The Focus Blog | Focus Lab, LLC

The Sidecar That Never Was

2013-05-17T12:00:57+00:00

Five months ago I made a decision to no longer pursue one of my dreams from a few years ago. The decision stung. It wasn't an easy one to make. But as I write this five months postmortem, I am confident it was the right decision.

tl;dr

In short, after years of dreaming, planning and coding, I realized that pulling off a CMS add-on business — at the quality I wanted — would severely hurt Focus Lab. It would be profitable, no doubt. But it would also take away from our client services which we're quite passionate about. That was all I needed to realize to justify no longer pursuing the dream.

The Beginning

I wrote my first ExpressionEngine add-on about four years ago. Initially I was simply solving problems I came across in client projects. It didn't take long for me to really enjoy this aspect of EE development.

To get better faster I started seeking out people in the EE forums who had problems of their own to solve. I would see if an add-on could be written to solve the problem and then I would go to work. If it was a simple enough solution, I would just upload the add-on to the forums and confirm that it's what they needed. I get a lot of joy out of helping people. This was the catalyst to my interest in starting an EE add-on shop someday.

At the time, there were only a handful of people or teams actively creating and distributing EE add-ons. The market was fairly small and the competition even smaller. Focus Lab was comprised of just Bill and myself, both still working full-time jobs. I saw add-on development as a natural and obvious way to generate revenue for the company. So I continued on helping people, writing about add-on development and learning everything I could about it.

Early Planning

Around Fall of 2009 I worked on a short list of add-ons we could start with. I wanted to make this part of my business, so some revenue would need to be involved. The plan was to have some free add-ons and some commercial ones as well. I had a working list of ideas and started writing code.

As I came closer to "1.0" for a few add-ons I knew it was time to plan out the distributing and selling of the software. That's when I turned to the wonderful community for input. I wrote a blog post aimed toward discussion about pricing for these add-ons. I was ecstatic when many of the existing commercial add-on developers chimed in with feedback about their experiences. I sat on the feedback for a few weeks and then wrote about my pricing model intentions.

The Problem

My pricing model had been determined. I was near complete with a number of add-ons. Only the small details remained. I needed to build a website that sold, distributed and supported the software.

Holy crap. That's a lot of work.

Now, the young whippersnappers in the EE world are probably thinking, "So what. Just use devot:ee."

At the time of these decisions, devot:ee was only an archive of EE add-ons and some articles. The store aspect hadn't been developed. The EE market didn't even have many options for ecommerce. This all pre-dates Carthrob, BrilliantRetail and Store. Solution for selling: roll my own. Not ideal.

Due to the amount of work required to getting that up and running, I decided that the timing simply wasn't right. I had a baby at home and would much rather enjoy time with her than moonlighting to build the support and payment pieces to selling add-ons.

EE's Conversion

Fast forward to May 2010 and devot:ee announces they'll provide the ability for any add-on developer to sell add-ons through the site. That's fantastic news for people like me. But there's a problem.

Just one month prior I quit my day job to officially launch Focus Lab. I had to spend all of my time on things that I knew would generate revenue. In addition, EE was painfully and slowly making the transition from 1.x to 2.x. If we were going to launch an add-on arm I wanted to only feel obligated to support EE 2.x so I felt the time just wasn't right.

I continued to focus on client work with the strategy of letting EE 2.x settle in the community a bit before launching the Focus add-ons.

Reignited

A little over a year later things were smoothing out in the EE marketplace. The EE1 to EE2 upgrade process was less daunting and happening more and more. It seemed like a good time to start thinking about selling add-ons once more. I revisited my earlier add-on list, scrapped a few ideas and added a few more. I had a new working list and started spending spare time on the add-ons. Add-ons included things like a handy developer toolbar for the front and backend, a client-friendly URL redirect manager, a full CRUD Restful API layer for EE and a few others.

At this point Focus had a few more people on the team so I got everyone on board. In order to prevent diluting and segmenting the Focus Lab brand we needed separate branding for the new venture. This would include a website for operation. With that our design team hopped on board and we started planning.

We landed on the name Sidecar. Sidecar, like all other businesses, would be limited by the size and quality of the market it serves. In my early days I intended for this to specifically be the ExpressionEngine market.

However, over time and after consideration, we planned to not only serve EE, but also other markets such as Statamic, Craft etc. Sidecar would be our home for add-ons, training materials, books and more. It would be the sidecar to Focus Lab's client services.

And it still may be. Some day.

Evaluating the Market

There were a few questions I looked at while planning Sidecar's business. The biggest of which was our market and how to sell to it. The most obvious concern was how to support the software and not allow the cost of support to kill us financially.

At this point everyone in the EE world was selling a license for anywhere from $10 to $100 and support just came with the purchase. This seemed unsustainable so my plan was to sell the two separately. The license would cost $X and support would be some type of recurring cost model based on the amount of support a customer needed. Interestingly enough, EllisLab announced that type of model not long after. This supported my view of the unsustainable model.

The goal for Sidecar was to be the best in the market. We wanted the best add-on website. The best brand. The best support structure. The best release testing. The best experience. Simply, the best.

The EE add-on market was much more saturated by this point. There was more competition but it honestly didn't worry me. Rather, it excited me. I knew that with more competition we would shine that much brighter if we really could pull off being the best. I knew we had the team for it, so my confidence was high.

The Numbers

I should have done the numbers sooner. The numbers could have saved me a lot of time and energy. I've had this dream for years though, so I was sold internally on making it happen. Finally, at the end of last year I started looking at the important math.

The numbers are speculative but necessary. Here are some areas I was doing math in:

Pricing potential (what's the highest price a typical purchaser is ready to pay for each add-on; same question about support)
Cost of customer acquisition
Upfront investment (mainly just time)
Cost of support delivery
Cost of continual development and competing

After reviewing everything I realized the opportunity cost was exceptionally higher than the probable revenue from Sidecar. Focus Lab is too small, too young and way too interested in maintaining an exceptional level of quality with client services. Starting this add-on arm was possible, but only at the expense of our current services. That was unacceptable.

After this realization I talked it over with Bill. He agreed on all points so I sent the following email to the whole team in early January this year.

Hey team,

Bill and I have a Sidecar update for the whole team. I'd like for you to read this in full but the short of it is that we're canning the project as a whole. I want you to know why though. Here's the info:

Why create Sidecar?

I've always loved building add-ons for EE. For years I've wanted to get into that market because I like to build software. I've built dozens of EE add-ons that help people get things done and it's a great feeling. I always wanted to sell them at some point, but I recognized the big responsibility (and hassle) that support would be. It never made financial (and thus business) sense to start selling the add-ons with support attached.

After a lot of thinking and interviewing of other commercial add-on developers (P&T, Solspace & other long-timers / big dogs in the market) I landed on charging for support. This was a solid direction that we were pleased with so we proceeded with the model and started branding the name Sidecar.

