hard to beat.

Knowledgebase

Support Center also includes a built-in knowledgebase system that is quick and easy to use. You can easily create categories and KB articles. You can attach images to KB posts while you create it making the generation process that much quicker- no seperate ftp uploading. The KB generates search engine friendly URLs automatically and actually generates static HTML pages as opposed to dynamic docs. To check it out in more detail you can see the Secure Delivery Knowledgebase.

The knowledgebase is nearly perfect- the features you need without any extra crap slowing you down. I love it- now I just need to find the time to write about 100 kb articles…

Oh, and one other thing- the web based ticket forms, even custom integrated forms, can load KB article suggestions as the users type their questions in through a bit of javascript- an awesome feature that keeps users from asking already answered questions over and over again :)

Support Center… Support

I have only had one problem with Support Center- a funny error with generating KB articles. The great thing is that after contacting the developers they diagnosed the issue, solved the problem, and had an update posted to their website in less than 3 days! I know a little bit about web application development, and let me tell you- this was awesome.

They regularly update Support Center as you can see from their changelog. They use web based delivery to issue updates, so you can easily log in to your account and download the most current version at any time.

The only gripe I have with Support Center, if you can even call it that, is that its mildly difficult to customize. I’m used to looking at complex web applications, so I can somewhat sort through the mix of AJAX, php, and HTML to find what I’m looking for, but they sure didn’t make it easy. While they did provide some basic template files to change the basic submission form, knowledgebase layout, etc. I could see novice developers having a hard time wrapping their head around customizations.

Still, this is a small price to pay for all the power and functionality you get for such a great price, and I would recommend Support Center to anyone who wants a full featured, reliable support desk without breaking the bank.

Give Support Center a look, try their online demo, or download the free single agent version to give it a try- you won’t be disappointed.

Note: The links above are not affiliate links. We personally use this software at Secure Delivery, I love it, and thats why I’m recommending it. If you want an affiliate link you can click here :)

Sponsored By: Portal Labs Custom web application design and development that doesn’t suck.

1. Product Affiliate Program

Now vendors can set up and run their own product affiliate programs for any PayPal or 2CheckOut product. Secure Delivery charges not transaction fees, setup fees, approval fees, or anything else.

The Product Affiliate Program will always be included with paid accounts free of charge with no additional fees, and for a limited time even Free accounts can set up the affiliate program for their free trial product!

The Secure Delivery Product Affiliate Program supports traditional hop-links as well as our special touch- Affiliate Buy Buttons. Now affiliates can sell your products directly from their blogs, email lists, and even forum posts while you maintain complete control over the payment and download. Maybe a better way to think of affiliate buy buttons is “managed resale” or something, eh?

When you enable the Product Affiliate Program for a product it is automatically added to your Affiliate Program Manager on the dashboard. From here you can get your unique affiliate signup URL, invite or remove affiliates, download PayPal Masspay files to pay out affiliates, and access communication options to email all your affiliates, all affiliates for a single product, or a specific affiliate.

2. 2CheckOut Support

We now support 2CheckOut as a paid account processor. We also support 2CheckOut for use with the Product Affiliate Program.

3. User Interface Improvements

We have tweaked the user interface to incorporate all the new affiliate features for both vendors and promoters. As a result, Secure Delivery users will notice a new tabbed Dashboard interface and tweaked visuals during the product setup process.

4. New Support System and Knowledge base

We’ve upgraded the crappy old support system to a true email based ticket system with email piping, priority queuing, and the like. We’re pretty nuts about product support and our old system was not meeting our expectations so this is a welcome upgrade for us anyway :)

The new Secure Delivery Knowledgebase is pretty slick too. We’re still adding articles, but there is already a wealth of information and setup guides already listed. Its not a bad place to learn more about Secure Delivery either- be sure to check it out!

But We’re not done…

Throughout the month we will be releasing bug-fixes and enhancements based on user feedback to improve upon the already unique and powerful Affiliate Program features.

As I stated above, running your own affiliate programs will be a paid account feature, but for a limited time we have it open to all accounts- including free. We’re really proud of our results and we think you’ll like it too- try Secure Delivery free now.

