[00:00:45.140] - Gordon
Hello and welcome. My name's Gordon.
[00:00:48.170] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor.
[00:00:49.040] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon." So, my name is Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:55.370] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:57.830] - Gordon
And this blog, this video, is all about us working as self-employed people, and we talk about what we've been doing during the week. So let's start with you today, Taylor. Tell us what you've been up to today.
[00:01:11.840] - Taylor
So this week I have been looking at learning a new software, and skill, to add to my skill set and hopefully produce better quality websites. So I have been testing and working, just playing around with a piece of software called "Oxygen." It is a builder for WordPress, and what it does, it allows you to create websites using a kind of drag and drop system similar to quite popular software like "Elementor," Divi, "Beaver Builder." However, this is more geared to people who are more advanced and if they wanted to, they probably could write the HTML and CSS themselves, but for...
[00:02:00.980] - Gordon
Which is the code you use to build a website.
[00:02:03.620] - Taylor
Yeah, but instead it's a more user friendly but has advanced features for more developer type style people.
[00:02:11.540] - Gordon
So apart from it being better for developers, what advantage does it give the user?
[00:02:16.550] - Taylor
It allows me to be able to speed up the load pages of times and also make sure that they're all, the mobile responsiveness and stuff, you know, is a lot nicer and easier to use. And also allows for custom filtering and, you know, posts and things like that, so you can design it how you want. Whereas other pieces of software, Elementor or Divi you're more locked into, if you want to add a blog module, you only have a set number of style options whereas this you can customise it to your heart's content, really.
[00:02:52.940] - Gordon
Ok.
[00:02:52.940] - Taylor
And gives me a lot more flexibility and freedom to design what I want, really.
[00:02:57.200] - Gordon
So I think the important thing there is the speed. The ease of use is not as good as it is for something else. I mean, I use Divi a lot, which is an "Elegant Theme's" WordPress builder and theme, and I use that a lot. And it comes out with new features all the time, problem is if I'm not using one of those features, then it still gets added to the code. It's still going to be in the site. Therefore it's going to slow down the entire site, even though it's more powerful.
[00:03:31.100] - Taylor
So, yeah, so these page builders, they're really known for their bloat. So the, how much code they put in, you know, they normally load everything rather than just what you need, whereas Oxygen is a 'theme builder,' not a 'page builder'. So this has a different approach to it and this will only load the scripts basically that you use, rather than Divi or Elementor, which just loads everything. And if you don't use it, then it doesn't matter, you still loads it, basically.
[00:04:00.530] - Gordon
And to find out that this actually was faster, you did some speed testing, didn't you?
[00:04:05.690] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:04:06.200] - Gordon
So you looked at a website that was running in one of the themes and builders, and then you looked at the same website in an Oxygen theme and you spent quite a lot of time doing this just to make sure that it was a good decision right?
[00:04:23.240] - Taylor
Yeah. So there are a few drawbacks because Oxygen is a very new piece of software and it's, there's quite a small developer team behind it. The updates and the amount of functionalities are a bit more limited in terms of what you can do. However, the fact that you can add custom coding means that you can then add the functionalities back in, but it just requires a bit more coding yourself.
[00:04:50.750] - Gordon
Yeah, if you know what you're doing. So one of the disadvantages to using oxygen for our users, for example, for our visitors, our viewers, would be that there isn't such a big third party landscape out there. So there's not a ton of themes and designs that have already been created for you to use, and add-ons, and third party plug-ins.
[00:05:16.580] - Taylor
Yeah. So the community base isn't as big, and there's not as much resources at the moment because it's a newer software. So that's the only downside to it.
[00:05:24.590] - Gordon
And that could be the reason that it's actually faster at the moment. So as Oxygen builds and gets better and more popular, it may be that they'll add features and the speed won't be as important, sorry, as big a difference between Oxygen and other plug-in theme builders and themes. So we shall watch and see what happens with that, but that all sounds quite exciting. So you're building a new site with that at the moment are you?
[00:05:53.110] - Taylor
Yeah, I am. And it's really nice. I'm able to, I'm doing a kind of members type of... For a big franchise distributor for "Herbalife." He wants a place where people can find out more information about the company and stuff, why you should use the company, but also have a members section so all of his current people that he supports, because he does one-to-one kind of support with each member, you know recommending things, training plans. And, you know, we're creating a place where he can store all of that information and then members can login with a password and then search for all of the information that is there, so that should be really interesting.
[00:06:35.400] - Gordon
And one of the reasons that you go to a web developer as opposed to doing it yourself, is that if it's a good web developer, they will continue to look at new technologies as they come out, learn how to use them, and make very, very educated guesses as to whether it's going to be a good thing for the future or not. And learning a new system is a big job, but it's something that a good web developer will do. And that's where you gain by getting a professional on board rather than trying to do it yourself, where you might just end up going to Wix, for example.