Setting our bar high

The only way I was willing to launch Sidecar was as "the best" in the market. That would mean having the best brand, best website, best documentation, best support experience etc. I have confidence that we could absolutely reach the bar we'd be setting high for ourselves. And our customers would love us for it. However, in order to be the best we would have to invest like we want to be the best.

Being the best at product support would mean setting up a near 24-7 support window. With timezones and our culture's (and industry's) current work habits/trends we would need "around the clock" response times in a sense. (Again, we're talking about being the best here.) Well, there's a problem with that.

Clash with work philosophy

I'm working to build Focus as a company that supports each of our lives. Not something that demands anyone be "on call" for any given reason. Building Sidecar in the way I think customers deserve would require building a team and structure that I'm currently not okay with. We're too small for that right now. Perhaps if we have a few more folks on board this would be easier to swallow. But right now we're basically EST people and I want to honor and respect everyone's schedule today.

The alternative is to acquire an existing add-on developer and his add-ons. I considered this as a possibility and even started drafting an email. That scenario would consist of us making an offer to buy out the add-ons of someone already working in these hours and then have them as a part of the Focus team. At the end of the day, though, that would still require a lot of time and investment with little to no return for a little while. Not a good move for the time being.

Ultimately I think Sidecar would segment our already-small team and slow us down from providing even better service to our branding and dev clients. With Sidecar out of the way we can make 2013 an even more amazing year for these projects and devote the time needed to our big goal of producing our branding book.

Thoughts or questions?

Let me know if you have any feedback on the project. Thanks for the role you played in brainstorming, designing and helping create the vision for Sidecar. You guys rock!

—e

Laid to rest

The add-on arm was officially laid to rest. We archived the project and haven't looked back. Our client services have continued to thrive and we're all the better for it. The Sidecar brand may be revived someday, but likely not as an add-on arm.

Always Learning

2013-05-07T12:20:55+00:00

I've had an idea for a while to do a series of posts describing the mechanics of what we do at Focus Lab. Not a series about our craft or techniques, but instead about what keeps our engine running, how we change the oil and what type of oil we use. This will be the first post in a scattered series entitled “How We Roll.”

To kick things off, I want to talk briefly about nurturing an appreciation and appetite for learning. We believe at our very core that, as individuals and as a team, we're never done learning in life. As such, we strive to create an environment where that's encouraged and demonstrated regularly.

“I've never let my school interfere with my education.”
Mark Twain

The irony in this educational emphasis is that I'm a college dropout. I spent about three semesters in college and decided it wasn't for me at the time. I didn’t like the way I was being taught, and I wanted to learn things I was interested in and at my own pace. I also wanted to have more hours in the week to work so I could get married and afford to pay the bills.

Both of my parents were teachers, as is my older sister and her husband. You get the idea. Coming from a family of teachers made the dropout conversation a bit awkward. "Hey Mom and Dad. I kinda wanna drop out of college."

Oh, and did I mention that I was majoring in Music Education? Yea, I wanted to be a teacher myself. Oh, the irony. But don't worry, Mom. I'm in good company.

I soon learned that I could be a teacher regardless of the context. Some of the world’s best teachers are experienced grandparents, good friends and sometimes even young children. Lessons are all around us; we just need to watch for them and be ready to receive them.

So how do we encourage continual learning at Focus Lab? A few ways.

Books

I mentioned I like to learn on my own terms. This has led us to build a library at Focus Lab. We started last year, and encourage everyone on our team to be aware of what we have so they can read from it whenever they want. We're a mixture of on-site and remote workers so we maintain a spreadsheet of the books accessible to the team. Our current office doesn't really have room for the books so they stay in my home office occupying a few shelves on one of our bookcases. The books range from technical and design fundamentals to biographies to business and personal behavior studies.

Personally, I'm aiming to read about two books per month this year. I'm doing both traditional and audio books. There is so much to learn from others' experiences and thoughts. I really like learning from these books, but more so from discussions with others who've read similar texts.

Online Sources

Books certainly aren't the only source of learning though. We also see a lot of great content published to blogs on the web. I have a seemingly endless backlog of links saved to Instapaper that I read from time to time. Some of our team members also use similar services to bookmark things to read later in an effort to learn something new, challenge a current methodology or spark a new idea.

I have a lot of fun when we, as a team, have the opportunity to collectively read an article or watch a video somewhere and discuss what we've learned. Sometimes we learn about a new process we can try on the project management side. Sometimes we learn about a new way to debug code we write. Sometimes we learn new ways to use certain Photoshop or Illustrator tools. Sometimes we simply learn how other companies solve similar problems and just talk through them. It doesn't matter if we do exactly what an article suggests, the discussion is the most important part of this process as a group. The discussion can be the catalyst to change when necessary.

There is a lot of great content out there on the web. People share wonderful and insightful ideas all the time. Learn from them!

Writing

The final area of learning I want to talk about is somewhat of an inward focus. There is a lot of value in writing down ideas in long form. I try to spend a fair amount of time thinking about the "why" behind things that we do. Without a solid purpose behind our actions, we're simply checking items off a to-do list for the sake of checking off boxes. We want to think about the "why" as often as possible. A great way to do this is to explain something to yourself in writing.

I discovered the value of this while living and breathing code early in my development days. In the early 2000s I was spending quite a bit of time working in Flash. I spent a lot of time on the flashkit.com message board and eventually was even a moderator in a couple of the forums. It was there that I learned the value of explaining a problem when I was stuck in rut.

There was a pattern behind it all. I would hit a wall in Actionscript or something else in Flash and I would crack open my books to see if I could find an answer under my one or two word topic. I would search the web for others solving the same problem, again using the same one or two words. I would similarly search the Flash Kit forums. After no results I'd start a new thread looking for help.

It was through the process of describing the problem and how I got there that I would realize my approach to finding the solution was flawed. A paragraph or two into writing, I often found myself thinking, "Wow. I really shouldn't be doing it this way." or "Did I seriously overwrite that object's value?" I probably didn’t submit a third of the forum threads I started because I solved my own problem through the exercise of writing it out.

Similarly, writing about business processes or ideas helps bring out the "why" of what we're doing. I'm willing to bet that as I write more posts in this series of "How we roll," I'll realize that some of the things we do can be tweaked and improved. There have been times where I wrote a technical article and then realized I could have coded cleaner or better.

Writing encourages self-reflection and learning. We encourage this practice within our team. Throughout this year you'll see various members of our team writing about things we do. Most of the time it's a fairly selfish effort. We want to learn from these reflective opportunities. We also want to learn from the discussions that publishing these reflections ignites.

Wrapping Up

This college dropout loves to learn. Whether from books and podcasts, interviews and self-reflection or even children and grandparents, I appreciate the many sources for learning that exist. I encourage you to seek them out and consume as much information as you can.

To turn the table in my previously mentioned selfish fashion, I want to learn from you now. How do you push yourself to continue learning?

Origins

2013-03-26T14:07:23+00:00

Lately I've been thinking about where Focus is today compared to where we started from. After going through some old emails, I thought it would be fun to share my first contact with Bill along with how we got the Focus ball rolling.

