popular help desks
HelpSpot is now #3 on the del.icio.us popular helpdesk tag list. Only 2 large open source help desks are ahead of it. Thanks all!
HelpSpot is now #3 on the del.icio.us popular helpdesk tag list. Only 2 large open source help desks are ahead of it. Thanks all!
I'm upgrading some of the behind the scenes systems at UserScape to support customer logins, hosted trials, update mailing lists and a few other goodies. Since I have about 4 minutes to actually spend on all this I've been looking around for a good PHP framework to help me out with the heavy lifting.
In the past I've had very very bad experiences with frameworks, finding them just about useless. One thing I think Rails really got right is that it was pulled from a real product. This gave it a huge leg up where things are just naturally in the right place. It's very subtle, but it's obviously hard to replicate as most frameworks that start as dude's just thinking about the 'best' way to do it stink.
That's why I made sure to note the URL with Rick Ellis (pMachine guy) released http://www.codeigniter.com/ a while back. Code Igniter was pulled from his Expression Engine product and in my first day with it I'm extremely impressed.
It's super quick to get started, even faster than Rails if you ask me. It's actually making PHP fun again! I even had an evil thought pass through my mind of rebuilding HelpSpot on top of it. Of course that's insane, but it's just that good.
The other HUGE plus is that it's PHP4 compatible. I don't use PHP 4 in any production work, but HelpSpot is 4 compatible and most of the PHP install base is 4 so this should be a big plus in the frameworks uptake.
It's not perfect, it could use a few more docs in some places and I'd like to see a bit better way to handle global header/footer type includes but overall it's a very nice package which I'm looking forward to working more with over the next few months.
The Business of Software forums hosted over on www.joelonsoftware.com have been a great resource for me. I've participated there for about 2 years and I've learned a bunch from the group of ISV's who participate on that forum. I also feel I've added a good deal to the quality of the discussion there and with it's rise as a top resource for small ISV's. That's why I feel betrayed by the moderators of BOS today.
Over the past few months the quality of BOS has gone down as ISV spammers have taken to posting links for their half finished products. These links are almost always by people who don't otherwise participate and are pretty transparent attempts to simply drive traffic to their sites.
I wondered if I was the only one feeling this way, so I posted a thread (cached version) asking for these spam posts to stop so that the forum could return to it's previous quality discussion without all the spam noise. I wasn't ranting, but in fact offered several suggestions including moving the "review" posts to a new forum on BOS or to an existing link site which joelonsoftware is affiliated with. An energetic discussion ensued where most people agreed with my position. Even Eric Sink a forum moderator and ISV guru agreed.
So I was surprised this morning when the thread, which had 22 posts on saturday still had 22 today. I remembered that the BOS forums will hide moderated posts from all but those who originally posted so I headed over to proxify to check the site from a remote server. I was extremely saddened to find that it had in fact been removed. You can see the image below, the post should be between 'Formal Documention Process Document Templates' and (ironically) 'uISV Needs Review of Revamped Site'.
*[This image was lost to time in my blog transition]*
It appears that the spammers have more rights on the BOS forums than someone who has actively participate for several years and who was simply posting a comment to improve the experience.
I'm not sure where to go from here. BOS feels like a part of my business having been such an important part of my learning process. Perhaps it's time to move on or start a new forum where the spammers don't have more rights than the true participants.
Update: Wow, looks like the stars must be aligned. Dharmesh comments below that he's started a new forum which is an alternative to BOS. Especially attractive is that he'll be approving all posters. While I normally don't like that feature in general, I think in this particular case it's exactly the type of thing I'm looking for. A slightly more exclusive forum where everyone knows everyone. If you're interested you can check it out here: http://onstartups.com/
Update 2: Thread is live again... Thanks Bob/Eric. I think it's the right thing. As I've been saying all along I just want BOS to be the best it can be. I truly am too lazy to find someplace else to congregate if I can help it :-)
Rudolf has released a special edition of DBxtra for FogBugz. What a fantastic idea. He's got a product that does everything needed and with just a touch of customization is able to reach an entire new market. Nice job Rudolf! If you're in the market for customized FogBugz reporting you should check it out.