[00:07:14.730] - Taylor
The only annoying thing is that, you know, as I learn and get better in Oxygen, is if I decide that I really do like this a lot, then all my previous sites that I've done, I'll want to transfer over just because of the speed and the functionality and stuff. Which will be a pain but I think in the future, if I get time and I've got, you know, not as much work, I think I might do something like that just...
[00:07:37.890] - Gordon
Well, again, it depends on whether the owner of that website wants to invest in creating a site that's quicker. It's really down to the owner. I mean, what you're saying is a big job, recreating a new site in new software. So only if the owner of that website wants the increase in speed will they ask you to do that. But, you know, there will be some people who will.
[00:08:01.350] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:08:01.860] - Gordon
So, very interesting Taylor, very interesting.
[00:08:03.770] - Taylor
What've you been doing then?
[00:08:05.850] - Gordon
Thank you for asking. So a while back now, Taylor created a system for automatically emailing his customers when a renewal was due. So that could be a hosting renewal, or domain name renewal, or one of his services was coming up for renewal, something that maybe gets renewed annually or biannually. And he'd created a system that sent out emails automatically to let the customer know that it was coming up for renewal and to ask whether they'd like it renewed. And this is something that I was doing with the system I had, but I was doing it in a very manual way. I would go into my software and I would look and see what was coming up for renewal, and I'd have to physically click a button for each one of them and it would send an email off to these people saying, "this is now up for renewal. Would you like to renew?" And that was it. So if that email went astray, then people didn't know that their product was up for renewal. I then had to do more manual work and call them or contact them again and say, you know, "would you like this renewed? It's coming up. It's going to expire soon." And so I have spent quite a bit of this week moving a lot of my emailing out into this system. Now, originally, we were bringing in all of the original data into Google Sheets, which is a free service and allows you to create a spreadsheet on the web that the information was going to be stored in, and then automatically, a service called "Integromat," which is great, it's an automation service, would grab the information, send the emails off on a 30 day; 14 day; day before; day after saying it's expired; and a thank you email when it's all been paid for. And that was being done by Integromat. Now, something that Taylor found, in fact, was another service called "Airtable." Now this is like a spreadsheet, it pretty much looks like a spreadsheet, but it's a database / spreadsheet. So it looks like a spreadsheet, but it's actually a database, and there are advantages to this. One of the main advantages is that it's got better support in Integromat to get the data out of Airtable and send information to the customers. So I spent quite a bit of time testing this and creating my own emails that were going out and laying them out, designing them, and then testing the service to make sure it was working as it should work. I still have one little bit to go, which is getting the information from my own database, my offline database, into Airtable, which is being worked on at the moment. I have a very good friend and database genius called Paul Longhurst, who's looking at that for me at the moment. So he's going to be doing that. And then it becomes an automated system, and it will work without me having to do anything. And because it's sending more than one email, I now don't have to worry too much about it not alerting the customer that their renewal is coming up. I've never lost a renewal at this point, but it is possible in the old system. And something else was, Taylor and I were sort of working on this together, and we found a few little tweaks that were needed for what you're doing as well, where a scenario would happen, where an email had been sent out to a customer giving them the chance to renew and the price of it. And then that was the 30 day email, and then on the 14 day email, they would get another email, but if the price of that product had changed between the 30 day email going out and the 14 day email going out, then the new email would give the new price and it would be incongruent having two different prices. So we've added onto the original email, and subsequent emails, the fact that unless we hear from you, the renewals won't happen and that the price may change between now and the time you renew. And so if people want to get the best price they need to renew as soon as they get the renewal rather than wait, because as soon as it goes into the next e-mail with the new price, that's the new price. Therefore, if they want to renew because they've waited, they then have to pay the higher price. But it was something we needed to, just manage expectations to the customer, so they knew that that was a possibility and that might happen.
[00:12:58.470] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:12:59.310] - Gordon
And that's taken, I mean that's taken quite a bit of time to get right as well as sorting out the emails. The emails look beautiful. If you are one of my customers, look out for your next renewal email because it looks really nice. And when a renewal happens, it sends out a thank you email saying, "thank you for paying, we've received your money." And, "this is your service, this is the new expiry date." So now they've got it in writing, in an email as well as on the invoice in my case. And there was one other point I was going to, oh, the Integromat will also, because it sends emails to the customer using my personal email settings rather than its own system, it means that my sent emails can be put into my sent folder, even though it's an automated email, which is great. I don't do anything, but all these emails appear in my sent folder. So if someone says, "I didn't get an email," I can go, "oh don't worry, I've got it." And I can go into my sent folder, find it, resend it to them. Perfect. So yeah, lots of plus points on this and will make my life a lot easier. Yeah, really good.
[00:14:14.650] - Taylor
That's really good. Another thing about Airtable is that, the difference between Google Sheets and Airtable is that you can link with, it's kind of a relationships between different sheets per se. So you can have a, we have a 'clients' sheet which has a list of all the client information, so first name, last name, email, etc. like that and then within the 'renewals' sheet we then, all you need to do is just put in the name of, or the ID of the client and it will just pull all the information in from that other. And it means if you update it, then it automatically updates and all of that so.
