This month we are pleased to have released two new eBooks on WP eBooks:
Funny how both Ron and I have worked at home before, but it’s taken this long to figure out how to work together, and work efficiently.
Since I have been at home for pretty much most, if not all, of our marriage, transitioning to working at home wasn’t a huge step. I mean, I was on the computer multiple times a day anyway, right? Those times just sort of got longer and melded together. Eventually, my routine became this:
get up, stumble to office, turn on computer
go to the bathroom, get tea
sit in front of computer
notice stomach is growling and tea is cold
notice the kids are up
get Ron up because he is up different hours
talk to people I live with and get breakfast
check computer
get dressed
check computer
cook lunch
eat lunch in front of computer
And so on… It was really easy to fall into a reactionary routine of being what I referred to as “on call”. Am I up? Yes. Is the computer on? If so, I’m “working”. then I realized this was most of the time.
On my more lucid days, I started paying attention to employees from places like StudioPress and Automattic, saying how they were enjoying their breaks and time off. This coincided with a week of trying to plow through a huge lists of tasks to get caught up, and not doing anything else but that. Seriously. Then the light bulb *finally* struck me:
I can’t work effectively without a decent break.
(Whoa,. Earth shattering, no?) I’d already figured out that I cannot function without a certain amount of sleep. that happened very fast, actually. I’m one of those people that need a good solid eight hours or no amount of anything would be done properly or effectively. I can’t even fake it on little sleep.
Ron and I first noticed this in my habits when I tried to not sew all week. I was miserable. Not just because I really do like sewing that much, but it was the regular mental breaks from work task that really helped me. I really do have issues with focusing on one task for a long period of time, so breaking things up works just dandy for my brain.
We clued in that play time – time to rest, recharge, recoup, and recreate, is essential for productive work time. It’s all related, just like everything else. And your play time or when you take it does not have to look like mine, or be at the same times.
My weekend schedule – and I figured I do need a weekend, that time to focus on my household, the people in it and me outside of work – starts on Friday afternoons and goes to Sunday noon. Yes, I work Sunday. 😀 It’s a GREAT time to focus on those “extras” because there’s not a lot of online distractions like there are on, say, Tuesdays.
Ron has also changed his work time in that he gets up and does *not* turn on the computer first thing. He takes care of himself first, then does some things around the house until lunch time. He works more effectively later in the day, so his work hours are afternoons and evenings. I start on a high note in the morning and go downhill from there. 😀 This way, we both have alone time in the office, and have a joint time.
Not only that, we’ve been forcing ourselves to have a break from work – even if the first few tries either one of us were meandering aimlessly around the house. And now, I can do tiny little breaks throughout the day .When it’s mealtime I stay downstairs. None of this rushing back to the office to check one more thing, just in case. People can wait! And it’s not worth burning my dinner over.
Also realizing I don’t have to handle everything at once is good too. Especially before breakfast. Oh, and breakfast is important. Knowing I have a break coming up where I can forget about work items really does help me work hard, as well as knowing what to shut out. I make my lists, I double-check them and cross check them with my partner to help keep me on track. And when it’s play time, knowing that things are fine or will be fine work-wise helps me to really enjoy what I’m taking my break on. Even if it is laundry.
And! As a perfect example while I was writing this, our internet speed tanked. Before, we both would have sat here refreshing, trying other things, stopping certain programs. Now? We walked away and came back in an hour. The world didn’t end, the connection worked itself out (like it always does) and neither of us were frustrated. Plus we got our daughter’s bedroom painted. Yeah, that’s winning.
In my year end review I mentioned in the closing paragraph that we would be incorporating a business. In 1995, I incorporated my consulting business first under a numbered company and then later as a named corporation. At the time you could realistically count on a minimum of 4 weeks to register a named corporation. At the time I needed one in 48 hours to meet a requirement for a contract. So, I did the numbered company first and the name registration after. Now the registration process here is all electronic and if you were in a rush, you could probably register a named company in less than a week.
