Season 1 - Episode 17

[00:00:09.620] - Gordon
Hello.

[00:00:10.110] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:00:10.610] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:00:12.380] - Taylor
I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:00:14.450] - Gordon
And this is Marty and he wanted to join us for today, so he's going to join in ok. We're not sure if he's going to stay or if he's going to go, he might just lie down for a bit. So welcome to "This Week With," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about the things that we've been doing during the week and a topic that we're interested in as self-employed businessmen. So this week has been very busy, as it always is. Shall I start?

[00:00:45.770] - Taylor
Yeah, you start this week.

[00:00:46.910] - Gordon
So this week I've been dealing with WordPress 5.5, which came out about a week ago, and it broke an awful lot of websites. Basically what they did is they took out an element of it because it was old and they didn't replace it with an equivalent. So therefore, anything that was written, like a theme or a plug-in that was written and referred to the bit that's missing, made the whole website stop working.

[00:01:19.280] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:01:19.670] - Gordon
And this is down to "J Query Migrate," which is a JavaScript library. And there was there was quite a bit of talk about this on the Internet and how it was breaking websites. And so WordPress actually came out a few days later with a plug-in that you can download, which I believe is called "J Query Migrate." And that basically puts the library back into your WordPress installation and fixes the problems that taking it out had caused. Now it's only a stopgap, it's a workaround so that you can get yourself back up and running. But if you've had problems with WordPress and you've upgraded to 5.5 and it's not working as you expect it to, then it's down to one of your plug-ins or your themes being out of date. And you need to either get on to your WordPress plug-in or theme developer and get them to upgrade it. Or if it's been abandoned, then you need to go and find a replacement for that plug-in so that you don't have to rely on it, because this J Migrate, J Query Migwai... J Query Migrate, it's difficult to say, is only a stopgap and shouldn't be relied upon for long term service. So that is, did you get, did you have any effect with it?

[00:02:47.320] - Taylor
So one of the main source that I used to build, my Oxygen plug-in broke and I couldn't use the colour picker because that relied on J Query. So they have released a beta which fixes that problem, but I'm going to wait until the full release comes out. So I've downgraded back to 4.8 for the time being.

[00:03:12.610] - Gordon
What you might want to do is upgrade on a staging site and see if the plug-in that they've brought out fixes the issue for you, because that might well do it for you.

[00:03:24.010] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:03:24.460] - Gordon
Yeah. So that's that's what I've been working on during the week. What have you been up to this week Taylor?

[00:03:29.170] - Taylor
So this week I have been experimenting and starting to look at another piece of software which is called "Laravel," which is a PHP framework. So it's a coding language and it's a framework for it. So you can, a bit like WordPress, how that's a content management system, but it's built upon PHP and all the rest of it and all other coding languages. But this one is more suited to web applications. So kind of, you could build like Instagram with it or, you know, all the Web applications, Facebook, for example, rather than kind of a static website per se.

[00:04:09.790] - Gordon
So it's building a service? Or building a website with functionality?

[00:04:13.420] - Taylor
Yes. So you could use it to build a web, a normal website, but it would be very over engineered and a lot more expensive because it's more custom. So they're more mostly used for kind of web applications, things that have dashboards, backends, something to do with like the backend, for example. And I was just looking into this because I've started using PHP within my builds and WordPress. And it's really interesting. I've learnt a lot. So I thought, you know, can I expand my skillset to understand it and see what I can do? And a great example of a kind of project that I can work on, as like a real life project is your, one of your companies, which is, or one of your businesses which is "Online Booking Assistant." So that was built with PHP, however, that was built a long, long time ago with a lot less functionality and kind of ability to be able to do things. And because of that, it's quite old in the way that it does things; it's not fully responsive. So I was just going to have a look to see if I could build a replica basically, just for my personal skills to improve my skill set really.

[00:05:23.710] - Gordon
That's great, yeah. It's always good to keep learning, learn new skills and keep up to date with technology basically. This is one of the reasons why we have lots of customers come to us to do this sort of thing, because that's what we do. We make sure we keep up with the latest technology so we can advise and use these tools for our customers.

