Updated Pudding's Marketing Site With Quotes and FAQ

I just uploaded a slightly new version of ProjectPudding.com, Pudding's marketing site. The home is a little different, I've added a FAQ section to the Support page, and I've added a gray "band" across the top of each page.

I'm still working on the next release of Pudding, so when that goes out I'll (obviously) be updating the demo video, but I'll also be putting up some screen shots for those potential customers who don't want to watch a video.

Thanks to John Lanza and Jaclyn Marcella for writing in with their flattering comments about Pudding. It's really great to hear any and all feedback. John has been nice enough to give me plenty of hard criticisms regarding Pudding :). It's only going to make the product better for everyone!

Happy Pudding Users

I'm going to be updating Pudding's marketing site, ProjectPudding.com, with some very nice comments from some happy Pudding users.

Here is one from John Lanza of Snigglezoo Entertainment.

"I’m so glad I found Pudding. Pudding provides a cost-effective, super-simple solution to a sometimes complex problem – getting feedback and approval from clients. It’s VERY easy to get up-and-running with Pudding and the service is INCREDIBLE. I can’t stress this enough – the SERVICE IS TERRIFIC! I made a suggestion to change how text was displayed and the site was changed within a day."

And another one from one of their clients, Jaclyn Marcella.

"I really like the website and I think it is a very efficient way to communicate about changes and approvals for different products. I like the fit to screen/real size option and the comments section. Overall I really think the website is an effective way to communicate. ... I love the site!"

John's been great about giving me feedback regarding Pudding. I can't wait until my users get their hands on my next release. It's not going to be the gigantic one I was hoping to deliver, but it has several very nice enhancements that will make the Pudding experience even better!

Our best are working on Eyeball Revenue

I'm so disappointed in the software development industry. 2 of our largest development companies, employing lots of smart developers, are basically just advertisement resellers.

I know MS is trying to grow their business in more areas than I have fingers and toes to count them on, but to see such a large focus on getting ad delivery deals is just a little disheartening.

I'm really glad the product I'm working on is the exchange-cash-for-delivering-value model. I find it more rewarding. I just can't wait to get this next version done!

Pudding marketing web site review by 47hats.com

Bob Walsh was kind enough to perform a review of the marketing web site for Pudding. It was by far the best feedback I've gotten regarding Pudding's marketing site. Thanks again to Bob for taking the time to put this together!

Max and I are still hard at work on V2 of Pudding. I'm really excited about the features we've got planned for the next release. I really believe it's going to be an awesome product for designers.

I think this is the part where I'm supposed to say, "watch this space". :)

Day of Code, Setting up is fun!

No it's not.

Thanks god that 3rd guy showed up to help Max properly install the necessary libraries to run the Pudding code base.

2007 - Short Year in Review

2007 was a great year for me. Pudding launched on June 7th, and my daughter was born one month later on 07/07/07. 

I've added the following features to Pudding since launch:

• Feed support
  
• Smart printing
• Branding

My Daughter has acquired the following features since birth:

• Insanely cute smile



• The ability to sleep (she didn't do that the first 2 months)

• Sitting support

• Blonde hair (this is what her hair looked like the first month)

Here's to a great 2008!

Pudding update

It's been a while since I've blogged about the progress of Pudding. I'm taking the stance that it's better to work on Pudding than blog about it!

I hit a nice milestone for the technical side tonight, so it's time to take a breather and do a little post. That milestone is brining Pudding over to Rails 2. Pudding is definitely faster as a result of this framework upgrade and it's going to make my REST development work easier. I won't be deploying the upgrade to Rails 2 until the larger release of Pudding is ready. General Tomfoolery and I are having a "day of code" this weekend. We're meeting up on Saturday and coding all frigg'n day. 

Goal? 

Integrate the first attempt at a more advanced UI. I don't want to talk about the details quite yet, but I've got a plan for Pudding this year. If the General and I can pull it off this year I can really see the creative industry getting excited about how Pudding can help them work with their clients. None of the tools out there hit the nail on the head, and I want Pudding to do it.

More to come....

Branding Feature Demo Video

I've made a few more tweaks to ProjectPudding.com, the marketing site for Pudding. One of the things I've added is a short demo video of Pudding's new Branding feature.

Design Studio, Creative Agency, Freelancer? Pudding Helps You Work with Your Clients. Pudding is a simple visual collaboration tool. You upload images and invite people to review, comment on, and approve your work. Sign up for your free trial at ProjectPudding.com!

