Blog

Before I jump in and tell you about my trip to the HOW Conference it seems reasonable to introduce myself. My name is Patrick McNeil and I am relatively new to the SimpleFlame team. I do however have a long history in web design and development; I am probably most well known for my blog Design Meltdown and my books The Web Designer’s Idea Book(s). At SimpleFlame I play a fun role, I get to help our integration team with the building of client sites and I get to drive new initiatives like our forthcoming Kiyuco.

This year I was fortunate enough to get to speak at the HOW Conference about web design trends and how to use them. It is a topic I am extremely passionate about and it was a lot of fun. One of the exciting things to see come out as a part of being at this conference surrounded by creative’s was seeing how Business Catalyst fills a need that is very evident to this particular audience. I had numerous conversations with designers looking to embrace the web and it was amazing how it always came back around to how BC could solve a lot of problems for them.

As a person rooted in technology it isn’t hard to imagine setting up a combination of things like Wordpress, Magento and Mail Chimp to create a full online business. I have become adjusted to the need to upgrade and maintain such sites. But when you consider all that BC does for you, and you combine that with the technical limitations designers face, BC becomes a powerful player. After attending HOW and hearing peoples stories and frustrations with embracing the web I have a much better appreciation of the power BC holds for such people.

I actually think Adobe missed a huge potential audience by not working BC into the HOW Conference. Sure they were there pushing CS5, but this isn’t exactly news to those attending. It would take some careful strategy to break through to the designers and speak their language, but I think Adobe would find a receptive audience.

I had a great time at HOW and I hope to be invited back next year. I was fortunate enough to meet a lot of great people and I look forward to working with creatives more in terms of helping them embrace technology and work in a field driven by it.

Trevor Clark, a great client and friend of our SimpleFlame team, happened to be passing by St. Louis on his way out west. In 2009, we had the pleasure to collaborate and assist with the creation of his Trevor Clark Photography brand. We are all fans of his work and always look forward to learning about his latest adventures throughout the U.S. As he stopped by our offices in St. Louis, we took some time to kick-back and talk shop for new things to come in 2010.

Besides some creative brainstorming and technological babble, we enjoyed some beers at one of our favorite local burger joints. Catching up and trading stories with the latest and greatest became way more fun than our standard project conversations. This goes to show that relationship-building, mutual respect, and understanding of one another can go a long way in a professional setting. As much as we wanted to keep it all going, we couldn't hold Trevor and "El Guapo" (the awesome travel photo studio he calls home) from continuing the journey.

We always tell our clients that we truly vest ourselves in their business and brand. Trevor Clark is no exception and we wanted to share our experience with everyone.

As we are fast approaching the holiday break, we genuinely hope you have a wonderful time with friends and family. Don't forget to relax, refresh and get ready for a busy 2010. We here at SimpleFlame are doing the same and will have reduced Business Catalyst Support hours over the next week as we give our team a well deserved break.

Our office will be closed and no support will be provided on the following days:

• Thursday, December 24, 2009
• Friday, December 25, 2009
• Friday, January 1, 2010

Have a very merry holiday break!

On Friday, we we had our company Christmas party here at SimpleFlame. The food was awesome, drinks were flowing and we had a blast. However, all week long some of our team members were asking why the invitations said "Entertainment will be...worth it!". Here are some of the videos taken for your viewing pleasure. Make sure to turn your sound up...you're gonna need it :)

Ever since late last night, almost every communication channel we have here at SimpleFlame has been buzzing about the news of Adobe's buyout of Business Catalyst / GoodBarry. It seems as if there are mixed emotions about how the buy-out affects everyone involved, especially existing partners. The biggest question of the day is "So Jason… what do you think about the news?" Although I've had the opportunity to speak to some of you, I figured it would be best to dust off the old blog and communicate my thoughts.

First off, I'm really proud of the team at Business Catalyst. These guys (and gals) have been working their tails off on a system that has caught the attention of the most influential player in the web design space. After meeting the Business Catalyst team in San Francisco back in May, I have never felt more confident that these guys are fully committed to delivering the best possible platform to their partners. Now, with Adobe's backing, I am excited to see how the platform might evolve.

Business Catalyst Partners

What an incredible opportunity it is to be a Business Catalyst Partner. Basically, here is what happened overnight:

• The solution you sell to your clients is now backed by Adobe, which everyone knows. If they don't know the name, just tell people it’s the company that invented PDF files. You just gained an enormous amount of credibility and it didn't cost you a dime. You can now say to your clients/prospects "We are a Certified Adobe Business Catalyst Partner". Of course, you can only use the word "Certified" if you have completed the Designer Success Program. If you've been putting that off, now is the perfect time to sign up.
• For some of you, your biggest competitor is going away. The GoodBarry brand will expire on October 1, 2009 and so will the comments from your tech savvy prospects that recognize you as a GoodBarry look-a-like. Now they can only get the system from you. That's good stuff!
• All of the Adobe tools we already use to build websites will most likely have direct integration into Business Catalyst. Yeah, there’s Triangle integration already, but what about all of Adobe's products? I can imagine there will be a direct publish utility and CMS integration with Flash, advanced Flex integration, etc. The opportunities are quite limitless. Now, this is only a prediction on my part (which is pretty easy to make) but think about how this might change your productivity? Personally, I am curious how it will play out.

