Catching Up...
Wednesday, December 2, 2009 at 8:59AM Missed a daily blog post yesterday :-(
Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned it and you may not have noticed.
Busy, busy month last month with the ScreenCastsOnline new members promotion that finished on the 30th November. The promotion generated a ton of interest and I'm happy to say, a ton of new members. With that success though comes additional pressures of administering a significant number of members.
The backend tool (aMember) coped admirably as well as the PayPal and eSellerate integration. With Barbara now taking on the bulk of the administration tasks iro the members it's a big help, but invariably, there are always some "funnies" that need to be worked through.
We could not cope without Mail Act-On for keyboard filing of emails, MailTags for email organisation, IMAP for sharing an email account, and the grand daddy of email productivity - TextExpander! We'd be dead in the water without these amazing tools.
Spent most of yesterday sorting out and setting up a new system for ScreenCastsOnline members to "Gift" a membership to friends. colleagues of family, at a 50% discount. On the face of it a fairly trivial task....
- Setup a special landing page on the Extra Members website
- Install the latest PayLoom plugin in Rapidweaver
- Configure the "Product" in PayLoom
- Test
- Setup an alternate payment method/product in eSellerate
- Add to Extra Members webstore in eSellerate
- Create eSellerate instructions page
- Create multiple purchase link and instructions page
- Test
- Upload changes to the website
- Test
- Create new URL to divert to new store page
- Create and edit introduction video clip
- Generate 4 resolutions for members feeds
- Upload via FTP
- Update test members feeds
- Download and test
- Update live members feeds
Just realised, I didn't send out an update via the ScreenCastsOnline newsletter - must do that after this blog post.
I'll include a link to the video clip to see how it turned out, although if you're not a member, you won't be able to access the URL as mentioned in the clip. If you can and you're not a member, please let me know!
All unplanned and unscheduled, so instead of recording two shows this week I've only left myself with time for only one.
All good fun though!
Reader Comments (6)
Thanks for the gift Don! Nice touch on the opening, very "evening news" style turn on the chair! Looking forward to the next shows. Am working my way through the SCO archive as we speak. Great value for money!
Yes, I have to agree. I grabbed the special offer option and have loved the shows that I have watched so far.
As I have already tweeted to Don this is costing me money... not the subscription, happy to do that as I get great content and I'm more than happy to support SCO with my cash as it is such a great piece of work. No, it's costing me money as I am already buying apps I probably wouldn't have before as I can see in the video how I can use it in my workflow. Launchbar is a good example - I bought it within 5 minutes of Don's screencast!!
Great work Don. Keep it up.
I am always amazed at how logical someone like you Don can approach such tasks, for myself as a creative nut I struggle at times with such challenges as Screencasts is a great way for me to discover new apps and the like to help tackle those little tasks!
Keep up the great work. BTW, I noticed my trash can was full on my iMac and upon empty command found I had 42,000 files to delete! It took a few hours but cleared them out and helped Safari run faster as it had slowed down, hence the trash can 'housework' that I thought would be the cause.
Recently the iMac has been running OK and I have to say that is since I no longer have TimeMachine running. I have also noticed that if I shut down my iMac and not use it for a day or so, upon starting everything seems to work as it should. Any reason that you know why this may be? I shut down each day to save power and clear the RAM ( I use photoshop and that eats RAM with my work), but on a daily shutdown I occasionally have issues but after leaving the iMac shutdown for a couple of days it seems to 'right' itself or am I imagining things?
Difficult to say Steve? Perhaps share your issues on the ScreenCastsOnline forum and you might get some answers or at least suggestions:
ScreenCastsOnline Forum
Don, I just found this post via google. I curious how you got esellerate to work with aMember? I can't seem to find any info if this is possible...
There's no integration I'm afraid, any eSellerate sales have to be handled manually