[00:05:46.630] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:05:47.890] - Gordon
So something I wanted to talk about today, my topic of the week, if you like, is 'Lifetime Deals' or 'LTDs.' Now, this is something that I've been interested in and purchasing for many, many years now. I think I've been doing it for coming up to ten years. So a long time ago, companies decided that they wanted to try and get a lot of customers on board quickly; generate a lot of income quickly; and use the customers that they've got that's been brought on to suggest updates and come back to them with problems and bug fixes that they need to do, as well as getting an amount of money, a big sum of money, that they could then use for further development. And for a lifetime deal, for the company it's a good deal because it means that they can scale what they're doing quite quickly and they haven't got to go out and tell everyone about their product and convince people to sign up to a monthly deal. They can just sell it at a quite low price and give the people who take them up on that limited time offer, lifetime access to their service.

[00:07:16.480] - Taylor
It's a risk that the clients or customers are taking on the product.

[00:07:21.370] - Gordon
Yeah, that's right. So the reason that it's good for the customers is, they get a lifetime deal, lifetime access, and this is the lifetime of that product. So if the product doesn't succeed, that lifetime is not very long. So there is a risk involved and that is why the deals are normally quite good value; because you have a risk to it. There are several lifetime deals that I've purchased that are no longer in operation, so I've lost my money on that.

[00:07:53.940]
Or things have become there's new lifetime deals come out that include that functionality.

[00:07:58.830] - Gordon
Yeah.

[00:07:59.100] - Taylor
So it becomes redundant.

[00:07:59.820]
Or something has superseded it and become a better option for me. So I've got an old lifetime deal that I could still use, but something that's newer has come along and I'm using that because it's better than the old one. Now, that's not to say that the old one won't get better than the new one at some point, which is why I hold onto them. But if you're, if you want to have a low value risk for a high gain, potentially, then lifetime deals are a very good way of going, of going about that. There are an awful lot of products that I use on a day to day basis that were originally a lifetime deal and I'm still using them, it's not costing me any extra money. Now, there are some companies that will mess up the lifetime deal by not giving you new features. So you get stuck with old features and you don't get all the new features. And again, that's something that in the lifetime deal community people will complain about. But one of the best places to go to find a lifetime deal is a website called "appsumo.com," that's a-p-p-s-u-m-o.com. I'll put a link into the notes for you, and this will be an affiliate link. So if you use my link to purchase anything, you will get a discount on your first purchase. They bring out about two to three to four, two to four deals a week. So you know, don't just jump in and buy, you know, anything you think might be useful in the future. Look for things that you think are going to be useful to you now.

[00:09:53.940] - Taylor
But they're also vetted as well, which...

[00:09:56.340] - Gordon
With "Appsumo" they are. Yes, indeed. They go through a rigorous testing procedure with Appsumo, there's a big contract in place to try and protect both the consumer and the companies. Now, the reason Appsumo is good, is that they give you a 60 day refund period. So you can purchase a lifetime deal; you can play with it for fifty nine days; and if you decide actually this is not what I want, you can refund it and therefore get all of your money back and give up your lifetime deal.

[00:10:29.784] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:10:30.270] - Gordon
Just as an example: "Zappia" was once a lifetime deal on Appsumo, so those people who bought that now have a really good deal.

[00:10:40.730] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:10:41.450] - Gordon
Now it's not only Appsumo, you can buy lifetime deals elsewhere. Companies themselves will offer lifetime deals. And it's just a matter of researching a bit. There's a whole community; there's communities on Facebook, there's a whole community on Appsumo. And they will write reviews; they'll ask questions; they'll listen to the company owners answers and they'll do their own due diligence, which is what I do. Just to make sure that this deal is not going to be sort of here for six months and then gone, and you lose all your money.

[00:11:17.520] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:11:18.110] - Gordon
And I normally will check to see if it's something that I actually want. Because there are so many deals that come and go that just to buy a deal for the sake of it, for FOMO: fear of missing out, is not a great way of doing it. You can very quickly become addicted to buying a lifetime. Yeah.

[00:11:40.460] - Taylor
Down the rabbit hole.

[00:11:41.390] - Gordon
Yeah. And just buy everything, and then you'll have what we call 'shelfware,' which is software that sits on the shelf and never gets used. And I'll be honest, I have a few of those. I've got a few shelfware lifetime deals that I purchased. But I happen to think, no I don't happen to think I know, because we keep a track of everything we buy and how much it is, when we bought it. What we haven't done, which we should do, is look at the pricing per month and work out how much we would have spent on that software if we'd paid a monthly fee for the level we're on based against the fee that we actually paid.