It started when I found his freelancing website ("Ideal Design" was the original name). He was looking for some Flash help here in the Savannah area. I was working three jobs at the time: Retail Jewelry, Worship Leader (church music) and freelance web work ("Designs by Erik", if you can believe that). I contacted Bill in early December of 2006. In then-typical Bill fashion, he replied a couple of weeks later not really knowing how long ago I'd emailed him. Here's a snippet of the conversation. Emails have not been edited.

Bill first email:

Erick,

You may not remember but you emailed me a couple months ago about job openings.
I am currently looking for someone who is very knowledgeable in Flash and other web programming.

Please let me know if you are familiar enough to build complete sites on Flash or just intros etc.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Me:

Bill,

Good to hear from you. I've been working with flash on and off since version 4 and have loved it the whole time. I've done simple animated intros with almost no programming involved to entirely dynamic flash sites (most recently using flashCMS by Flash Loaded). Since I do not use Flash regularly it's not the fastest thing I do. On top of that, I'm extremely busy right now with working fulltime at Helzberg Diamonds in the Oglethorpe Mall and also leading worship at Live Oak Community Church. The only work I can offer with a decent time frame attached right now is html/css/php/etc. Flash would need more time than I have. If your deadlines aren't around the corner then I'd be happy to work with you. But if it's something you need very soon then I'm afraid I may not be the best help. The Christmas season in retail is insane! Let me know what I can do, if anything. Hope to talk with you soon. :)

Bill:

Erik,

I am still interested in having you take on html/css/php jobs if you feel that you have time. I have so many clients that its hard to keep them all happy. I have a ton of print work as well as Web jobs going right now. If you are willing to take on a job or two that would be great. The first job I have is not that bad. Its for a local famous artist who wants have his site redesigned. It will feature about 10-20 of his paintings with brief descriptions and purchase links to his email. A small background song and that’s it. Preferably build with the option for him to sign in a upload new paintings or remove old ones. If you have or know of any php already built for that, and you can just customize to what we need then that’s fine to. I have other jobs as well but I know you are busy. If you are interested let me know. We can meet up and go over stuff. Ultimately I will be looking for a Web designer so I can handle all the Print and Photography. Let me know how this may suit you...

Me:

Bill,

I'd love to help out. I am actually putting the finishing touches on a photo gallery script I've been working on for 2 clients. It's a gallery I plan to use with future clients as well. I took a free photo gallery script I found online and tweaked it a bit. I also have a CMS that I tweaked a lot for my clients. It was also a free news blog that I just turned into a CMS. I'm may end up writing the gallery into the CMS but who knows. Anyways, let me tell you my schedule for the next week so you have something to look at to plan to possibly meet. My schedule is weird because of working in the mall so here we go:

[schedule clipped]

I don't have my schedule for work beyond that but I will have it soon. If you'd like to get together somewhere in there just let me know when and where. If you'd ever care to give me a call you can reach me at [redacted]. Looking forward to meeting with you.

In the conversation above, we scheduled our first meeting of the minds which was at a local Applebee's over dinner. We talked about the project Bill had in mind, but in the process also talked about our respective dreams. I wanted to run a business someday and Bill wanted to build up what he had. We were both working multiple jobs to get by and busting our butts with the hopes that one day our freelancing gigs could be something bigger. Bill and I saw some convergence in these dreams.

By the end of that first meeting, Bill proposed we just tackle this business thing together — as partners. I was quite shocked considering I was just there to get some more freelance work at the time. Regardless, I said I'd consider it and I liked the initial sound of it. Later that week we decided to join forces. The next month, at the beginning of 2007, we started working together.

Structure and Sustainability

In our early days, Bill and I both had other jobs so we simply worked on our client projects whenever we could. We rarely met in person, despite being in the same city. It was difficult with my schedule across three jobs; and his job was literally 45 minutes from any of my jobs. So we just emailed and IMed back and forth.

Bill and I had existing client bases by the time we met so we just worked from that. You may have caught this in his emails above, but his goal was to relinquish the web design duties so he could focus on print design and photography. Oh, how times have changed.

When we met, Bill was charging about $10 per hour more than I was. With our first unified project we bumped our rate up to account for the added value of two heads versus one. Perhaps it was just our own perceived value at the time. While digging through old emails for this post, I found one of our first project invoices where we both did the work for the whole thing. The project started two months after we met and was 100% Flash work. Here's a snippet from the invoice:

We will be creating and modifying a full flash website and introduction to [domain name]. Along with this new flash site will be the availability for users to register for events and pay for them online.

The project spanned a few months and the total cost to the client was next to nothing. It didn’t take long for us to realize that our pricing was far too low to support our goal of doing this full time. We didn’t have a sustainable model and we had to change something.

But how do we make more money? Is it new prices? New services? New clients? These are questions were were starting to ask ourselves regularly. (Later we realized the better question was about profit, not revenue.) Little did we know how important those questions were and how much the answers would shape Focus Lab’s future. In a future article I’ll go into more detail on how we slowly answered those questions.

Design

Most people reading this blog know of Bill Kenney's philosophy of simplicity in design. He has a particular style that follow's writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's quote, "It seems that perfection is reached not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." Suffice it to say Bill didn't start his design career that way.

Here are some screenshots of the amazing work from our early days:

The code behind most of these projects is jumbled up PHP 4.x with a variety of CMSs powering the sites. This was also a time of everyone validating everything so we had the usual suspects of CSS, XML and HTML validation icons in the footers etc.

Process

We didn't really have a defined process back then. Anyone could call or email us any time and we'd respond as fast as freakin' possible in an unfounded fear of possibly losing the client. And of course, by "call us" I mean "call Bill's cell phone." That's the best we could do at the time.

We worked crazy hours (remember, this was my side, side job) and did everything through email. It's amazing we made it longer than a year.

After a site would launch we would do small changes for free constantly. We had no conception of post-launch billable time. Our business was going nowhere fast. To put it into E-Myth author Michael Gerber's words, we were two Technicians simply "paying our dues" early in the game. Thankfully we didn't continue that pattern for too long.

I'm happy to say we learned a lot of lessons along the way. Enough to keep food on the table and slowly begin to build what we have today. As far as I'm concerned we're still very early in the Focus Lab timeline, but we've covered some good ground thus far.

What about your origin?

It's fun to look back at our origin from time to time. It really wasn't that long ago when I was regularly working 14 hours a day across three jobs. I'm glad that period is behind me but I got tremendous value from the things I learned then.

What about you? What did your early days look like?

What’s your job title?

2013-03-19T11:07:54+00:00

What's your job title? You know, that word or phrase on your business card that so succinctly tells the world what you do. Today mine is Technical Director. It's accurate-ish.

In the world of small business, job titles are often laughable. The smaller the company, the more hats each person often wears. To date, Focus Lab has gone the traditional route with titles like "Art Director", "Lead Designer", and "Developer". It works for us so I don't have any issues with it.