Rudolf also has a pretty snazzy help desk and product forums ;-)
There's been a spate of posting to the JOS forums lately with people wanting feedback on their websites. I'm sorry to say that almost all of them are terrible. My cheapskate post pretty much covers my thoughts.
I've been feeling a bit negative on the community as a whole lately actually. I think people are starting to distort the MicroISV idea. It started as an idea that one person or a small group could make big products (support your family big at least) by using new tools and leveraging the internet. Now some people think it means produce junk with out much work and make a bunch of money. I mean if you're putting no thought into your website how serious can you be about your web based business?
So I was happy to see a post tonight by Jason Sankey about his new product, Pulse. I encourage you to go checkout his site. If you're going to send around a link for thoughts your site should look at least this good before you bother or you're just wasting peoples time.
Great job Jason, good luck!
This is just a quick shout out to Giorgio and his crew over at ValiantHost. ValiantHost offers the only "official" HelpSpot full service hosting where they take care of the installation, upgrades, etc. As HelpSpot sales have increased he's finally getting more hosting customers and prospects from HelpSpot. Over the past few days we've been working a lot together and he just does a great job.
If you need hosting you should definitely check ValiantHost out and of course if you need HelpSpot (or FogBugz) hosting he's a must to check out.
Obviously the guys over at 37 signals know what they're doing, but I can't help but think they've gotten a little off track lately. I mean I'm all for making a buck but perhaps they're taking it a bit too far?
Today they released a new job board service for designers. You can find the details here:
So as far as I can tell they now have this wide variety of products:
Perhaps this is the first web 2.0 conglomerate?
Well I wasn't going to talk about this here yet, but it appears to be a better idea than even I thought! Today I launched a new site called www.HelpDeskTalk.com, a forum for the help desk community.
This came about because of my own personal need to keep track of trends in the help desk world. In most semi-technical industries this can pretty easily be done by tracking blogs and forums. Over the past year I've found that this isn't really the case for the help desk community. There are some good blogs out there, but not as many as you might think. As for forums, well there's basically none.
A few of the of the help desk organizations have them but they're unused. I believe because most are behind 2 layers of authorization. First a general membership login, then a forum system login. Beyond those it's mostly limited to sub-forums of larger IT boards where the help desk topics are so buried as to be impossible to find.
So HelpDeskTalk was born. While I know there's a need I've been surprised by the response I've gotten in just the few emails I sent around. In fact it's already gotten several inbound links. One from Rob in the Salt Lake City HDI chapter and another from on of my favorite help desk bloggers, Mike McBride.
I'm also noting with everyone that this is a community effort and not a money making one. There's no ads and I hope to keep it that way. I don't see why I wouldn't unless it gets popular enough to where it's actually costing significant money to run, though even then I'd be inclined to just eat the cost or perhaps share with another organization.
The site is also a nice example of how darn flexible the HelpSpot portal templates are. It literally took about 5 CSS changes and a few images to set it up.
I know a lot of you may not be in the target audience for this type of site, but as always I'd love to hear your feedback if you have ideas for improvement. Things are light over there right now since I just flipped the switch so I'd also encourage you to add a post if you have a relevant topic.
Link love for the new site is also greatly appreciated ;-)
As an entrepreneur it's really nice to get these emails:
"Hello -
I just wanted to say how much I appreciate your product! While our
company (http://www.elucid8hosting.com)
may be a small web hosting company, our customers support needs are
anything but small. HelpSpot has turned out to be an ideal solution for
providing technical support. Your product has enabled our small team to
streamline our support process, to more effectively communicate, and
ultimately to resolve issues in a more timely and professional manner.
Thank you! (And you can quote me on that!)
Greg"
Great piece by Rick on choosing a name for your business. I think I hit most of these. Wish I had this article before I started though.