Ravi's Rants

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Create Wicked Cool Marketing Graphics

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If you read my earlier post, you already know how awesome I am at creating graphics (not!) 🙂

Here’s a software box image I created many years ago (around 2001) for my then-active web site, WebmasterInABox.net – later renamed to MyWebmasterInABox.com, because Google banned the original domain when the site got hacked and was injected with malware for a period of time back in 2005 or so. And since I had not been actively maintaining the web site at that time (thanks to my J.O.B), I never even realized that my site had dropped out of the rankings until after a few months, when I noticed a big dip in sales.

Anyway, here’s the terrible CD box cover image that I created myself back in 2001.

wbib

Fast-forward many years later, I wanted a more professional image for DAP. So I paid someone about $200 for this software box image.

DigitalAccessPass_Box

 

Then again in 2011, when we were getting ready to launch WickedCoolPlugins.com, since we were planning on launching multiple plugins, I figured $200 – or even $100 – per image was going to be wasteful and expensive. By this time, of course, there were many marketplaces where you could hire designers – like dribbble, odesk and even fiverr.

Still, I managed to overcome good sense, and tried creating this myself during that launch. Took me only about 5 hours!

box_smp

And then I found the holy grail of “Graphics Tool For Noobs“.

The one below took me less than 10 minutes.

Drag, drop, done.

STU-Cover

Box Shot King: Easily the best option even if you are a Photoshop guru, better than using Photoshop macros.

Why WordPress Is The Absolute Best Platform For Your Membership Site

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NOTE: WordPress is right for you, only if you want to actually launch your membership site some day, make money from your site, and do not wish to spend an insane amount of time creating and maintaining it, and only if you do not wish to spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars outsourcing the creation and maintenance of your site

I recently happened across a blog post that presents an argument about why you should not use WordPress for your membership site.

That seems to have caused quite a stir among my target audience (who are basically people who want to start a membership site using WordPress).

A couple of them wrote to me and asked me for my opinion, 1) because I am such a big evangelist of WordPress, and 2) because I have developed a Membership Plugin for WordPress.

I read the argument with interest, and of course felt that it was a very extreme, one-sided worldview of WordPress. I tried to comment there on the site itself, but I got a message that “the site owner has blocked you from commenting”. Not sure why. I will try again. But in the mean time, I simply had to post this here.

So, after you’ve read Alex’s argument for why you should not use WordPress for your membership site, read my (well-rounded, well-educated and balanced, IMHO 🙂 opinion about why you would be foolish NOT to use WordPress for your membership site – especially if you’re a small-biz owner, info-product marketer, blogger or Do-It-Yoursef’er, and don’t have a big team or a big budget to outsource your membership site development.

My note to Alex…

Alex,

Having developed WordPress and Non-WordPress scripts for almost 15 years now, I have to respectfully disagree with your argument for not using WP for membership sites.

Let me try to present an objective argument here.

You wrote:
>>it doesn’t matter which one you will choose to use as they all share one big flaw – their dependency on the core of WordPress!<<

I am the developer of a plugin called DigitalAccessPass (DAP), which does *not* have a dependency on the core of WordPress. DAP is a separate piece of software, that can be plugged on TOP of wordpress, and only needs a simple, light-weight “Plugin” that acts as a “bridge” between WP and DAP. In the 15 months since the launch of DAP, and 10 months prior to that when we were developing DAP, WP has released a huge number of updates in those 25 months (2+ years), and we have *never* had a single instance where a WP update affected our script.

Again, it’s all in the design, right? DAP was deliberately designed from the ground up *not* to have a dependency on *any* CMS, not even WP. That’s the reason why DAP works right out of the box with regular, plain-ol HTML web sites, and using the “bridge” plugin concept, can be integrated into other CMS like Joomla, Drupal, etc (Joomla plugin for DAP is in the works as I write this). In fact, with just a little bit of work, DAP can be made to work with every imaginable CMS out there, for this very reason.

>>By themselves they will not function and same goes the WordPress core<<
See above. DAP will function all by itself with just regular HTML web sites.

>>WordPress is Open Source and its code is constantly under scrutiny not only by the good guys but also by people who are looking for a way to compromise your site<<
I can kind of agree with you there, but then, even software and services from even high profile companies, like Google and Microsoft get hacked or gamed. So, just because it’s open source doesn’t mean it’s more vulnerable, and just because it’s “closed source” doesn’t mean it is secure. It all depends on the developers and the community behind it.

I mean, non-WP sites get hacked all the time because the shared-site owner left a PHP script in there that’s vulnerable to XSS attacks, or left the permissions wide open inviting hackers to come join the party. That actually says more about the security of PHP itself, and the security of a shared-host environment. But why blame WP for that?

>>You quickly contact support of the developer who created the plugin you use for Membership Management before jumping into upgrade, as you have to ensure that it will continue to work with new version only to learn that he is taking romantic vacation on secluded island somewhere in Fiji and will not be back for next couple weeks…<<

Yes, I agree, that if you went with a small-time, one-man-developer solution, then regardless of whether they are in Fiji, or get hit by a bus, you’re going to be in trouble. That’s why you pick software from companies like mine, which have been around for 15 years, have written millions of lines of code for small businesses as well as for the enterprise, have a team in place for support, and won’t be going away any time soon (we can’t, because this is what we do :-).

>>I personally prefer that my membership script is separate and with dedicated support!<<
DAP totally fits the bill here :-). It is separate, and has dedicated, “non-outsourced” support 🙂

You are recommending a downloadable script solution at the end of your post – one which is developed in PHP. PHP has always been (arguably) one of the most insecure programming languages, just because, if you didn’t quite know what you’re doing, it allowed newbies to easily shoot themselves in the foot. Of course, PHP has come a long way since then, but it’s still not the most secure language.