Then there are companies like our friends at Paragon, nGen Works and others. Their titles aren't traditional, but still give a snapshot of duties. Titles like "Head Strategic Focus-izer" and "Lead Creative Juicer" are just some examples. Then there are titles like "Chief Code Thrasher" and "Super Glue". These are both fun and informative.

We put a lot of emphasis on client relationships, heavier on the people aspect rather than the project aspect. Therefore, I'm starting to lean toward just letting our team come up with their own titles just to add one more layer of personality to things around here.

So — I'm curious. What's your job title? Do you like it? Did you create it? If you could change it, what would it be?

What is my role?

2013-03-13T15:00:57+00:00

You know that conversation you have with your mom? The one you've had about 20 times because she doesn't truly understand what you do at work. “So... you're a designer?” she asks.

Patiently, knowing where this is going, I answer “No, ma. I'm not a designer.” (Long pause)

“Then what do you do?”

Well, here you go ma (and any other interested parties). I wrote a blog post about what I do as a project manager just for you.

I'm a Scheduler

First and foremost my responsibility is to manage company resources, and the most important one is time. From scheduling meetings to milestones, I plot the course of our projects.

During the definition phase of the each project, we assign a range of hours it will take. From there the next step is to see what approach we'll use: waterfall or agile. The type of project, the requested turnaround time and our team availability dictate which approach we'll implement.

Next, I break the schedule down in phases; this is often based on past projects. As a team, we continually evaluate these processes to find ways to improve them. I don't dictate the flow, but rather work with developer and designer to see what is achievable based on their current workload, or even external factors. Working alongside the team, I create the milestones for the project and present them to the client.

As an example, one branding project might have weekly turnarounds, where another project has a looser timeline and can handle 1.5 or 2 week turnarounds. I then place those milestones so they don't overlap and the team member doesn't get overwhelmed.

As anyone knows, regardless of your plan, things rarely happen as perfectly as it is drawn out on paper. There is always give and take. When a project gets slowed or springs forward, I manage these fluctuations to ensure everyone involved stays on the same page.

I'm the Voice

Not like the TV show; though if I could sing I would beg Adam to select me. Anyhow, I'm the voice of the client, and of the team.

I attend every client/team meeting, taking notes and asking questions to make sure we truly understand what the client means. Armed with this information, while the team is working on the project during the week, I remind them of what the client said. If I see us going off path, I'm quick (a little too quick sometimes) to let the team member know that based on the client's feedback we took a bunny trail.

In the creative process bunny trails are okay. That's the organic flow of imaginative problem solving. Most times those offshoots still produce work that we will include in a deliverable. However, if a project has too many bunny trails, a client will think we didn't listen to their feedback, follow their direction, or care about their input.

I'm also the voice of the team. Our creative designers spend hours at a time on one element, like a UI screen or a letterform. Tweaking the various elements to be just right on their own and as part of a broader scheme requires a depth of attention that I'm just not good at. Having spent a good number of years designing, I can attest that the longer I spent on a design, the deeper focus I achieved. To try and craft an email after spending exhaustive hours inside Illustrator is just hard to do.

So, instead of the designers presenting their proofs, I do it. I craft an email covering the objective of the round, what the client should look for, points to consider, a changelog (where appropriate) and what the next step is. Also, as an “outsider” I can look at the delivery from the client's perspective to see what we're missing, or what I need to communicate.

I'm the Ears

At Focus Lab we strive to avoid the risk and temptation of over-communication. This is something that can happen both internally among the team, and externally with clients. Too many interruptions can be disruptive to the work process. But, we also need to be accessible and quickly take care of questions as they arise.

To do this, I'm the ears for the company. When a client has a question, thought or inspiration, I work with them in communicating it to the team. Sometimes it's an immediate need, other times I hold off and ask on their behalf during one of daily meetings. Either way, if a client has a need I'm there to help facilitate the solution.

So there you go! You probably know more about my daily life than you wanted. Of course my duties here at Focus Lab are a bit more expansive than this might suggest, but it paints a pretty good picture.

Are you project manager/account rep at your gig? Share about your day. I'd love to follow you. Hit me on the tweeters @alicjacolon.

On Goals

2013-01-22T14:00:55+00:00

At the beginning of each year we seem to hear more people talk about goals than any other time. There must be something about the change back to a single-digit on the calendar that encourages people to stand up straight and say "I'm going to do something different this year." Or maybe it's just marketing.

As mentioned in our 2012 Recap, I've never really been a big goal-setter. Sure, I've had goals here and there, but not often. As Focus has grown though, I've seen a much greater need for defining specific goals for the company. They truly help to clearly define the paths we want to follow both during projects, and in the broad view of the company.

Therefore this year, we're being very intentional about goals.

What is a goal?

I won't bore you with my definition of a goal. There are plenty of blog articles out there where the authors try and tell you their set of rules for goal setting. From tiny, daily goals to BHAGs, there are plenty of opinions about what makes up a goal.

In the case of Focus Lab, we’re looking for three big things in our goals: a clear definition of what we’re trying to accomplish, the ability to see how that progresses and a clear point where we can say “It’s done.”

Bad goals

Goals have a bad reputation with some people. I think the issue is that many people have been force-fed goals from managers or bosses in the past. In many cases, goals are treated as ultimatums - “Accomplish this or else...!” The biggest offender of this the bunch is the sales goal. Anyone who has ever sold anything understands this pain.

I worked in retail jewelry for a few years and in that environment, like many organizations, each region, district, store and sales associate had a specific sales goal generated by someone other than the person responsible. While I understand the math behind it, I personally hate that model. This type of goal setting can lead to potentially bad things. It can encourage people to fudge numbers or to unethically persuade customers, just to reach an artificial goal.

We don't like these types of goals.

"Meh, goals."

Some personality types simply don't like goals. They're the "free spirits" in life who don't want an agenda. They simply want life to happen and they want to respond to it. Perhaps there are things these free spirits would like to achieve in life; but they wouldn't dare call these things goals. I have nothing against the free spirits. I have plenty of free spirit friends who will read this and think, "Meh, goals." They tend to be somewhat passive on the topic.

There are others like Peter Bregman, author of "18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done", who argue goals should be dismissed altogether. Bregman suggests replacing goals with "areas of focus." The idea of "areas of focus" is excellent. It's actually something the late Zig Ziglar called the Wheel of Life.

Areas of focus

Each spoke on Zig's wheel is an area of focus that he says each person should consider in life. The point here is that when you're missing a spoke in your wheel (your life) or the spoke is much weaker than the others, it's harder to ride the bike. Ziglar suggests we have seven areas of focus:

Family
Physical
Spiritual
Financial
Career
Intellectual
Social

I love using this list as my areas of focus. It's easy to look at this list and determine where I focus most and where I focus least. From there, I set some goals to apply more focus to each area as I see fit.