[00:14:48.750] - Gordon
And that is possible in Google sheets, it's just not as easy. And there's, it's a bit more fiddly to do in Google Sheets, so Airtable is definitely the better use case for this.
[00:15:00.190] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:15:00.690] - Gordon
Any news Taylor?
[00:15:02.130] - Taylor
So Zoom are going to be now fully encrypted. So as of today, you want to update your Zoom.
[00:15:11.130] - Gordon
Yes. So as of tomorrow everything is encrypted and it means that if you've got an old version of the software, or an older version of the software, you must update it today because otherwise tomorrow it will stop working. This was something that was in the news, wasn't it, Taylor?
[00:15:29.880] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:15:31.290] - Gordon
They, when lockdown came, everyone started to use Zoom and then some clever people realised that it wasn't actually end to end encryption, which is what they were claiming. And they've worked very hard, let's say, to get to the point when it is going to be end to end encryption. And I've been using Zoom quite a lot and it's a good service. It works really well. I love their free calls for 40 minutes when you've got three or more people. If you didn't know, unlimited time if it's less than three people on Zoom, which is great. Screen share works really well. But the encryption thing that you were talking about is really important, isn't it?
[00:16:17.910] - Taylor
Yeah, especially if you've got meetings and stuff and you're talking about confidential information, you just need to make sure that everything's encrypted and secure for all possibilities really.
[00:16:28.770] - Gordon
Yeah. And it means no one can hack in and grab the data as it's being transmitted. Yeah, really important, really important.
[00:16:35.940] - Taylor
So what about you, any news or information?
[00:16:38.640] - Gordon
So as you may know, if you've watched our earlier episodes, our internet here is not great. It's not very fast and it...
[00:16:46.680] - Taylor
It's got better though.
[00:16:47.130] - Gordon
It has got better, agreed. It's still not great, though. I mean, my dad has internet speed that is about 30 times faster than my internet speed, and it's completely down to the location of our house and where services come in. We just don't get cable here. So we are limited to the telephone lines and the fastest speed that that will allow. And that's down to your local exchange and how far from the exchange you are. But there is some good news coming. In Australia, I think it was a university, they claim to have created a, using fibre optic cables, a speed of 44 terabits per second.
[00:17:42.180] - Taylor
Wow. That is a lot.
[00:17:43.830] - Gordon
I mean, that is just unbelievable. Just to give you an idea of how fast that is, imagine an HD movie, which, you know, could be, say, 2 gigabytes. Let's just go with 2 gigabytes on average. So if you were to have a 2 gigabyte HD movie, a 4 terabit connection will allow you to download 1000 HD movies per second.
[00:18:20.960] - Taylor
That's a lot.
[00:18:21.960] - Gordon
That's phenomenal, isn't it? Obviously, it's not available now, it's going to take years until it filters down. And that's assuming that their claim is correct and they haven't fiddled it in some way. But it does goes to show that the internet speeds are improving all the time. And hopefully at some point we will get cable here so that we can improve our speed, because we use a lot of internet here, don't we?
[00:18:50.070] - Taylor
We do, yes.
[00:18:52.460] - Gordon
Yes, an unbelievable amount of internet. It's not, I mean it's not just computers that are using our internet. We've got smart home systems; we've got Amazon devices; we've got, what else have we got?
[00:19:06.100] - Taylor
Washing machine.
[00:19:06.770] - Gordon
We've got a washing machine that tells us when it's finished, don't ask. Yeah, there's all sorts that are using the internet connection here, including TV. Our TV, we're using Sky that's now downloading films, using the internet connection. So we've got loads of things, so a faster internet connection would be really useful to us.
[00:19:28.460] - Taylor
Yeah. So I think that's everything.
[00:19:30.710] - Gordon
I think that's everything from me. As always, do go and visit our YouTube page and then click 'subscribe' and the little bell so that it will alert you when we have a new video up. As always, we go live at 1pm on a Friday, every Friday. So make sure you join us on YouTube and/or Facebook, links are on this page. And something else, if you know of somebody who you think this would be of interest to, then please share it with them, send them a link, tell them about it. You've actually done a little update on our website as well, which is thisweekwith.co.uk, so what's the update you've done?
[00:20:17.450] - Taylor
So I've added the YouTube video to the home page so you can now watch it straight from the home page once it's, after we've gone live. Once we upload it, you can now watch it on our website after.
[00:20:30.680] - Gordon
Yeah. So it gets streamed live and then it takes just a little bit of time to process and then it will be available on our website. So YouTube and Facebook to see us live, website to see back issues. YouTube will also have them, Facebook will also have them, but you know, use the website that would be great. There's also links on there if you want to subscribe to the podcast and listen to them on a podcast. We are available on, at your favourite podcast app, basically. And if we're not on your favourite podcast app, tell us, leave us a message, let us know. So thank you for joining us. We will see you next week. My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:21:11.120] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:21:13.130] - Gordon
We'll see you next week. Bye bye everyone.
[00:21:14.990] - Taylor
Bye.
