Lately I’ve been working on a number of projects that run the gamut of web development, doing accounting crap, and discovering new lands.  Read on to hear more about it.

eCommerce Development

I’m building a quasi-ecommerce site using the excellent Magento Commerce package.  This is a modified “quote-to-order” site that functions like a shopping cart but with no prices.  People add items to their quote (cart), complete the submission process (checkout with no payment info), and submit.  On the back end I wrote some custom code to export orders to the client’s quoting, CRM, and accounting systems (Peachtree / Act Premium / Quotewerks).

I really like Magento- its powerful but its not the easiest to wrap your head around if you are not used to object oriented programming. if you’re coming from osCommerce and want to do some heavy customization (and are the average “wtf is a function?” osC user) it will blow your mind, be warned.

Access Controlled Resource Site

I’m working on a access controlled site that shares company information with outside distributors.  Its based on Drupal and is nearly pure function- blog, download catalog for video, brochure PDFs, promotional CD images, etc.

We wrote a custom account expiration module where users have to click a reactivation link sent to their corporate email after x number of days/weeks.  The theory here is that if an employee of a distributor leaves their company they won’t have access to their company email anymore and can’t reactivate their account, effectively cutting them off after their activation period has expired.   I don’t think its the best idea in the world, but its what the customer wanted so what can you do?

We’ll probably release the module publicly as a Portal Labs joint once we test it thoroughly and clean it up a bit.  Promotion is promotion, right?

Portal Labs Site

We redid the Portal Labs site to focus more on contract development and highlight our technical prowess.  Still a work in progress, it shows some stuff we have done and explains what we can do.  If anyone is looking for custom web application development we have one partner working full time on contract work now and he’s good- probably the best I’ve ever seen.  I’m kinda jealous of him, that brilliant asshole.

We’re very reasonable on our rates, especially for what you get- PHP/Ruby/Python developers with Symfony and Rails experience who code well and work fast.  After all, its more cost effective to pay someone good $60/hour for 4 hours instead of paying some rube $30/hour for 10 and still get crap.  Yeah, I’m still working on the sales pitch.

Of course, those with requests like “I want you to make me a site like Amazon for $200″ need not apply.

The 4 Letter Domain

We’ve had a 4 letter domain name for a while now that a good friend of mine gave us.  We’re writing a ruby-on-rails app for it so its not just sitting there idle.  After all, all the 4 letter domains are gone and it’s silly to just have it sitting in the domain registrar not doing anything.   Its a drop dead simple short-URL service like all the others out there.

It was kinda a competition for us- how fast can we write an application to utilize the domain.  We spent about 3 hours on development and have a fully functional app, which is cool in its own special way.

Eventually we’ll integrate the service with Digital Product Delivery so affiliates and whatnot can generate cloaked short URLs from right inside the app.

As soon as the design work is complete we’ll announce it here or on the new (and currently barren) Portal Labs blog.

Other Stuff

I spend $200 on QuickBooks so we could do quoting and whatnot.  Portal Labs is making some ok money now, which is a good thing.  Now that I have accounting software I can do cool things like profit and loss statements, see where expenses are coming from, see where income is coming from, etc.  Nifty fact- 6% of our expenses come from bank and merchant account fees!  I know, exciting right?

Lets see, what else… While walking around my yard this weekend I found that the property pins that mark the boundary of my lot- about 75 feet farther back than I where I thought they would be.  As my lot is around 200 feet wide, it turns out I have an extra 15,000 sq/ft of land.  Its behind a berm and is full of brush and trees.  The berm will be handy for concealing the area as it’s about 5 feet tall (2m or so)- I’m thinking of clearing the brush and putting ugly things like a compost bin and workshop wood scrap pile back there.  Once a year I’ll rent a chipper and make free mulch for landscaping or something. Of course, all this will take place after the 95F+ temperatures in Georgia die down.

Um, oh I switched from Comcast Cable to Dish Network for my TV service.   Dish has an HD-only package thats right up my alley, and at around $40 a month (with DVR service) its a lot less than what I was paying Comcast for all the channels+HD+DVR service (around $80 a month).  I only watch HD channels as the non-HD stuff hurts my eyes now- its amazing how your eyes get used to clarity and fuzzy non-HD channels give you headaches after a while.

Oh yeah- I’ve been using aging CRT computer monitors in my home office, but one finally gave up the ghost this week. I bought a shiny new 20″ widescreen LCD to replace it and I just love it.   I’m going to buy a second one next month so that both my monitors match- I have a dual DVI video card so I’m going to have ultra digital clarity in stereo soon. Its amazing how you get used to a blurry old monitor and don’t realize how crappy it was until you put it beside a sharp new one.

Funny thing though- With my old square 19″ CRTs I was used to opening Dreamweaver full screen on one monitor and Firefox, etc. full screen on the other when I’m working.  Edit in DW, Crtl+S, Alt+Tab, Crtl+R, preview in FF, that sort of thing.  Now that I have a widescreen monitor everythig is wide as hell full screen, so not making everything full screen and actually utilizing the extra desktop space is going to take some getting used to.  I hope I can fit two of these badboys on my computer desk.  After all, widescreen monitors are, well, wide.  Wider than my 19″ CRTs anyway.

Add to that the 19″ LCD I use on the ubuntu dev server thats also on my desk and the desktop is going to be cramped.  I know, ultra-geeky with the 3 monitors, two keyboards and mice.  Perhaps a KVM switch is in order.

Anyway, thats whats been going on.  Stay classy internets.

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.

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.

3D-Box Maker

You basically upload three images- side, top, front, and the box maker will perform the transform effects and mesh them into one 3D box image for you. Pretty handy, especially if you are not familiar with the Photoshop 3D rendering tools or don’t want to spend $50 for specialized software to make one or two boxes.