[00:12:26.690] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:12:27.200] - Gordon
That would be a really useful statistic. But I know for a fact that I am well out in front. If I'd paid lifetime, if I'd paid monthly for everything that I own, I would be massively in debt I think, is the answer. So I have carefully chosen my software to make sure that I am actually going to use it. And most of the time I do. One last thing to say. With Appsumo in particular, you can stack deals and stacking basically means you buy a lifetime deal and then you buy, and you get one code for buying a lifetime deal, and you can buy extra codes normally up to ten. I don't think I've ever seen anything go above ten. But the more codes you buy, the more resources you get on a software. And sometimes buying maybe three or four or five codes will also unlock extra features as well. So be aware that it could cost you a couple of hundred dollars to get a good deal. But that couple of hundred dollars is a one off fee.

[00:13:38.270] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:13:38.630] - Gordon
And you won't be paying monthly from then on to get the features that you've paid for.

[00:13:44.090] - Gordon
So have a look in the show notes and click on my link to get yourself extra discount for your first purchase, and let us know in the comments if you do actually purchase something. There are some interesting deals going on right now. Oh, you've woken up.

[00:14:02.660] - Taylor
Hello.

[00:14:03.350] - Gordon
Taylor, what would you like to talk about?

[00:14:05.480] - Taylor
So this week I wanted to talk about scaling websites. So when people used to build websites, it was very much kind of you'd just build it using just pure HTML and kind of just writing it as you wanted it. However, as things have gone on, we've started to use, people have started to use WordPress, which is a content management system which allows you to scale things up. So, for example, you can put all your posts into one page and use a template to, for all your posts, basically.

[00:14:38.120] - Gordon
Oh, Marty's had enough. He's not interested in scalability. Right.

[00:14:42.980] - Taylor
And so I've kind of been looking at how I can scale up all my websites. So a lot of websites I do are kind of trade or service websites. So that includes a home page about, services, testimonials or reviews and a contact page. That's the kind of main kind of layout of a website that I do. And I wanted to find a way to make it scalable so that for the client it's super easy to add new content and for me it's easy to manage and be able to keep everything uniform. So what I mean by that is, things that are the same and are duplicated with the same style, so, for example, services: most service pages, all they change is images, title and the actual descriptions and body text. So what I can do with that is, I can build kind of a post type called 'services,' and from that I can template the services pages. So all the services pages have the same, all have the title in the same position; all the images are in the same position; and the body text is in the same position. And then in the back end, all I have to do is ask the client to put in the title, the image and the description, and that just collates all that information and puts it out in the template that I've specified.

[00:16:10.100] - Gordon
And in the right place, on the right pages.

[00:16:12.060] - Taylor
Yeah. So what that means is, that I, if they want to go down the line they go, "oh I want to add a service, another service," I'm like, "sure, just add another post with the service that you want on it with all the information," and just adds it in the next column basically, if you have a layout of columns of your services. And that means that you don't have to worry about duplicating a page, for example, or, for example, blog posts, you don't have to worry about duplicating the post to make sure they're the same. You know, if you change it on one, it's not going to change on the others. And so it means that all you have to do is just add the new ones and everything scales up. This can help with managing all your content because if you can split them up into different areas. So all the testimonials are in one place, in a whole list; all your blog posts are in a list in one place; all your services, etc. etc. It's very easy to see where things are, what you've got, and it just makes managing things a lot easier and keeping it tidy. The other thing is kind of having a global section to add information. So, for example, if you wanted, if you had a telephone number and you're using that in the header, the footer and the contact page. If you wanted to update that, you'd have to go into each separate kind of page and update it. So by making global attributes, you can change it once and it changes on the whole of the site. Similar to how you can do with buttons or colours, colour schemes and things like that. So that's really important if you kind of are looking at doing your own website or if someone's building a website for you, you make sure that they know about scalability or they make sure they scale it. Because I've got quite a few websites which I've built in the past, which I didn't have the knowledge or understanding or know about kind of scaling, and updating it is just a pain because none of the, there's no templating involved, there's you know, nothing, so everything I have to do manually and update it myself.

