Ravi's Rants

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Better Than Disneyland

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How Your Online Course Can Be Better Than Disneyland

How Your Online Course Can Be Better Than Disneyland

So recently, along with my family, I visited Disney California Adventure.

And a few months ago, in December 2016, during the holiday break, my family and I went to Universal Studios.

Now, I live in San Diego, which is about 1.5 hours from Anaheim, which is where Disneyland and California adventure are located. And about a 3 hour drive from Universal Studios in Los Angeles.

Universal has something called “Front of Line” access. It is about $100 dollars more on top of a regular ticket, which by itself costs about $100.

So when you pay an extra $100 for front-of-line access, you basically get to go to the front of the line for every single ride, only once per ride, of course. And even if you go on a week day, let alone going during a major holiday, the lines are absolutely crushingly long. 1 to 2 hours wait for each ride. And because we paid extra for front-of-line access, we were able to get to the front of the line for every single ride, thus saving us at least 1 hour per ride.

So paying $400 extra for 4 front-of-line passes, was totally worth it, considering we saved about 4 to 6 hours in total of standing in line. Now that’s a win-win, if you ask me. Universal wins because it gets to squeeze out an extra $100 per ticket for the front-of-line access, and it was a win for us because we saved so much time, and that made it so much more enjoyable, and we were able to get to all of the rides, and it only enhanced the experience.

But here’s the problem with what Disney does, which is completely the opposite of what Universal Studios does. And here’s why you shouldn’t make the mistake of following Disney’s model, and should instead use Universal’s model….

Listen to the rest of this via my podcast episode above.

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 😉

Are You Keeping A Tab On Your Competitors – and Yourself?

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Quite frequently, I am reminded of how we take certain things for granted, while it could be something completely new/interesting/educating/shocking for someone else.

Using Google Alerts for competitive research is one such “thing”. During a chat with a friend the other day, I casually mentioned how I use Google Alerts to keep an eye on my industry, and it completely blew him away, while I’d actually been doing this for as long as Google Alerts have existed (and before that News.com alerts).

So, for what it’s worth, here goes:

I use Google Alerts to set up specific alerts for specific keywords.

When Google first finds any new or existing content (blog posts, web pages, forum discussions, etc) anywhere on the web that it hasn’t indexed before, that contains these keywords, Google sends me an email with a link to this newly-found content.

And if a publisher has password-protected their content, but still allowed Google to index it (using the “password-protected content” sitemaps feature), then Google emails me a little blurb of that password-protected content!

So, basically I have set up tens of alerts, the first one (vanity “alert” ahead – quite literally! 🙂 being my own name (“Ravi Jayagopal”). That way, I always know the instant (or within a few days at worst), if anyone is blogging/writing about me or my products.

Google Alert

Here are some of the alerts you could create:
1. Your full name
2. For all your product names
3. All your web site urls
4. Each and every one of your competitors’ names
5. All of your partners’ names
6. Name of any industry expert (or their web site url) whose blog/site you follow (like I have one for “Seth Godin” 🙂
7. The name or category of your industry: For eg., right now I’m a month away from launching a very powerful “Access Management” software to manage subscription-based web sites. So, some of my alerts include the keywords “subscription”, “content”, “download”, “security”, etc. Yes, I do get some false positives, but who cares!

The kind of stuff Google finds on a daily basis thanks to these alerts, not only help me keep a tab on myself, my customers, my competitors, and my idols, but it also gives me a lot of new ideas, new features for my products, and great new ways in which I can make my product remarkable!

So go create your alerts today.

Amazon Kindle: Not kindling my passion for, er, anything

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The folks who buy a new product when it first comes out, are commonly known as the early adopters.

These people – who are not the same as the “beta testers” – actually spend money to buy the product.

They risk the annoyances, technical and usability issues of First-Generation products in exchange for the “Wow” factor that comes with someone stopping by at your table at a restaurant, or interrupting you on the train, or huddling near you at a party, to ask about your cool new toy.

There is a certain coolness and hipness that comes along with owning the latest and greatest gadget.

But what if the gadget itself is considered a failure? What if you just kept reading poor reviews everywhere you look, especially from the people and web sites and blogs you visit and respect?

Would you still shell out hard-earned-money when you know there is very little “Wow” factor in it for you?

I’m not an early adopter in any way. I am usually on the other end of the curve, buying only the latest version of the most proven products, after the product has been out for a while, after reading tons of reviews and doing a lot of online research.

Even I was initially tempted to get the new Amazon Kindle. But after reading poor reviews everywhere, I finally pulled the plug on this item from my wish list.

Here’s one of the best, most balanced, most informative reviews I’ve read about the kindle.

So, don’t take my word – judge the Kindle for yourself.