Most partners that I have spoken to in the last 24 hours are just trying to process the news. How does this affect my business? Will the commission structure change? Is Adobe going to dump all of us and pull off a GoodBarry on steroids? Will Adobe give all of the existing partners a full copy of CS5 (is that even out yet?) just for the fun of it? OK, nobody asked that last question but you have to admit that would be pretty cool, right?

If anyone was affected by the news it was us. How do you go from "GoodBarry Experts" to "Business Catalyst Experts" overnight? It's called a lot of coffee, a lot of jokes and an incredible team of people getting it done. Trying to squeeze "Business Catalyst Experts" in our logo without the need for a magnifying glass was the biggest challenge of all (right Cesar?). We're still not finished, but we are well on our way.

Here is my advice... take a deep breath. Adobe develops software that EMPOWERS web professionals, and that’s a great thing. I mean, if they want to hire an army of web designers and build every site on the planet, I guess they could try... but something tells me that their intention is not to take business from their core audience, but to empower it. I suppose anything could happen, but when Adobe purchased Business Catalyst, they also purchased the partner network... which is the bread and butter of their revenue model.

GoodBarry Website Owners

For those GoodBarry website owners that have an upgraded website (meaning you are currently paying for it) please visit the FAQ's on GoodBarry.com to see how this will affect you immediately. However, to sum it up, here is what you will experience as of October 1.

• Instead of seeing the GoodBarry logo in the upper left hand corner of your admin panel, it will be Business Catalyst
• Instead of your billing statement saying GoodBarry it will say Business Catalyst

For those of you who have not upgraded your GoodBarry website and plan to after November 1, you must have a Certified Business Catalyst Partner/Reseller handle the upgrade. Just in case you were wondering, SimpleFlame is a Certified Partner and can help you with your site upgrade (and support you too).

The best piece of advice I can offer up to a GoodBarry website owner is to align yourself with a Certified Business Catalyst Partner. Since GoodBarry is going away and Business Catalyst will be targeting web professionals only, I suspect that over time direct support will be pushed off to the Business Catalyst partner network. Aligning yourself now with an active partner will be critical so you can focus on your business and not on technology. Here at Simpleflame, we have been providing GoodBarry Support to users all over the world by email, phone and screencasts for quite some time. We answer all of the "how-to" questions for our clients at a small additional fee. (see SimpleFlame’s hosting plans with support)

Final Thoughts

If you're a Business Catalyst Partner, feel empowered to use Adobe's credibility in your sales pitch. Go get after it and use the news to your advantage. Stop reading the news on TechCrunch.com and start making calls.

If you're a GoodBarry website owner, start interviewing Certified Business Catalyst Partners and align yourself with a partner that has a proven track record in the system and can adequately handle your support needs. If you want to interview us, just let us know.

If you're currently building your website on GoodBarry and won't launch until after November 1, we'll happily upgrade your site for you when you're ready.

If you have any more questions that need answers, feel free to post them as comments. We’ll do our best to answer them or offer our perspective.

GoodBarry added a new Affiliate Report that allows you to download a spreadsheet of all affiliates and their respective sales to facilitate easy commission payments or analysis. To learn more go to eCommerce->Affiliate Programs and select 'Reports and Performance'.

We recently had the priviledge to work directly with the GoodBarry team to program a new payment gateway for GoodBarry.  Mollie is now available as a option for GoodBarry users in The Netherlands.  It offers a non-seamless option much like that of Paypal Payments Standard, however with one catch.  With Mollie, the purchaser must choose a valid bank before being redirected to the appropriate bank website to complete the payment transaction.  Naturally, all payment information is tracked fully by GoodBarry and the participating bank so as a business owner you can be sure that all of your order information is in one central location.  This represents, yet another step to provide international payment options for GoodBarry's ever growing customer base. For more information about Mollie and how to setup a bank list for proper integration, checkout the wiki article.

GoodBarry also added EBS in India and Banco Popular in Puerto Rico in this same release. For more information, see the system announcement on GoodBarry's website.

Now you can tag products and display them in various parts of your website with ease. We've developed a new module that allows you to display any number of products for a given tag on your website. We've also added an alternate layout so featured products can be displayed differently to other products on your website. To learn more go to eCommerce->Products and choose a Product. From the action box simply click to tag your products. Then go to a web page and use the Module Manager to simply drop on your page.

This is great news for all GoodBarry fans in Europe. We've been very fortunate to work with a few European based companies and have a ton of friends over there that must be jumping for joy. I can remember the days before the North Ameirican Data Center launched and although GoodBarry is awesome, load time was just a wee bit slow. It's great to see the strides GoodBarry has taken in such a short period of time to respond to the direct needs of their world wide audience. Nice work gents! Now we just need to release the ability to move websites from one data center to the next. Chalk that up to another wishlist item.

If you are interested, here is the full write up at GoodBarry.