[00:18:15.290] - Gordon
So basically, this is this is making it easier for the website owner.

[00:18:20.090] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:18:20.480] - Gordon
To scale their business and in turn scale their website without adding a ton of cost.

[00:18:27.830] - Taylor
Yeah, pretty much.

[00:18:29.490] - Gordon
OK, that's really useful.

[00:18:32.320] - Taylor
Yeah. It works really well, and it doesn't matter if you wanted to add something on the page. So for example, you want to add maybe a list of the things you offer for one service, you can use repeaters and repeat the information and say, "for each list I want a tick box and then the list item," and then all the client needs to do is just add a new one; type in what they want; click 'add new,' and it just and then it will just repeat on the page, so everything is matching basically.

[00:19:04.640] - Gordon
That's very good. Yeah. So it's not only making it easier for the owner of the website, it also makes it easier for you to update and add new content.

[00:19:16.370] - Taylor
Yeah, and it makes it easier to find things as well. So yeah.

[00:19:19.970] - Gordon
And less mistakes as well because if you've got a global variable for the telephone number or the email address, then by just changing it once it changes it on the whole site, you can't then accidentally miss one of the places where it is and...

[00:19:38.330] - Taylor
I've had that happen a couple of times where they're not templated and I miss things and the client comes back to me and says, kind of "you've missed this" or something, "can you fix it?" so...

[00:19:47.570] - Gordon
And then it's just another interaction with the customer, which takes up time for them and for you.

[00:19:53.250] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:19:53.780] - Gordon
Yeah. It just streamlines the whole thing.

[00:19:56.900] - Taylor
So, yeah, that's...

[00:19:58.100] - Gordon
That's really helpful. There you go. So if you're thinking of building a website and you've got services or...

[00:20:05.630] - Taylor
Anything that's repeatable and you have multiple of really.

[00:20:08.510] - Gordon
Yeah. Then make sure whoever you go to, you can either come to me or Taylor or go to someone else, make sure you specify you want it to be very easy and you want custom fields in their custom post types so that it will allow you to very quickly change things.

[00:20:25.190] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:20:25.580] - Gordon
Perfect. Or add content.

[00:20:27.290] - Taylor
Yeah. Exactly.

[00:20:28.880] - Gordon
Excellent. Well, there's a lot of interesting information in this week's podcast, vidcast. I think that's it from me.

[00:20:38.060] - Taylor
Yeah, that's it from me.

[00:20:39.230] - Gordon
So as always, you can find us on Facebook /thisweekwith, and our videos go live at 1pm. Again, we asked last week, if you find 1pm is not a great time for you to watch live, please let us know what time would suit you and we'll try and put all of the answers together and come out with a good time slot to do it. So you can find us on Facebook as normal. You can also find us on YouTube, and that's /thisweekwith as well, and all of our broadcasts go live at one o'clock on a Friday there as well.

[00:21:19.400] - Taylor
You have our website: thisweekwith.co.uk, which has all past episodes in an easy to find place which we templated and we just put in the information that is changing and it just puts into a nice template with all of our show notes, YouTube video and also the podcast audio.

[00:21:38.900] - Gordon
Good example. And we can be found on all the big podcast sites, Sticher, Apple, Spotify.

[00:21:48.440] - Taylor
And then...

[00:21:49.010] - Gordon
Pretty much all of them.

[00:21:50.600] - Taylor
Yeah.

[00:21:51.260] - Gordon
What podcast app do you use?

[00:21:54.440] - Taylor
"Pocket Cast."

[00:21:55.130] - Gordon
Pocket Cast, same as me. So Pocket Cast is available on iPhone, probably on Android as well.

[00:22:00.800]
Yep.

[00:22:00.800] - Gordon
Desktop?

[00:22:01.940] - Taylor
Yes, they do have a desktop app.

[00:22:03.230] - Gordon
So you could listen to it while you work in the office. So that's everything from us. Thank you for joining us. We will see you next week at 1pm. It's goodbye from me. I'm Gordon from Drayson Design.

[00:22:15.710] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.

[00:22:18.170] - Gordon
We'll see you next week. Goodbye.

[00:22:20.210] - Taylor
Bye.