Without further ado, we are pleased to announce that we have incorporated Rennick Media Ltd. and will be moving the ownership of all of our media services and our clients projects over to Rennick Media Ltd. The company name is in keeping with our business focus on media services. We are expecting to continue to do some development projects. Over the last 6-8 months we have pared down the number of active projects we are working on one time to a more manageable level. By doing that we have also been better able to focus on individual projects.
It’s been a few months since we started wpebooks.com and we both thought people would be interested in knowing how exactly we built the site, and the functionality in operating the site on a day to day basis. You know, with real users. 😉
The most shocking part of this is also the most basic: it is a single stand-alone WordPress install. We did not use multisite and domain map it, nor did we make it a third network on our exisiting installation. This is one of those times where we truly wanted it completely separate from all of our other websites. It even has its own cPanel account. 😛
For the support framework, we installed BuddyPress. Yep, we did.
The theme we started with was Enterprise from StudioPress, so we use our own GenesisConnect plugin to add the required BuddyPress support to the Genesis theme framework. We also added a couple extra plugins to help with day to day tasks: BuddyPress Group Email Subscription and BP Group Management, both by Boone Gorges. The Group Email subscription sends us an email anytime a user posts in any of our groups, so we can respond as soon as possible. Group Management has those missing pieces such as allowing me to add specific members to Groups without them requesting an invite. And finally, we developed Private Group Downloads (coming soon to wpebooks) to provide plugin and ebook updates to customers in the support areas.
Some extra plugins, just for special touches:
Genesis Simple Sidebars – we added support for this in GenesisConnect, so there are certain sidebars only visible to logged in users when visiting BuddyPress areas.
Download Manager – to keep track of free ebook downloads
Secure Contact form – I needed something simple & this fits the bill.
The biggest part of the functionality of the entire site is also the simplest: we sell the ebooks & bundled plugins via e-junkie. No ecommerce plugins to handle on our end, and at $10 a month for up to 20 products, it is money well spent. They track everything for us and there are no headaches.
The only manual work involved is when a user requests an invite for the support group they wish to join. Some request access to all groups, not just for the ebook they purchased. There could be a way to do this automatically, especially if the ecommerce part was handled within WordPress, but for now this is how we do it. Some users sign up with a different email address than the one they used for purchase, so I still have to hunt down them manually anyway. I realize this part is not scalable. 😉
Overall, I think the experience is a success on both sides of the screen. Some users have had issues with the BuddyPress UI, but I think this is only because of the non-forum-like presentation with BuddyPress itself. Others users have been pleasantly surprised to find out it is BuddyPress-driven.
If we had to build the site over again I’m not sure how much, if any, we would change. I might lean towards trying out something like eshop, just to see if I could keep the entire thing WordPress-based, and we also discussed having the products as custom post types instead of pages. But these are lesser issues than the main point – supporting the user in a private enviroment.
Andrea & I are using BuddyPress and private groups for the support area of WP eBooks. All of our plugin eBooks include lifetime updates so in planning WP eBooks, we knew we needed a plugin/utility for providing our group members with updates. Until recently, we haven’t needed to provide updates on any of the plugins. A few weeks ago, I did a first pass on a secure download manager for BuddyPress that runs inside the BP Groups component.
From the user side the plugin is fully functional, but there are a few bugs in the group admin side that need to be fixed before I can label the plugin as a beta. The files uploaded through the plugin are stored outside the website and are only accessible through the download area of the group that it is associated with. This plugin will be our next release on WP eBooks. Here is a screenshot of the group member’s download area (click for full size):
Late last week I released another ebook called Aggregating Global content across a WordPress Network. Or something like that.
I’d actually started writing this one a long time ago – easily a year. It’s not that it was particularly difficult, just small things cropping up here and there which meant rewriting sections, taking new screenshots, finding alternate plugins, and of course changing everything that said WPMU into just WordPress.
So, everything in this ebook is about setting up a homepage for the entire network, with some extra section on crafting a new signup page, making a huge tags cloud like wordpress.com, getting post thumbnails to work in sitewide tags, and a few other small things, all tied up in one handy package.