Focus Lab goals

At Focus we have three tiers of goals, and only a few in each tier. We have company-wide goals which Bill and I are responsible for creating and aiming for. Then we have team-level goals that are specific to design and development. Lastly we have individual goals that each team member creates for themselves.

Yes, the goals are measured and tracked. But there aren't any dire consequences for missing a goal. We've tried to mitigate the risk of negative side-effects to setting goals like this. We've also written out the purpose behind each of our goals to keep us mindful of why we're doing them.

What about you?

Do you have any goals for 2013? What target are you aiming for that you're willing to share? Higher revenue? Working harder? Working less? Reading more? Exercise? Diet?

Let's hear 'em!

2012 Recap

2012-12-28T15:00:25+00:00

Wow. It's hard to believe that 2012 is already coming to an end. As I write this, Focus Lab has already ceased all client work for the year. We're wrapping up some things internally as we prepare to take about ten days off to enjoy the holidays with friends and family. Like last year, we wanted to recap how 2012 went for the Focus team.

Also like last year, we have to start this off right.

Thank you!

Thank you to all of our friends and family who've been with us for the 2012 journey. We learn so many things from you and value the time we have with each of you. Whether it's in the form of an occasional tweet or a conversation that lasts hours, we love to continue learning and wouldn't be where we are today without you. Thank you!

January — the kickoff

We started off the year with a facelift of our own website. The Focus Lab site relaunched with more portfolio content, team bios and other details that help tell our story. Before this we just had a simple one-page scroller site that also included a blog. For the 2012 iteration, we went deeper, and it truly paid off. We received some fun recognition for the site's design and interactions and also had many sales leads referring to our site as one they loved. With the launch of the new site we held a contest where people hunted for our hidden “monocle man” references. We gave away $300 in Amazon gift cards, and had a lot of fun with it.

This year our site traffic grew quite a bit. The addition of more in-depth content certainly helped. Here are some stats:

Visits were up 345%
Uniques were up 250%
Page views were up 600%
Bounce rate dropped 25%

To-date, the launch of the website was our highest traffic day ever.

This iteration of our website has served us well, but we realized late this year that we have again outgrown our current site. While superior to the last, it doesn't tell our story the way it should. We've been so busy helping our clients tell their stories, that we haven't kept up with ours. So we're in full swing to redesign our site again for this coming January. We're planning yet another contest and look forward to launching it.

Events

We took a break from events this year so we could focus on completing high-quality client work and strengthening our team. We attended a few small local events and I went to a business/leadership event in Orlando, but for the most part, we stayed in the office. This really paid off. Our team is stronger than ever, and we're ready to crank things into high gear for 2013.

Dribbble

Dribbble is an interesting thing. I can share this with pride in our design team, knowing they would never say this if they were writing this article. Our team's collective following on Dribbble has skyrocketed this year. As a result, we have more eyes than ever looking over the shoulder during our creative process, which leads to a great network of peers providing productive, creative feedback. As a team, our Dribbble following has increased more than 10 fold this year.

Our site traffic is largely from Dribbble referrals and the majority of our sales leads find us through our profiles and work on Dribbble. These are some really big numbers and we've seen it impact our business dramatically this year. Dribbble not only allows us to get the real-time feedback on work, but when our clients allow us to showcase this real-time work they get early feedback on their products as well. It's basically like free marketing for many of them. Our buddy Ian Landsman, owner of Userscape, even wrote an article partially about how our team's use of Dribbble helped him build the Snappy user base early and quickly.

Projects

We've had the honor of working with some great people this year. I can't list everything and everyone, but I wanted to share some highlights. As with our portfolio, we typically showcase the design work because it makes for much more visually appealing content. Our dev team did some awesome work too, but who wants to look at code in a blog post!?

A Glimpse into Next Year

Next year will be a defining year for Focus Lab. We were intentionally slow to grow this year, saying "no" to way more project opportunities than we said "yes" to. As mentioned earlier, our focus was on our small team and the quality of work for our clients. Now that we've settled into a process and flow we're really comfortable with, we'll be ramping things up. Next year we'll see more growth and high-quality work. We more than doubled in revenue year-over-year in 2012. We're aiming for a similar goal in 2013. Here are a few things we hope to achieve next year:

New Site

We truly believe our new website (in progress as I write this) will help tell our story in a way we don't come close to today. The site will stay true to our aesthetic simplicity, but dive deeper into what we do and how we help our clients succeed. As a response to the Dribbble network interactions, we'll be building in some fun pieces to the new site around what we post there.

Stronger Team

As mentioned earlier, we spent a lot of time strengthening our team this year. Next year will be only be different in how much more time we spend with our team. We've each set our own goals to become knowledgeable and experienced in ways that help us do our respective jobs better. Bill and I have similar goals, and will also be spending more time creating an environment that encourages this kind of learning and growth. We'll also attend the occasional conference when appropriate topics arise.

Growth

If we're going to aim for 100% year-over-year growth for 2013, we have our work cut out for us. We adjusted our sales strategy in November to impact January and get us off to the right start. The growth we're projecting isn't just revenue centric though. To achieve the growth we want, we'll need to slowly expand our team, our client base, and even the work we do. While we are currently only a services-based company, and we love the work we do with our clients, we'll be trying out a few things in 2013 on the product side of life. We're really excited about it!

Reading

If you ask any of my teachers from my childhood they would probably tell you that I hated reading. I never read my assignments and when I did, I skimmed them and wasn't engaged at all. What they didn't know though, was that while I wasn't reading my fiction books in high school, I was reading about PHP and other topics that actually interested me. I like learning and I like reading things that interest me. That being said — I don't do it nearly enough. Next year I'm planning to do a lot more reading and learning. Our team is following suit in a number of ways. The end-game with the reading is to learn more and better execute on projects and strategies across the company. I'm really pumped up about this one.

Goals

Lastly, I want to touch on goals. I've never really been a big goal-setter. I've done it a little here and there, but not much. We had a revenue goal for 2012 (which we hit) but it was only verbally acknowledged a few times. Honestly, it's either fluke or a testament to our work that we hit the goal considering we never broke it down into steps necessary to achieve it.

For 2013 our company is deeply embracing goals. In fact, Bill and I have produced a document that outlines our company's goals at-large, our design team goals and also our dev team goals. Additionally we're working with each team member to encourage them to set and reach goals throughout the year. I'm really excited to see where this takes us.

“Give me a stock clerk with a goal and I'll give you a man who will make history. Give me a man with no goals and I'll give you a stock clerk.”
James Cash Penney (JC Penney founder)

We are all gassed up and ready for battle.

Bring on 2013.

Form Building Add-ons in ExpressionEngine

2012-11-13T16:00:11+00:00

Recently we published a post that reviewed member profile add-ons in ExpressionEngine. At that time, we promised a similar review of form management add-ons as a complementary piece. This post will review three such forms add-ons that make HTML forms in ExpressionEngine easy, fun, powerful and beautiful. We couldn't pack in every feature of every add-on but aimed to walk through high-level features and, ultimately, our recommendation of which to choose.

