[00:00:10.470] - Gordon
Hello.
[00:00:10.930] - Taylor
Hello.
[00:00:11.370] - Gordon
My name's Gordon from Drayson Design.
[00:00:13.410] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:00:15.540] - Gordon
And welcome to "This Week With Taylor and Gordon," a weekly podcast and vidcast where we talk about things that have affected our businesses in the last seven days. And welcome back.
[00:00:27.810] - Taylor
It's been more than seven days.
[00:00:29.040] - Gordon
It's been more than seven days. Well, we were on last week, so that is seven days. But what we didn't mention last week is that we apologise for the previous two weeks. We missed the first week because I had shows.
[00:00:44.160] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:00:44.730] - Gordon
On a Friday, which is very unusual. But it's lovely to get back to doing real live shows. I've been without them for about 15 months now, so it's nice to get back to doing them. So we apologise for not having a show for you on that week. The following week, Taylor was a little unwell weren't you?
[00:01:06.640] - Taylor
Yeah. I was ill.
[00:01:07.410] - Gordon
He was a little bit unwell, so we didn't do a show then because he wouldn't have looked good on the show. He would have been looking like he was fast asleep basically. So we missed that one. We did do last week. We didn't mention that we weren't, why we weren't able to do the previous two weeks. So we apologise for that. But for those of you who have joined us, welcome and thank you very much. It's been a weird old time at the moment, what with restrictions. And we've got the weather that's doing all sorts of things at the moment. We go from really, really hot to really, really cold. So last Sunday, I did a show with Bunny, and it was probably the hottest day on record, I think. And you could tell because we had a lot of kids who were very hot; we had me, very hot. Bunny was very hot and cross. He was a bit of a 'hot cross bun,' really he was. It wasn't a great sort of temperature to do shows in. So I have no idea how people do shows in hot countries. I'm guessing they have air con don't they.
[00:02:26.160] - Taylor
Yeah, I don't think it's as humid. I think the UK, when we have heat it's very, very humid compared to, you know, hot countries.
[00:02:33.090] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:02:33.090] - Taylor
You know, they're acclimatised to it.
[00:02:34.740] - Gordon
Yeah. So anyway, that was my very long winded way of saying welcome and we're back. And our aim is to do one a week, as we have been doing, from now on without, you know, barring any issues with shows and illness. And we may even possibly, yet to be confirmed. We may have a special guest next week.
[00:02:58.380] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:02:59.190] - Gordon
We will let you know. Well, you'll know next week when you watch the show, you'll see if we've got a guest. So Taylor, anything important that's happened during the week before we get to the topics?
[00:03:12.960] - Taylor
Not really apart from just I'm feeling a lot better.
[00:03:15.570] - Gordon
Good.
[00:03:16.320] - Taylor
Back to kind of normality.
[00:03:17.910] - Gordon
Yeah. Because you're the same as me. When you get ill, you just don't feel like doing anything. It's just, you lose all your energy, your drive and enthusiasm and everything, and it just sort of like, "uuughh," you just want to get over it. Which I think is possibly the best way of doing it, you know, getting over it and then letting your body deal with whatever the problem is and then getting back up as quickly as possible.
[00:03:41.790] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:03:42.480] - Gordon
But he's looking good isn't he? Yeah, he's looking good. He's looking better now. So topic of the week, what would you like to start with?
[00:03:50.130] - Taylor
So the kind of past couple of weeks while I've been kind of relaxing, I've been working on a kind of side project just kind of to pass the time really, and just keep my brain kind of ticking over. And I've been working on implementing a 'user gamification system,' where users can get awards, they can enter and vote and kind of just building up an app-like website that is just full of really nice features and integrations.
[00:04:28.950] - Gordon
OK, so this is a secret project at the moment?
[00:04:33.690] - Taylor
Yeah, at the moment it's not finished so...
[00:04:36.030] - Gordon
So is there anything that you have sort of been challenged with on this project? Because there's normally some sort of problem or issue that you need to find a solution for.
[00:04:46.710] - Taylor
Um so...
[00:04:47.850] - Gordon
Sorry to interrupt. I remember you said there was an issue that you actually ended up finding out there was a bug.
