private

Aug

2011

YouTube, 720P and Private Videos

I opened a new YouTube account recently so that I could show videos on the Warrior Forum as it seems that’s the only way you can do it.

I have to say I’ve found it quite useful. There have been a few good changes since I registered my first account a few years ago, and one of those is that you can view videos at 720p. The really interesting thing about this is that if you have the bandwidth, 720p actually loads faster than the default 360p.

Pop it up to full screen at 720p, and the quality is so good it’s getting very close to the quality I recorded it at. Great stuff.

And…

You can turn off ads!

How many videos have I watched and thought “Flaming Google putting ads everywhere!” Now I’ve found out it’s not Google at all, it’s the individual user turning them on.

You can even make videos private, although I’ve not tried that yet.

In all this now means I can do a pile of tutorial videos (optionally for staff only if I make them private I guess) and you can watch them at really high quality without sucking any bandwidth from my server.

I wonder if the whole private video thing also lets us share them automatically to individuals via an API? That would be really cool wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t need a dedicated server or Amazon S3 to store your videos for your members, you could just use YouTube’s storage and bandwidth instead.

If it’s possible, there’s another product idea eh? 😉

-Frank

Nov

2010

Private Comments Available Today

Update: The Private Comments plugin sale is now LIVE and you can purchase a discounted licence for the plugin by clicking the button below. There are 50 copies available at just $7 and the plugin itself will be updated shortly with some additional features. 🙂

***

This is a quick reminder that just 50 copies of the Private Comments plugin will be released at 5.00pm GMT (12.00 midday EST) for only $7 and it’s a case of first come, first served.

Now as I write this, my developer is testing out some additions to the plugin that I’ve asked for.

IF she doesn’t think she can get these changes in, then I’m not going to hold up the sale, as when I do that I get told off.

It’s true.

In the past when I’ve delayed a sale for any reason, I’ve always had complaints that people can’t now make the new time and that I shouldn’t have changed it.

So “come hell or high water” I’m going to release the 50 licences at 5.00pm GMT today.

IF the changes aren’t done and tested by that time, it will turn into a PRE-ORDER SALE and when the changes are done (probably tomorrow) I’ll update your download page with the plugin.

Okay?

Update:

The Private Comments plugin sale is now LIVE and you can purchase a discounted licence for the plugin by clicking the button below. There are 50 copies available at just $7 and the plugin itself will be updated shortly with some additional features. 🙂

-Frank Haywood

Nov

2010

Private Comments Plugin

Update: Sale starts today, Friday 19th at 5.00pm GMT (12 noon EST).

***

Tomorrow I’m going to release 50 copies of my new plugin called Private Comments, and it’s something I’ve wanted myself for ages.

It allows you (as admin) or a visitor to your blog to add a private comment that isn’t seen by the rest of the world, allowing you to hold a private discussion with someone.

This is incredibly useful.

From my own perspective, I sometimes get a comment on my blog that really shouldn’t be published, and that I’d like to reply to there and then.

I’ve found it quite frustrating not being able reply directly to a visitor so they can see what I have to say to them and not involve everyone else. You’ve probably had the exact same issue.

The only way round this is either to use email when I often don’t want to give the person my email address (and that’s not always guaranteed to get through spam filters), or to edit the comment they made and leave it unpublished, but that’s not always noticeable, and it just doesn’t seem to be a good way of doing it.

The visitor can’t then reply without creating a new comment and it all starts to get a bit messy.

The upshot is, we don’t always want everyone to see the content of a discussion do we?

This plugin solves the problem.

It allows you or the visitor to mark the comment as private. Now only you as the site admin and your visitor can see the tic-tac of back and forwards conversation.

And as a little nice bonus, we’ve built in comment threading (nesting) for those themes that don’t support it. This means you can reply to a comment and the plugin will keep it all cleanly organised and directly underneath the original comment.

(There’s a teensy problem with some old WP2.x themes, more on that in a moment.)

The Private Comments plugin does this without requiring your visitors to register on the blog. Instead, it uses the cookie that WordPress normally drops on your visitors browser allowing them to see their comments, and now of course, yours too.

Think of it as being like the blog equivalent of a PM (Private Message) on a forum, but where registration isn’t required in order to keep it private.

(And we’re also planning on making it more robust for those people who do register.)

