Blog: December 2004

Problems with Customer Service (We Hope Not)

December 31, 2004

We often recommend Jumpline as our Web host for new clients. They keep the servers up.  But they also do some pretty lame brained things, like this weekend.  They sent out, this December, a “Fall Newsletter.” (It’s reproduced in full below.)

What the newsletter didn’t say was that they would be taking down their customer service operation—no way to contact them by email or phone—for three days.  You had to follow the links in the newsletter to learn that—and it was probably blocked by many clients’ spam filters in the first place.

As we noted in our Fall Newsletter, we will be updating the current Customer Manager to offer improved features and functionality. This update will take place beginning at 6:00 pm EST on Thursday Dec. 30th and will conclude at 12:00 am EST on Sunday Jan. 2nd.

During this time you will not be able to access your Customer Manager or our online support system. Also during this time, our call center will be closed as we perform maintenance on our phone system. Our call center will re-open Jan. 3rd at 9:00 am EST.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.
Jumpline.com Customer Service Department

This level of disruption of service, even if it is happening at a very slow time of year, should be telegraphed much more clearly to their clients, and I want to assure our clients that if we had received more notice, we would have shared it with you.  Meanwhile, we’re keeping our fingers crossed for you until the 2nd.

Read the entire item

Posted by Travis Smith at 9:31 PM | Comments (0)

Attention, clients using Moveable Type

December 21, 2004

We want to write to let you know about an upgrade to Moveable Type that’s become available.

It’s a small upgrade, but it fixes several issues related to comment spam and its related server load.

If you’ve had problems with server load or spam comments, I’d recommend it.  Otherwise, it’s probably not necessary.

In addition, there’s a bug-fixing version of MT-Blacklist that’s due out.  The current version of MT-Blacklist, you’ll may have heard, has the unfortunate bug of sometimes deleting two blogs when you try to delete one. Since you would very rarely if ever want to delete an entire blog, the benefits of MT-Blacklist in blocking spam far outweigh this one issue, but it would be nice not to even face the small possibility of this.

Let me know if you’d like us to do upgrade these both for you. I anticipate it would take an hour or two.

Posted by Travis Smith at 1:56 AM | Comments (0)

Finishing a Book for Dummies

December 19, 2004

076458457X.01._PE34_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpgSusie’s been writing a book lately, in her off hours.  You know, those off hours she spends eating, sleeping, having fun, etc.  It’s been her ever-present companion (in addition to me) since she had to meet her first deadline, in October.

So the book, “Buzz Marketing with Blogs for Dummies,” has now been written.  She met her final deadline early last Tuesday morning and turned in the final quarter of the book.

Of course, there’s a lot left to do.  Revising chapters and getting edited by a technical and a project editor, and all that in time to hit a current release date of March 2005.  Tech books have a very short turnaround, and even then, especially with something as shifting and growing as blogs, the longer it takes to write, the more likely it is not to have the latest information.  Which is why there’s also a blog to go along with the book.

There’s a significant amount of work left to do, but at this point, Susie has officially written her first book.  And, incidentally, you can save 34% if you pre-order it now!

This hereby ends this product plug.

Posted by Travis Smith at 12:20 AM | Comments (1)

The Pricescan Blog

December 18, 2004

I haven’t had the chance to blog about it until now, but last week, we launched another project.

It’s worth taking a look: a blog for the Pricescan online shopping guide site.  They approached us and asked us to install and customize a blogging solution for them.  We chose Moveable Type, because we were certain it could handle the load and because they had previous experience with it.

The group blog will be written by several of their staff, and will highlight certain interesting products, as well as interesting features of the site. The blog is highlighted on their front page, and linked to from the top tool bar as well.

Oh, and look for it to be mentioned in Susie’s upcoming book.

Posted by Travis Smith at 9:23 PM | Comments (0)

Latest Site: Your Love Trip Planner

December 3, 2004

Today, we launched ”Your Love Trip Planner for Women Ebook.”

It’s a small site, but involves an interesting ecommerce engine.  The ecommerce part is hosted, but semi-customizable.  It represents a step up from PayPal, though it can also be integrated with PayPal.  It also can be used for recurring transactions, and for automated downloadable transactions—which is what this is.

The site’s owner, Kathryn B. Lord, is selling a PDF book about planning your emotional course to a new relationship.

Hop Studios provided the glue to pull the site together.  We picked images and created graphics, did the HTML for the page, integrated it with the shopping cart and configured it, and installed session tracking software to evaluate the success of the page in ways other than just final sales.

Posted by Travis Smith at 2:57 AM | Comments (0)

New Blog for Hop Studios

December 2, 2004

Hop Studios announces its first commercial blog.  This is for clients, current and potential; supporters and detractors; and those interested in Web design, Web development and Web deployment.  I encourage you to make this a regular stop on your Web travels.

Posted by Travis Smith at 10:58 PM | Comments (0)