[00:04:54.610] - Taylor
Yeah, so this was a known bug with the builder that I use. And the support team confirmed it. But I spent three days probably trying to figure out what the issue was. I actually managed to end up come up with a workaround solution until it kind of gets fixed. And that was implementing the user profile kind of pages, and the issue was if the user was a subscriber, so they were just a user of the website and, or they didn't have any posts, so if you are an author, for example, on the website and you didn't have any posts that you'd created, your user profile didn't show up correctly, or the text didn't render correctly. So what it would do is it would display the first user in the website, normally with the user ID of 1, rather than displaying the actual user that you had visited, user profile page you'd visited. And I was very, very stumped in terms of why this wasn't working. I ended up finding a solution which...
[00:06:02.430] - Gordon
Keep going, I'm going to sneeze. Apologies, it's hay fever season, and even though I've taken lots of hay fever tablets and try and build up my immunisation against hay fever, I still get it. And you get it now as well. So I apologise. Sorry, you carry on.
[00:06:21.210] - Taylor
But yeah, so I managed to find a solution for that which worked really well. And then the second or kind of couple of other things were implementing an award system. So this was kind of when people voted, for example, or entered the challenge, they could win awards. And this is just a fun little way for people to be able to interact, to kind of have a reason to keep entering, to kind of just, you know, against their friends as well, you know, you can compare your, um your kind of, yeah compare your awards.
[00:06:54.910] - Gordon
Gamification is a really well thought out way of getting more engagement with your website. If you've got a site that you think maybe gamification would work for, then I highly recommend you look into it. For example, an e-commerce site, you could give people...
[00:07:18.070] - Taylor
Loyalty points.
[00:07:18.910] - Gordon
Loyal... Well, yeah, you could give them awards for being, you know, the person who spends the most or who buys the most number products or who buys special, unique products, you know, gamify it in a way that people will want to take action on your site and engage with it, so that and only so that, they can gain this award. I mean, your rewards are basically just digital pictures that get assigned to people's accounts, right?
[00:07:52.180] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:07:52.180] - Gordon
So there's no actual physical payment. There's no prize. It's virtual award.
[00:08:00.790] - Taylor
Yeah. But it's a nice way, because people can see other friends' profiles, it's a nice way for you to be able to compare or compete with your friends, which is kind of what drives the interaction.
[00:08:13.930] - Gordon
Yes, most definitely. Yeah, definitely. Um, so yeah, it's harder to do on a service based website, like my magic website, for example. Because you're getting sort of one off customers coming and buying a show.
[00:08:32.560] - Taylor
If it's a community based website or something that there's a large audience that's public, then it works really well.
[00:08:39.490] - Gordon
Yeah. I'm surprised Facebook haven't done anything really, that's a possibility for them. I don't know why they didn't. Maybe they did in the beginning.
[00:08:49.400] - Taylor
Didn't work. People didn't, weren't really interested because...
[00:08:51.340] - Gordon
Maybe not.
[00:08:51.340] - Taylor
It's more a social media than a...
[00:08:52.660] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:08:53.130] - Taylor
A chat, like a game or anything but yeah.
[00:08:56.350] - Gordon
So that's very interesting. So you actually found a bug in the Oxygen builder?
[00:09:02.020] - Taylor
I found a bug that was already reported to them.
[00:09:05.080] - Gordon
OK.
[00:09:05.500] - Taylor
But I didn't know about.
[00:09:06.430] - Gordon
And is there a way to find out if these bugs are known? So that you, next time you get to this situation and you think, you assume it must be you and not them, can you go somewhere and look to see if it's a known bug?
[00:09:20.950] - Taylor
There's a GitHub which has people that have tracked issues for it. So I could have searched there, I just didn't think about that.
[00:09:27.880] - Gordon
There you go. New experience for you. New knowledge.
[00:09:30.580] - Taylor
I knew it was there, I just didn't think to look there.
[00:09:33.940] - Gordon
Well, you never assume it's you do you?
[00:09:35.560] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:09:36.160] - Gordon
Sorry. You never assume it's the third party. You always assume there's something you've done wrong.