Are we next going to start recommending that no one should use PHP scripts at all, and instead use something like Java or .NET?

So, whether it’s a programming language (PHP), a content management system (WP) or an operating system (Windoze), the solution is only as secure as its developers, the company backing it, and the community supporting it.

And most importantly, the security of a site is only as good as the actual “user” using it (if you download spyware and infected .exe files from the web and your computer gets infected, can you really blame Microsft for it?).

I guess you could blame MS, but that doesn’t mean you’re right.

So, when it comes to the quality of code, extensibility (hooks and filters and plugins) and the community, and the insanely large user base, WordPress simply can’t be beaten.

And when it comes to a membership script for WordPress, DAP also can’t be beaten 🙂

My humble $0.02 🙂

Appreciate the soapbox, the opportunity, and for your great post which seems to have evoked so many great responses 🙂

Thanks much!

– Ravi Jayagopal
Founder & Developer, DigitalAccessPass .com
(Membership Script for WordPress)

I’m hoping to augment this soon with a more detailed article about using WordPress as the platform to build your membership site.

So stay tuned by subscribing to this blog or by following me on twitter.

Feel free to pass this link to other WordPress lovers, and don’t forget to add your comments below. And no, I won’t block them – even if you’re Alex 😉

Insane Web Hosting Deal From DreamHost

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My favorite web host DreamHost is offering an *insane* deal…

2-year web hosting (normally $214) can now be purchased for just $21.48 – that’s almost a 90% discount. And I just got a new account (already have 3 accounts with them!)

This is not an affiliate offer. This is just a coupon I found online, and am sharing with you.

Unfortunately, the coupon I originally found on the same web site (for a 95% discount) expired before I could redeem it, if not, I would’ve gotten a better price (and also let you know sooner).

So hurry up, go over to DreamHost, use the promo code 220 to get the crazy discount.

I have about 30 of my own web sites – including this blog and many of my mission-critical sites – hosted on DreamHost and couldn’t possibly recommend a better web host.

Chat With Your Visitors: Google Chat For Your Web Site

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Until last night, I thought I was quite tech-savvy and very up-to-date with the latest and greatest in the web world. But I guess I was wrong 🙂

I started on a (brief) quest last month to add live-chat to some of my sites. After looking around, I couldn’t find a decent free solution. Of course, I always pay money gladly if I can’t find a free solution or find that a paid solution will solve my problem. And my search ended concluding LivePerson as the best option.

But then of course, my primary project took precedence, and I forgot all about it (eADD anyone?).

Recently, I picked up the thread again, and stumbled upon Yahoo Pingbox. It seemed very cool – simply add a piece of code (the gadget) to your web site, sign in to Yahoo Messenger as usual, and your visitors to the page with the gadget can chat with you, and you’ll get the messages in your YIM client. And the best part is, Yahoo notifies you every time someone arrives at the web page, even if they don’t initiate chat.

So, I tried it, but the gadget on my site always showed me as “Offline” even though I was online.

After a lot of searching, forum-posting and soul-seeking(!), I finally gave up on Yahoo’s Pingbox. But it was this search that led me to Google’s own Chatback solution.

It is rather surprising that Google and Yahoo would offer such services and do absolutely no marketing whatsoever.

And the irony is that even if you Googled for “google chat gadget” or something similar, you would probably still not find the link I’m about to share with you, as Google seems to have hidden their own service quite successfully from site owners like you and me – who can really use something like this!

Here’s a live example (you’ll see a live ‘clickable’ link if I’m ‘available’)…

When you add a Google Chatback Gadget to your site…

1. Visitors can chat with you anonymously, but you get all the instant messages in GoogleTalk or within the browser if you’re just chatting from within Gmail.

2. Your visitors won’t know what is your gmail id – so you don’t have to worry about spam.

3. Whatever status you set in Google chat, that’s the status your web site visitors will see too.

4. You can add the same widget to any number of web sites/pages.

Here’s how you add the Google Chatback Gadget to your site:

A. Go to http://www.google.com/talk/service/badge/New .
B. Log in to your Google account
C. Customize the Gadget style
D. Copy the code to your web sites/pages.
E. Sit back and wait for your visitors to start messaging you! Done!

So, spent 3 days and couldn’t get Yahoo Pingbox to work. Spent 10 seconds and got Google Chatback to work.

There, I just saved you a few hundred dollars 🙂

How To Check If Your Web Site Can Run PHP Scripts (or WordPress)

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  1. Create a file called phpinfo.php

  2. Enter these few lines of code in it: (you can copy-paste from below):
    <?php
    phpinfo();
    ?>

  3. Upload this to your root folder (where your home page (index.htm or index.html etc) lives.

  4. Access this script via the browser like this:
    http://www.YourSite.com/phpinfo.php

  5. You should see a nice page come up, with the PHP logo and headers, that shows all of your PHP configuration and settings. If you see it, then: Hurrah, you can run PHP on your site!

  6. If you see some kind of errors, first try changing the file’s permissions (chmod) to 755. (CHMOD Tutorial)

  7. If that still doesn’t work, then you’re probably SOL (S#!t Outta Luck). Confirm it with your web host.

  8. If your web host doesn’t support PHP, don’t waste your time – or your web site – with your current host. Just switch to where I host my own sites.

  9. WARNING: Don’t forget to delete the phpinfo.php file from your web site. Hackers can figure out a lot of stuff from this page!