The state of play

These “catch-up” posts have become too frequent and regular posts too infrequent for my liking. I’m in a transitional period at the moment after which I’ll re-evaluate this website’s content and direction. I’ve not decided yet, but I may retire this blog, or “reboot” it.

Obviously, I’ve not posted here in a while. That’s not because I’ve been idle - quite the opposite. The energy that I would have invested in writing this blog has been spent on the simpleContact support forum. There are refinements to be made (search is a particularly glaring omission) but there is now a substantial amount of content there.

Forums have an in-built Catch-22. As an administrator, you want people to use a forum. You want it to become the front-line of your support offering. You want to be able to receive and answer questions in one place, so common questions can be answered quickly without duplication of effort.

The problem is that unless people can see that other people have posted, they won’t post themselves. It takes time and dedication to build a forum to the point where enough dialogues have occurred that newcomers feel inclined to post.

I’m happy that the forums have now reached that point of sustainability and value.

In the months since I released simpleContact Pro 2.0 I have used this period to provide support. As 37signals put it in their post why it’s wise to launch softly:

Soft launching lets you tweak and revise. You get the word out there and you gauge interest. You know what works and what doesn’t. Plus, you get to make mistakes while you’re still in the shadows. Messing up in front of a smaller crowd means you’ll be better off when the bright lights eventually do shine upon you.

You can find any bugs in the initial release. Answer early-adopter questions. Discover where the immediate friction is between what the application can do and what users need. Sometimes you learn surprising things about your own product and how people use it.

Migration to the new, dedicated website simplecontactform.com is in progress. Support materials have moved. This weekend I plan to move purchase and delivery mechanisms to their permanent home. After that, I start building web pages based on the new design. I hope to have the new website live in a month or two.