While ExpressionEngine is pretty solid out of the box, HTML forms have always been a bit of a bear. Both designing and processing forms has been limited to the basic forms used for login, contact, tell-a-friend, and few other options. Even ExpressionEngine 2, which comes with SafeCracker, offers a nice way to capture information into a Channel Entry, but lacks WYSIWYG customization and form processing features you would want in a full-featured, dedicated forms add-on.

Add-ons we’re reviewing

There are currently 3 HTML forms add-ons for EE that match up evenly on base features, so we chose those for this review.

Forms v3.1.2 - DevDemon

Single license: $55.00
Developer license: $275.00

Freeform Pro v4.0.6 - Solspace

Single license: $99.95
Developer license: n/a

ProForm v1.18 - MetaSushi

Single license: $65.00
10-pack license: $580.00 (10% discount)

Note that all of these developers actively release hotfixes and new features. The versions we reviewed are listed above, but each add-on has a newer version already available. See the respective add-on's change log for the latest features.

Installation

The installation process for each was a straightforward ExpressionEngine add-on installation. Place the module files in your third_party folder and the module’s theme files in themes/third_party. Visit Add-ons → Modules in the ExpressionEngine Control Panel and click the “Install” link for the add-on.

Layout

Each of the three add-ons offers a WYSIWYG form layout canvas. Each also offers support for multi-column forms, fieldset grouping and appropriate HTML elements such as horizontal rules. They also feature the ability to split forms across multiple “pages,” which makes breaking up long forms a cinch.

Forms layout canvas (Full size)

Freeform Pro layout canvas (Full size)

ProForm layout canvas (Full size)

Forms and Freeform Pro allow you to make changes to a field’s settings right in the layout canvas. ProForm requires a redirect to a separate view which can disrupt the form-building flow.

Field and Input Validation

Each of these add-ons give you the ability to mark fields as required while providing options for specifying data types that can be entered in a field. For instance, a text field can be told to only accept integer input or text. Despite these similarities, this is the first point where one add-on’s functionality rose above the others. ProForm uses CodeIgniter’s validation library to great effect and goes deeper than the others on data-type validation.

ProForm validation rules (Full size)

ProForm also allows for rule-stacking so you can cascade. For instance, checking a valid email address-> encoding it. If you have the need for stringent data integrity checks, ProForm stands out.

Forms offers some conditional logic that reveals additional elements in your form based on input in previous fields. For instance, you can change the options available in one select menu to match an age-range selected in a prior menu

The Toolboxes

Each add-on has the same basic tools for building forms with a layout canvas and a set of standard, pre-built, HTML form elements.

Forms and Freeform Pro allow for drag and drop placement of elements directly from a tools palette, while ProForm requires you to select the element, choose your settings and then it will place the element on the canvas. Once placed, each allows for rearranging items to get the layout you want.

Forms and Freeform Pro have special widgets for multi-column layouts including two, three and four columns, while ProForm intelligently rearranges on-the-fly as elements are dragged close together.

Timesavers

With any of the three add-ons, you can save presets for all form elements with multi-option fields. Selects and checkbox groups are obvious candidates for these presets. An area where Forms rises above the others is in its pre-built sets of field groups, like a typical Address form. Also, when building a select list, Forms offers a wide range of pre-defined options:

Forms options

Freeform Pro offers Country, State and Province pre-built selects, and the ability to populate a select from Channel field, which is a nice treat when using Freeform Pro’s secret weapon (more on this in the next section).

Front-end Display

Each of the add-ons offer tags and parameters that make presenting your forms easy, yet with enough flexibility to give you complete control:

<h1>Contact Us - Forms</h1>
{exp:forms:form form_name='contact'}
	{forms:fields}
		{forms:field}
	{/forms:fields}
{/exp:forms:form}

{!-- Channel Entry Example --}
<h1>Contact Us - Freeform Pro</h1>
{exp:channel:entries channel='stories'}
	<h2>{title}</h2>
	
	{stories-body}{!-- standard textarea --}
	
	{stories-contact}{!-- freeform fieldtype --}
{/exp:channel:entries}

{!-- Standard Template Example --}
{exp:freeform:form form_name="contact"}
	{freeform:all_form_fields}
		<p><label>{freeform:field_label}</label> {freeform:field_output}</p>
	{/freeform:all_form_fields}
{/exp:freeform:form}

<h1>Contact Us - ProForm</h1> {!-- simple --}
{exp:proform:simple form="contact"}

<div>
<h1>Contact Us - ProForm</h1> {!-- un-simple --}
{exp:proform:form form="contact"}
	{fields}
	{if field_type == 'string'}
		<p><label for="{field_name}">{field_label}</label>
		<input type="text" name="{field_name}">
		</p>
	{/if}
	{if field_type == 'text'}
		<p><label for="{field_name}">{field_label}</label>
		<textarea name="{field_name}"></textarea>
		</p>
	{/if}
	{/fields}
{/exp:proform:form}
</div>

When it comes to basic, dead-easy display, Freeform Pro takes the blue ribbon. With the new feature of a Freeform Pro ExpressionEngine Field-type (the secret weapon!), you can select and display any of your Freeform Pro forms right in a channel entry:

Freeform Pro field type (Full size)

In your template, simply use the field name of your Freeform Pro field as you would any other custom channel field.

Fine-tuning

All your fields are now set and ready for your visitors to use, there’s one thing left. The form needs to look and behave your way. Thankfully, each add-on gives us the ability to override default CSS and JavaScript. Forms allows you to disable CSS and JS, Freeform Pro gives you Composer and ProForm’s long form output give you complete control over presentation.

In addition to parameters, Freeform Pro offers a further step for taking complete control. Composer templates use the familiar ExpressionEngine tag syntax which allow you to craft your form’s CSS and display. This gives you a way to change the look and feel of your forms easily, especially if you use the Channel Field type.

Storage, Export & Reports

With each add-on, form submissions are available in the ExpressionEngine Control Panel. You can look over each entry to review what was captured.

Each one offers a means to export form submissions so you can work with the data outside of ExpressionEngine.

Freeform Pro export

ProForm export

Forms export

Forms offers a unique option to have the form submit to a 3rd Party service. Unfortunately the documentation on that is non-existent, which made implementing a test a no-go. Another feature unique to Forms is built-in print-to-PDF support in the Control Panel.

Administration

If you need a means to restrict access to your form, all of the candidates offer a way to set permissions.

Freeform Pro has controls for Multiple Site Manager and Control Panel access, but leaves front-end access restriction to the template.

Forms allows for front-end form availability based on Member Group as well as a date range. Date range would be useful for event registration, for instance.

ProForm relies on ExpressionEngine Member Group permissions for the Control Panel and template access restrictions for the front-end.

Each one allows for email notification when a form is submitted. ProForm accepts a list of addresses and can have multiple lists. Freeform Pro only notifies the site’s admin, but each form’s notification can be customized with Notification Templates.