[00:09:40.190] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:09:40.570] - Gordon
Yeah. Very interesting.
[00:09:43.120] - Taylor
Yeah. That was...
[00:09:43.690] - Gordon
Anything else you want to say?
[00:09:44.980] - Taylor
I was looking into working with "Ajax," which is a way of submitting data and requesting data without the website reloading. So a lot of applications will use what's called a 'single page application,' which basically means that all of the, every time you go between a page, you're not re-loading the page, you're just rendering the page again. So for example, if you have any apps, most of them will use a single page application and that's a way of requesting the page via JavaScript and not actually reloading the full page. This allows you to do nice things, like when you submit a form, for example, instead of you submit it then the page reloads, you submit it and it just saves into the database without kind of having to reload, which is a nicer experience for users.
[00:10:41.230] - Gordon
Yeah, it is. It's more real time isn't it, which people expect when they use applications on their computer.
[00:10:48.640] - Taylor
Exactly.
[00:10:48.640] - Gordon
And it's bringing the web into that sort of thought process.
[00:10:53.260] - Taylor
Yeah. So it's trying to work with that. And yeah, there's a lot to go on, a lot going on that I need to work out but yeah, that's what I'm working on next.
[00:11:01.480] - Gordon
Great. Excellent. Very interesting. So you'll be very proud of me.
[00:11:06.290] - Taylor
Yeah?
[00:11:06.770] - Gordon
Because I've been working on a magician's website. This is a new website for this magician, and they came to me and asked me as part of Drayson Design if I would build the site for them. And they had this specific Art Deco branding that they wanted me to use, which is great. It's really nice when a customer has a good idea of what it is they're looking for, the sort of style they're looking for. And even better, this particular customer has brand guidelines.
[00:11:42.780] - Taylor
OK.
[00:11:43.160] - Gordon
So they have a document showing their logo, how it can be used, the colours that they use for their branding, which again, is just great for me. This person has come from a different background, rather than being a magician all their life, a professional magician, they've done other things. So they realise that this sort of branding process is quite important.
[00:12:05.530] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:12:05.750] - Gordon
And that's what they've done. However, you'll be very proud of me, because I've been building it in Oxygen and I've managed to do, there's seven pages I think it is in total, and I'm currently on about four, and I've done most of those pages, not all of them, but most of those pages without asking Taylor to help me. So for those who don't know what I'm talking about, I'm using Oxygen Builder, which is Taylor's favourite builder for WordPress now, and he challenged me to build my Pip Kennedy website in Oxygen, which was the first site I ever used. And I had a lot of help from that, from Taylor for that, because there were lots of things I just could not understand. So this is the second site that I've built, or attempted to build with Oxygen, and it went a lot smoother. And that's down to learning how to use it and understanding it more. There were still a few little bits that I was struggling with, and it's nice to be able to ask Taylor, you know how he does it. How many sites have you built with Oxygen now?
[00:13:19.820] - Taylor
I'd have to look at my licences and the activations, but probably in the region of about 50 installed.
[00:13:28.280] - Gordon
50.
[00:13:28.850] - Taylor
Maybe not, maybe not that many.
[00:13:29.930] - Gordon
OK.
[00:13:30.650] - Taylor
Maybe 30. But quite, I've got quite a lot of installs with it.
[00:13:34.100] - Gordon
So he knows what he's doing now. And I'm on my second site. And I am learning which sites I want to use this builder for, and which sites would be better for other builders.