Apart from the obvious use discussed above, I also realised that this plugin could be used for some other things too, such as client discussions, and even a simple support desk. 😉

Now then…

At the moment, the only downside to this plugin is that it seems to have problems with some (not all) old WP2.x themes, and it doesn’t do the comment threading (nesting) properly or at all.

But don’t worry as the developer is looking at this to see if it can’t be fixed or worked around, and when it’s solved we’ll release a new version. (Who knows, she might get it done by tomorrow.)

The good news is, every WP3.x theme we’ve tried it on seems to work perfectly.

Tomorrow (Friday 19th) at 5.00pm GMT (12.00 midday EST) I’m making available 50 copies in a pre-launch sale at a bargain basement discount price. First come first served, and when they’re all gone that’s it, the price goes up.

Okay? 🙂

I’ll drop you a line tomorrow with details of the sale.

-Frank Haywood

Nov

2010

Three Updates

#1 – Affiliate Link Plugin

We’ve just completed testing a bug fix for the Affiliate Link plugin, where we’ve now amended the method of hiding the destination page so that it appears as if it’s part of your own blog rather than a page on another site. We’ve done this by moving from an iframe to a regular frame (and changing a couple of other under the hood things), and it seems to work perfectly.

If you have this plugin, go back to your personal download page and get the latest version there. Just unzip and FTP it to your website overwriting the plugin files that are already there, and you’re done.

Your cloaked links should now work perfectly.

#2 – Script Manager Plugin

D’OH!

I kicked off the sale last Friday and decided to take a couple of days away from it all. When I looked again, I realised that the PluginGreat.com domain expired on Saturday… (It was on my todo list to renew it, and I missed it.)

I’m really sorry about that, I quickly reactivated the domain so you can now go back to the download link that would have come with your email and finally download it if you haven’t already done so.

AND… if you need it you can get support from the support desk on the PluginGreat.com site too.

Egg on my face…

#3 – PL Ahh

Dirk W (hi Dirk) came up with a great idea for Decembers software PLR product, and Eric (one of my WordPress plugin developers) has been busy working on it. It’s such a good idea I’ve been tempted to keep it all for myself, but I told Dirk I’d release it with PLR so we’ll stick to the plan.

If you’re a member of PL Ahh, you’ll be thrilled with it, and I know there’s more than a few members that will make a lot of money from it by selling it, far more than I’ll be making by supplying PLR to the membership. 😉

The plugin itself is internally called Affiliate Ticker, but of course you can call it anything you want. That’s all I want to say about it for now, but it’s well worth having when it’s ready, both to sell or give away and of course for personal use too.

As well as the plugin, we’re also releasing another set of 5 sales pages (both HTML and WP versions), and personally I think these are better than the first ones – and those first ones are *very* good. I’ve already seen two of last months PLR sales pages turn up on a couple of sites, so I’m pleased to see they’re already being put to good use.

Ask anyone. If you were to pay to have ONE of these sales pages created for yourself, they’d cost you $47-$97 depending on who did them for you, and all you’d get back is the design with uneditable PNG or JPEG files.

With the ones we supply you get Private Label Rights to the entire pack of 5, plus all the PhotoShop source files, PLUS WordPress page template versions too.

Okay?

Each month from PL Ahh you get TWO PLR products for the price of one.

Typically it will be a standalone PHP script or WordPress plugin or WordPress theme, plus a graphics type product. But I might also add in the odd report that I write myself (or have written with my close supervision). The report would come with a squeeze page to allow you to sell it as a list builder.

Now this current (first) months PL Ahh products I released for November are without sales page or copy. My reasoning is that if you’re not going to put in the effort to make the products yours, then you may as well just be part of an MRR membership instead.

Make sense?

Despite that, I’ve had some people say that they’d like the sales pages and copy included for the products, so I’m going to do that because I want to give you what YOU want, not what I think you should have. This then also gives those people who are prepared to put in a little effort the opportunity to make their version of the products unique.

That difference always means more sales.

Now then…

I really want to see more members join PL Ahh and it’s still possible to join in this first month and while the price is still only $27.

I’ll just repeat that as it’s important.

The monthly membership cost is STILL only $27 for the next 17 new members. (The next step up is another $10 at 101 members.)

You get TWO brand new PLR products each month, and I think you’ll find those two products are a little different from what you’d normally expect to get from a PLR membership.

When the final 17 membership places are taken, the price will go up by another $10.

It’s well worth your time securing these last few places before it’s too late.

You can find out more about the PL Ahh membership here:-

http://www.plahh.com/

-Frank Haywood

Oct

2010