Forms’ functionality falls somewhere between the others with the ability to set up several email notification templates, or customize directly in the form layout. It also has the ability to integrate with reCAPTCHA, MailChimp and Campaign Monitor - but again, unfortunately, the User Guide doesn’t document these features.

Documentation

Software can only be as good as the documentation that helps you use it. Each of the three add-ons has a User Guide available, but the depth of information included varies between each.

Forms: The User Guide mimics the display style of the ExpressionEngine User Guide. Sadly, that’s where the similarities end.

It outlines Installation and Updates, how to implement Structure support and ExpressionEngine template tags for presenting your forms and entries. There are also some examples provided to get you started. Missing in Action from this guide is any documentation related to the Control Panel which is a real shame considering that’s where much of the action is.

Freeform Pro: This User Guide follows the Solspace style and covers every nook and cranny. Each tag, parameter and option are documented with several examples provided. Solspace also includes a Control Panel User Guide, which is great considering how much more there is in the new version of Freeform Pro compared to previous versions.

ProForm: Thorough. That’s the best way to describe ProForm’s User Guide. If you need to find the meaning of life, check this User Guide as it’s likely in there.

Extensibility

If you need to take the reigns at any point in your form’s processing, then you’ll need some hooks to work with.

Forms offers 4 undocumented extension hooks. Since they aren’t documented, you’ll have to dig into the code to see what they offer:

forms_submit_data_format_start
forms_submit_data_format_end
forms_submit_save_start
forms_submit_save_end

ProForm offers 16 documented hooks.

Freeform Pro has 6 documented hooks currently marked as being for Freeform 3.x, but they still appear to be active in Freeform 4.x. Freeform Pro also offers extensibility through Freeform Pro Field-types. Like ExpressionEngine, Freeform Pro offers an API to build custom field types.

freeform_module_admin_notification
freeform_module_form_end
freeform_module_insert_begin
freeform_module_insert_end
freeform_module_user_notification
freeform_module_validate_end

Final Thoughts

In summary here are the key features and attributes that define each of these add-ons:

Forms:

Nice Control Panel interface but lacking documentation on what’s available there
Predefined lists are a quick timesaver
Limited notification options
Basic validation

Freeform Pro:

Beautiful new User Interface (which can be disabled to match native EE Control Panel)
Well documented both in templates and the Control Panel
Limited notification options
Basic validation

ProForm:

Uncluttered User Interface
Impressively documented
Robust notification options
Extensive validation options

The Recommendation

All three add-ons are worth the price of admission. Ultimately, your decision should be made based on which one best meets your needs and workflow.

For me? I’m going with ProForm for my own internal needs. The documentation, development hooks, and validation rules make it stand out as the best overall choice contextually. If the client is the end-user then I'd have to lean toward Freeform Pro or Forms.

Branding Snappy

2012-10-30T13:07:17+00:00

We are excited to spotlight one of our newest branding and User Interface projects for a product called Snappy. Snappy is a new Help Desk web application being developed by the amazing folks over at UserScape (the creators of HelpSpot). Ian Landsman and his team approached us to help bring their idea of a lightweight and speedy Help Desk to life. Throughout the process we’ve found that the UserScape team is a design firm’s ideal client. Not only are they amazing people that understand the design process, but they are also open to any and all ideas, no matter how ridiculous (see: Snappy underwear).

Concept & Direction

When UserScape first approached us, Snappy was named Snap Reply. As we explored the name, as you do in the discovery stage of any branding endeavor, we instantly gravitated towards “Snap” as the primary term. It made sense, because the entire idea of the application is to imply fast, simple and quick. Our early sketch explorations contained related animals and inanimate objects that reflected these key attributes.

We also explored concepts that touched on the “reply” aspect of the name. Ideas like chat bubbles, email icons and arrows were some obvious plays, but at the end of the day, proved too literal and lacked personality. Interestingly, after the first round of digital sketches a name change was made and “Snap Reply’ became ‘Snappy’. It seems as if both parties had been discussing the idea internally, and when it came up as a side note during a branding round review, everyone agreed it was a better fit. The rest is history and Snappy was born.

The Mark

The first round of explorations for the mark covered a lot of ground. From animals, to simple abstract marks, to underwear, we intentionally threw anything at the wall to see what would stick. The main focus was quickness, so animals that embodied the characteristic of speed were the front-runners (no pun intended) early on.

The breakthrough really happened during a follow-up meeting where we were reviewing digital sketches. Ian made a comment regarding one of the concepts, a red cross email combination, observing “Hmm, I thought it was a robot... who doesn’t love Robots?” Oddly enough, the concept that elicited that comment was almost pulled from the delivery, but we decided to keep it in since it was only the digital sketches round. We instantly moved in that direction, sketching robots and pairing them with typography.

As is typical of our process, we posted examples to Dribbble to gauge initial reactions. We found that after some small tweaks, everyone jumped on board, excited by the possibilities of this robot driven direction. Simple, yet powerful, “Snappy” the robot was exactly the solution we were looking for. A mark that had personality, scalability, movement and a ton of room for great extensions of the brand like stickers, shirts and other collateral. Besides, like Ian said, ”Who doesn’t love Robots?!”

Typography

The right typography evaded us as we worked through a couple rounds of robot forms and color palette refinement. Pairing the right typefaces with the mark proved to be a significant hurdle. But when we put the challenge into the capable hands of Matt Yow, he landed on Pluto Sans which proved to be the perfect solution. It carried the variety of weights we needed to fill out the branding system, while carrying a personality that did not conflict with the new mark. The variety of weights and soft edges embodied the company's goal of being a bit playful, while remaining a trusted, professional brand.

We also introduced a typeface called Sue Ellen Francisco as a secondary look in the branding system, reserved for call to action buttons. It provides a handwritten style that further emphasizes the playful approachable nature of the product.

Finally, Helvetica was chosen as the body text for both the UI and website. It provides a clean look and feel that balances personality with an effective user-experience.

Color

Along with a strong mark and a balanced typography pairing, we knew we wanted Snappy to carry a unique color palette to help set it apart from other Help Desk web apps on the market. It was clear through initial conversations, and then the discovery phase, that the client wanted to avoid being part of the long list of light-grey Apple web apps currently on the market. We decided on a bold palette led by a vibrant burnt orange as the primary color, which can be used to define the brand in any medium. We paired this burnt orange with a collection of light-to-medium tone blues, purples and dark greys to provide necessary contrast. The blue and purple combination was also introduced in a gradient form for call to action buttons and other small applications of the brand.

UI

We were challenged with the task of not only designing the look of the UI, but also with how the user interacted with and experienced this new application. Other than a few wireframes outlining what information the app would contain, we set out to design a lightweight application that would tackle all the previous goals set forth. The goals were to create an application that was not overloaded with features and countless screens, but instead was a lightweight, yet robust application that managed a variety of experiences all within a single screen.