Of course, once you create your first product box cover you can always set it up for automatic delivery and sell it for free with Secure Delivery :)

(That’s right, a shameless plug!)

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

My goal for 2008 is to grow Secure Delivery to the point where it is my primary, full time source of income. As it stands now, Secure Delivery is in the black but does not generate enough income where we can work on it exclusively- we have to make ends meet with other contract jobs, outside development, etc.

I don’t like that. What I do like is working on Secure Delivery. Thats what I want to do full time, and damn the rest. Right now updates are slow to SD, and with good reason- we have to pay the bills somehow. Its hard to dedicate the time needed to grow a business when it only produces a fraction of your income, but we are willing to do it.

It will be a hard goal to reach though. For one, my current income level, and the current income level of my business partner, are pretty high by world standards. We both make in excess of $50,000 a year now, so there will have to be major growth to replace all that income from multiple contracts, etc. with income from Secure Delivery. We are both willing to take a “pay cut” to make it work, but we have to be realistic- we both have mortgages, car payments, and wives- or in the case of my business partner, a wife by the end of the year :)

On the bright side, Secure Delivery is picking up. Sign-ups are up, paid subscriptions are up, and we have a couple great features that are coming out in the next few months that are going to rock people’s socks off. We are structuring the non-fee parts of our site to expose users to the paid features to help conversions and planning a whole rash of promotional methods to get the word out on our new features and the overall Secure Delivery offering.

I predict 2008 will be a good year- here’s to everyone meeting their goals in the new year.

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

Secure Delivery Stats

I put this section first for two reasons- First, I am proud of Secure Delivery and want to toot my own horn :) Second, this gives you an idea of my sample base for the rest of the conclusions in this post.

• Users: 250+ (paid and free accounts)
• Products: 500+ products
• Transactions: 3200+ Transactions
• Payment Stats: 90% Paypal, 8% ClickBank, 1% PayDotCom.
• Average Product Size: 15.4MB
  Smallest Product Size: 43k
  Largest Product Size: 1.2GB

Notes: These stats are from cursory examinations of the database tables for the Secure Delivery app. As such, a small number of the user accounts are development test accounts (maybe 10?). Likewise with the products- probably 25 are test products using various processors. If I had to guess, probably 300 of the transactions are for testing too. 1% or so of the transactions don’t use a publicly available payment processor like PayPal or ClickBank- they are for internal testing using processors like 2CheckOut and eBay that we are working on.

The Interesting Observations:

The Disclaimer:

I am no analytics expert, so your results may vary. These observations are provided purely for the insight and entertainment of my blog readers because I thought they would be interesting from an academic perspective. These observations were made from looking at server logs and database tables. This was an attempt to share what I find to be accurate based on my personal observations. There is no chance in hell of me sharing any specific numbers, user information, or database tables from Secure Delivery with anyone, so forget that :)

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

This is why I chose to do my tech-related holiday shopping there. For a special someone I bought a digital camera that had an awesome bundle that included the camera, rechargeable batteries and charger, and 1GB SD card. This is where my trouble started…

After I placed the order I noticed that the sales confirmation that was sent to my inbox did not have the free bundled items- the battery/charger, SD card- and got on live chat with Newegg customer service. The customer service rep said the items were included on the order and that I placed the order correctly.

Today the package arrived sans the free bundled items. After a moment of mild irritation passed, I got back on live chat and spoke to another customer service rep by the name of “Martin”. He informed me that I did not properly add the bundle to my cart and instead added only the camera- in other words, it was “my bad”.

I told him that before the order shipped I spoke to customer service and they confirmed I did the order correctly and I would receive the free items.

I explained that this was a Christmas present and that I would happily pay the expedited shipping charges to get the items by Friday- after all, it was my bad for not adding the items correctly, but it was their bad for telling me I did add them and everything was good. I was more than happy to split the loss like the blame- you send me my free stuff, I’ll pay for the shipping.

He said hold on, let me speak to the boss, and I waited a minute or two.

He came back to the chat and told me that Newegg would make an exception and send the items next day air for free!

Newegg is not short on customers. While I would have raised hell until they sent me my free bundled items, they went above and beyond by first giving me no hassles about the free bundled items, and second, giving me free next day air shipping when I was willing to pay for it myself.

The fact is that not only did they made a customer happy- they made an evangelist of their company and customer service out of me for life.

Bravo Newegg.

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

Apparently, many ebook authors believe you need to write pages that are 56 inches long, filled with claims, promises and fake book covers… …I’m not sure that this, by itself, is the future of the medium, though. I think it belongs to people who find a following, curate information for them, build a permission asset and then write a tremendous ebook at a fair price.

As a guy who runs a digital product delivery service that delivers hundreds of ebooks from every conceivable market I can tell you this, almost without exception, is true.

I’ve seen quite a few sales sites for the products that are delivered with Secure Delivery and I can tell you one thing- it’s not the 30 foot long sales pages that sell ebooks, its seller that treats their buyers like human beings and cultivates trust in their audience that post the biggest numbers.

I’d bet on a good conversational blog post to outsell a over-hyped, over-styled 12 foot long sales page any day.

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

Click on the static image below to see an example of the dynamic charts that we are integrating now:

We plan to release a full analytics package that will show composite and drill down stats for each product and for every processor. Of course, this is a big undertaking so we’re going to start with the affiliate system we are developing now and eventually release the analytics site wide for standard products, products that use ClickBank and PayDotCom, etc. in the future.

I think they’re pretty slick and will definitely be a selling point for users who want treat their digital product sales as an actual business as opposed to those just wanting to make a few bucks. Casual sellers will think they are pretty cool too :)

This is just one of the features we are currently implimenting to attract experienced, professional sellers and those new to digital product sales alike.

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