[00:13:47.570] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:13:47.980] - Gordon
And that mainly comes down to the customer. So the last site I built, for example, was for a customer who wanted to be able to make changes, big changes to their website, add new pages, that sort of thing. And so I went the route of "Elemental" with that mainly on the requirement of the customer, the customer said they wanted to use Elemental. So that's why I used it. And that was my first and only site with Elemental, but because I've got some background knowledge in builders and I know WordPress pretty much inside out, it wasn't that difficult for me to build it. But that was a specific requirement based on the customer and what they needed, which is that they wanted to be able to edit it themselves. So this customer hasn't specified that, the customer is going to be needing to add their own blog posts, but that's going to be nice and easy because we can just get them to use the built in 'Gutenberg' and then we can take that into the Oxygen builder and style it properly, so they don't have to worry about that. They can just create their content in a very standard and straightforward WYSIWYG editor, basically. But yes, it's really good. It's something that's taken quite a long time to do, this site. And as always, which I find is always the reason, the delay was because of waiting for content. And it's very difficult to sort of style and build the look of a website without any content to put in it. And so I was waiting for a while to get some text; I was waiting for a bit longer to get some images. And, you know, by that, by the time it all gets to you, it's sort of like the customer's spent, you know, maybe two months, as it was in this case, getting together all the content. They then deliver it to you and it's like, "right so when's the site going to be ready to go?" It's like, "well, you took two months to get that. I've now got to do my bit, which is going to take, you know, probably a month or so in my case." So they're just going to have to be patient, but it's managing customers' expectations, because he's now given me all of the content, he's now waiting to see it and get it live. And so, you know, every day that goes by is a day he's getting more excited about the project and wanting to put it live. So I have to manage those expectations and make sure that he understands what is involved, right from the outset in fact, at the time of taking on the client. Just make them aware of what's involved and what stages we have to go through to get to the point when we can put the site live. And I think it's going to be a really good site. You've seen it, what do you think?
[00:16:51.210] - Taylor
Yeah, I really like the design. It's different and it's very clean, I think.
[00:16:55.290] - Gordon
Yeah. And it is very different. It's very different from magicians. And he's got a hook which, he's got a gimmick, if you like, which sort of makes him stand out from other magicians.
[00:17:07.470] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:17:08.280] - Gordon
It's not up and running yet so I can't mention it, and I will check with my customer before I promote it, just in case anybody, in case he has a reason not to let you know about it. But once it's finished and if he gives me the permission, I'll let you know what it is and you can go and have a look.
[00:17:26.760] - Taylor
Yeah, I have, just mentioning about kind of managing expectations, I have a clause in my kind of proposal slash contract that says, you know, "it will be this long after I receive all of the content." So, you know, if they give it to me in drabs and I start it, you know, it can still be a month from when they give it to, all the content, not just from when you first start giving me content, from when you finish giving me content.
[00:17:54.010] - Gordon
Yeah.
[00:17:54.300] - Taylor
And that kind of manages expectations in terms of, you know, how quickly I can go and...
[00:18:00.600] - Gordon
How long the whole thing's going to take.
[00:18:02.340] - Taylor
Yeah.
[00:18:02.760] - Gordon
It's very sensible.
[00:18:04.740] - Taylor
So, yeah.
[00:18:05.460] - Gordon
Thank you. Yeah.
[00:18:06.630] - Taylor
That's everything from me then.
[00:18:07.830] - Gordon
That's everything from me. So thank you very much for watching, we hope you enjoyed it. We hope you'll be back again. As always, we can be found on YouTube and on Facebook; links are on the screen.
[00:18:22.440] - Taylor
You can also go to our website: thisweekwith.co.uk, where you can see all of our past episodes and also search for them.
[00:18:29.520] - Gordon
Yes, the transcripts we I think we mentioned last week are now completely done for Season 2 and we're now going back into Season 1. So those transcripts and subtitles are being done. We have someone who is actually working extremely hard on this, and we thank them once again. I know it's a very long and tedious job, but we do really appreciate it. And they're also managing to keep up with all the latest episodes as well so...
[00:19:03.330] - Taylor
That's good.
[00:19:03.750] - Gordon
For those of you who, because of the way YouTube works, we have to cut the header out and that takes about a day and then we have to import it into our software, which again takes a little bit of time. And then the person who's doing it has to then find time to do it. So we've been averaging about sort of Tuesdays and Wednesdays, that sort of time to get the transcripts and the subtitles live for an episode. So it's before the next episode, but not immediately after the episode is finished because it's done by hand. So thank you once again, you know who you are. And that's it from us. We'll see you next week. My name's Gordon, I'm from Drayson Design.
[00:19:50.250] - Taylor
And I'm Taylor from The Creative Tinker.
[00:19:53.010] - Gordon
Goodbye.
[00:19:53.490] - Taylor
Bye.