We started out by tackling the general layout and aesthetics by adding bold colors and introducing a general flow of content and simple feature ideas. As we evolved and polished the new look, we began incorporating unique user experience features, such as tickets that could slide right and left to reveal options and priority levels. We also had to account for a collection modal windows and how they live on the canvas, which covered features like ticket replies, conversation threads, attachments, collision notifications and tags. In the end we were successful in keeping 95% of all interactions within a single screen.

Final Product

We could not have been more excited to hand over our work to the client. The final product was a unique and personable mark, combined with an approachable, yet professional type. These elements were then implemented into a powerful and efficient User Interface that will round out the full ‘Snappy’ experience.

Working with the UserScape team was a dream. When you have a company that allows you to take some risks and explore your options, it really allows you to take a design to places it may not have wound up otherwise. We are extremely excited for this to reach the market and are also looking forward to working with the UserScape team again in the near future.

To get in early on the service you can sign up here.

Stand by for robot takeover...

Client Thoughts

“Working with the Focus Lab team has been an amazing experience. These are no mere pixel pushers, but true partners who have helped us conceptualize and realize our branding, UX and UI. The amazing network of design professionals they’ve built enabled us to get a jump start on our marketing efforts by directly driving thousands of pre-launch sign ups to our mailing list.”
Ian Landsman, Owner of Userscape

Member Profile Add-ons in ExpressionEngine

2012-10-23T14:29:03+00:00

My name is Jonathan McGaha, and I’m a developer who has worked with Focus Lab for a little over a year. As we prepare to start a new project, we realized that a review of the available options for member management and form management would be valuable for us as well as other members of our community. This post will look at the currently available add-ons for creating and editing member profiles in ExpressionEngine, while a post reviewing form management add-ons will follow in the next few weeks.

Coming into this post, we only wanted to review add-ons that store member data as channel entries, rather than simply keeping them inside the member_data area of the database. For this reason, Solspace User is not included. For the add-ons covered, we’ll discuss the installation process, the workflow for migrating users from existing sites, the template tags available and the included support.

Add-ons we’re reviewing

Profile:Edit v1.0.7

Initial version released November, 2011
$65 - Devot:ee, $50 - mightybigrobot.com

Safecracker Registration v1.1.5

Initial version released Spring, 2012
$25 - Devot:ee, $20 - objectivehtml.com

Zoo Visitor v1.3.15

Initial version released February, 2012
$59.99 - Devot:ee

At the outset, I'll tell you that the add-on that most impressed me was Zoo Visitor. It has complete documentation, the easiest installation process and simplest migration process, which made me appreciate all of the work that went into executing every detail of this add-on.

Installation

The installation process for each of these these add-ons is a standard ExpressionEngine add-on installation experience. Each has an extension and a module to be installed, but Zoo Visitor also has a nifty fieldtype (more on that later). Once the add-ons are installed, Profile:Edit and Zoo Visitor also give you the option to install sample templates that really help to speed up the development process.

Another plus for Zoo Visitor is a “Troubleshooting” tab. This tab checks all the necessary settings to ensure Safecracker and Zoo Visitor are working correctly. I happened to have missed one setting that otherwise would have been hard to figure out, but the Troubleshooting tool caught it for me. Any add-on that has multiple moving parts and settings should consider something like this to help users and decrease support requests.

Zoo Visitor's Troubleshooting screen (Full size)

Migration

Any existing site that installs these add-ons will need to migrate data from the member fields into a channel. Zoo Visitor handles this process the best of the three. All you do is simply check which fields you want migrated, and you're done. The channel and all of the custom fields are made for you automatically. With Safecracker Registration, you have to make the channel and then all the custom fields yourself before migrating the data. Profile:Edit makes a channel for you and places a few fields into that channel, but these are not your custom fields. I actually deleted all of the fields that the add-on put in there for me.

Zoo Visitor's import options screen

Profile:edit's import options screen

It is also worth mentioning that I could not get Safecracker Registration's migration to work. I contacted the developer who said that was a little-used feature, but he was going to do more work on it before the v1.2 is released.

Templates

One of the main purposes of these add-ons is for your users to be able to register and edit their profiles without having to use archaic, built-in member templates included with ExpressionEngine. All three of these add-ons are built on top of Safecracker, so if you've ever used Safecracker, the syntax will instantly be recognizable. Safecracker Registration even uses the {exp:safecracker} tags with just a few enhancements, so it should be quite easy to pick up.

Here are examples of the template code needed to edit your profile.

{exp:zoo_visitor:update_form return='profile'}
    Screen Name:  <input type="text" name="screen_name" value="{screen_name}" />
    Email: <input type="text" name="email" value="{email}" />
    First Name: <input type="text" name="member_first_name" value="{member_first_name}" />
    
    <input type="submit" value="Save" />
{/exp:zoo_visitor:update_form}

{exp:profile:edit return="profile"}
    Screen Name:  <input type="text" name="screen_name" value="{screen_name}" />
    Email: <input type="text" name="email" value="{email}" />
    First Name: <input type="text" name="member_first_name" value="{member_first_name}" />
    
    <input type="submit" value="Save" />
{/exp:profile:edit}

{exp:safecracker channel="members" error_handling="inline" return="profile"
    dynamic_title="[member_first_name] [member_last_name] - [email]" register_member="true"
}
    Screen Name:  <input type="text" name="screen_name" value="{screen_name}" />
    Email: <input type="text" name="email" value="{email}" />
    {label:member_first_name}: <input type="text" name="member_first_name" value="{member_first_name}" />
    
    <input type="submit" value="Save" />
{/exp:safecracker}

Extra Features

Profile:Edit, which is made by the same company that makes the e-commerce module CartThrob, has some cool, built-in integration. When these two add-ons are installed, you don't have to use any Profile:Edit tags. You just use the CartThrob customer_info tag.

Profile:Edit and Zoo Visitor also make your member fields available as global variables. If anyone has worked with member profiles without this, you’ll know that you very quickly run into parse order problems since these fields are normally parsed at the end.

If you edit or view a profile from the control panel, Zoo Visitor uses its custom fieldtype to add some really convenient features. If you go to Content → Edit → Zoo Visitor Members and then choose any member, from there you can change their member group, email address, password, login as the member or even delete the member. For the other add-ons, you’d have to go the native route and go Members → View All, then pick the member and click through various links to find that info. With Zoo Visitor, it’s all in one place.

Support

Safecracker Registration and Zoo Visitor are supported in the Devot:ee forums. I was able to get quick responses for Safecracker Registration and Erik, our Technical Director, vouches for quality support from Zoo Visitor in a previous project.

Profile:Edit has a support forum at their own website. I’ve not needed it yet, but I’ve always gotten good support for their other product, CartThrob.

Conclusion

As we stated in the introduction, Zoo Visitor came out on top for us. Their installation and migration process was by far the easiest of the three. When you see that the template tags are pretty even across them all, you appreciate the extra niceties Zoo Visitor has.

The one caveat I have for this recommendation is for those who are doing a project that uses CartThrob. In this case, Profile:Edit might be the way to go because it integrates better with CartThrob than Zoo Visitor does.