Sponsored By: Portal Labs Custom web application design and development that doesn’t suck.

This is actually a premium theme that I am toying with the idea of buying a developer license to. The theme’s creator offered three different licenses- basic, premium, and developer. Basic was one site, you had to keep the credits in the footer, etc. Premium was a branding free option, and you could use it for all your own sites as long as you didn’t sell it. Developer allows you to create derivative works and sell them, use it as a base for client sites- basically call it your own.

I contacted the themes creator and asked if I could buy the premium version, play with it and see how I liked it, and if I decided it was for me later upgrade to the developer version for the difference in price. They agreed, and so here we are.

This theme has some nice features- several different index, post, and archive page layouts, built in ad blocks (disabled right now on my blog), post thumbnail support, the nifty featured article scroller thingy at the top of the page, etc. I think the best way to look at it is as a rapid development kit to theme development- something I value as I don’t have a lot of time with running Secure Delivery to spend building a custom theme from scratch. With this I’ll pick my layouts, modify my visual styles and graphics, and deploy quickly.

I intend to design custom themes based off it for jcCommerce (you can see the work-in-progress now), the Secure Delivery Blog, and a couple other personal blogs I am currently developing.

So far I have been tweaking the features to how I like them on this blog and I’ll be honest- I love it. Next week I’ll dive in to modifying the visual styles in depth for the Secure Delivery blog and I’ll be able to decide if I want to drop the extra $100 for the developer version.

After all, I already know of a digital product delivery solution that I can sell custom themes with, and I would probably sell limited editions of 10 copies or such using Secure Delivery’s sale limit feature. It makes sense to invest a few hours making unique designs :)

Sponsored By: Portal Labs Custom web application design and development that doesn’t suck.

The PortableApps.com suite is basically a menu system that loads specially formatted portable software versions. These portable versions do not need to be installed on the computer you plug the thumb drive into- you run them directly from the USB stick. They are completely self contained, leaving no trace of the application or personal data on the computer you use them on.

There are three versions of the suite- standard, basic, and lite:

PortableApps Suite (Standard Edition): ClamWin Portable (antivirus), Mozilla Firefox – Portable Edition (web browser), Gaim Portable (instant messaging), OpenOffice.org Portable (office suite), Sudoku Portable (puzzle game), Mozilla Sunbird – Portable Edition (calendar/task manager) and Mozilla Thunderbird – Portable Edition (email client) and runs comfortably from a 512MB drive.

PortableApps Suite (Lite Edition): Uses AbiWord Portable (word processor) instead of OpenOffice.org Portable and runs comfortably from a 256MB drive.

PortableApps Suite (Base Edition): If you’d like to pick and choose exactly which apps to include, you can try Portable Apps Suite (Base Edition). This is a stripped down package with just the PortableApps Menu, PortableApps Backup utility and custom folders, icons and autorun. It’s less than 1MB installed, so it’s a great option for smaller drives.

In addition to the suite packages, there are a number of handy programs you can install listed on their site. Being a web developer I installed the following to allow me to administer and work on Secure Delivery from anywhere:

WinMerge – File comparison
WinSCP – Windows SCP Client
Putty Portable – Portable version of the SSH / telnet Client
7zip Portable – free 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, RAR archive tool
Pidgin Portable – Instant Message client (I’m not a big fan of the standard Gaim included with PortableApps so I removed it)
KompoZer Portable – A light web editor
Firefox Beta 3 – Installs along side the standard Firefox 2 so you can try both.
KeePass – A handy password locker for keeping all your logins straight.

With the above additions I’ve basically created a portable environment where I can respond to a customer support email from anywhere, log in with FTP or SSH, compare two files, download and extract a patch, and fix a bug. Add to that a full featured word processor, your own browser (with your own extensions and theme) and I really don’t know how I was able to deal without it.

I’d recommend PortableApps.com to anyone- its free, its incredibly useful, and it’s “no trace left behind” privacy might keep you from getting fired from work while working on your killer app :)

Sponsored By: Portal Labs Custom web application design and development that doesn’t suck.