Pudding with Custom Branding and Site Layout Realigned

Pudding now has custom branding! I'll be posting screen shots and (possibly) a video some time in the next week of the feature in action.

I've been wanting to realign the layout of ProjectPudding.com for a while now and I took this feature launch as the opportunity. Unfortunatley, I haven't yet added all the screen shots and videos to the site, but it's about 2:00 am and I need to sleep!!! :)

Please let me know what you think of the new layout. (And keep in mind there will be more screen shots showing the features soon!)

Pudding, now with Smart Printing

I got an email from Kathy King at UThinkIt Graphics, and she was incredibly disappointed in the way Pudding printed out her creative pieces. (Pieces = proofs/concepts/mocks) The printing in Pudding was so bad that under some circumstances the image wouldn't even appear on the page!

I never paid attention to printing before. I figured everyone would want to view everything through their browser. Now, even if I did take the stance that printing isn't the main focus of the application, there's no excuse for how wretchedly (that's actually a word?) terrible the printing in Pudding was, so I fixed it.

Let's say you've got the Greatest Client Ever, and you create them logo. This is what it looks like when you upload it and view it in Pudding. (Awesome logo design, huh? I did it myself. :) )




Originally when you printed it, all the navigation would show up , the form elements, etc...

Now, when you hit the print button in your browser, this is what you'll get.

I want to show you another view. Let's say you upload another version of your piece, it is approved by the Greatest Client Ever, and you decide to hide the comments. This is what you'll see in Pudding.


And this is what you'll see when when you print from your browser.

I call the improvement, Smart Printing, and it's now live in Pudding.

Design Studio, Creative Agency, Freelancer? Pudding Helps You Work with Your Clients. Pudding is a simple visual collaboration tool. You upload images and invite people to review, comment on, and approve your work. Sign up for your free trial at ProjectPudding.com!

"ThumpThumpThumpThumpThump, I'm not dead yet!" - Pudding

I've got some great news regarding Pudding. It's heart is beating strong!

I've found someone to work with to continue developing Pudding! He doesn't want to be revealed until he has contributed some more work, which knowing him won't take too long.

I'm currently adding a small feature that I feel a product like Pudding needs, and General Tomfoolery is plugging away at the new UI of Pudding.

I've got the spark again for the project. I'm really excited and I can't wait to start seeing my sketches come to life in code!

Thump Thump

Thump Thump

Thump Thump

Thump Thump

ThePudding?

Come on now! I thought I was the only Pudding in town?!

;)

http://www.thepudding.com/

Thump Thump

Thump Thump

Future?

READ THE UPDATE
-------------------------

Hello Everyone,

I haven't done much for Ataraxis Software and my darling little application, Pudding, since the birth of my daughter. I was in a mad rush to get Pudding launched before she was born, and I did it!!! I was able to finish a small feature after launch, and I (finally!!!) got up a "tour" video of Pudding.

Unfortunately, Pudding hasn't exactly been as huge of a success as I would have liked.

During the last couple of months of Pudding development I knew it would be a long shot for it to be successful. Pudding is a very basic application, and with competitors like ConceptShare and a host of other photo-sharing-editing-viewing web apps out there, Pudding looks very 2005. Which, oddly enough, was the year it was conceived.

2005 was kind of the birth of the whole microISV/AJAX/web 2.0 era, and if Pudding launched within 3 months of me thinking it up, the product would be in a very different place right now. I could have built out the feature set, came up to speed with the sophisticated UI technologies like Flex, and implemented a totally sick Flash interface sometime in the beginning of 2006.

I tried to play catch-up this year. I convinced a couple of buddies of mine, one amazing artist, and one amazing programmer (Java/Flex - he would have picked up Ruby in about 2 hours), to join me in the development of Pudding 2.0. We came up with some really amazing UI concepts (on paper). I really believe the UI ideas we came up with would really stand up to, and in some ways beat, the current offerings in visual collaboration.

After a year and a half of Pudding development I was completely burned out. But working with these guys got me totally inspired! It was like catching a 5th wind.

Unfortunately, we all have full time jobs, and not everyone is willing to sacrifice every waking moment of their life for a software startup. The three of us have unofficially stopped working on Pudding 2.0. There's no hard feelings, it's just, life got in the way.

I'm now at a very difficult point in this journey. My options are....

1. (by myself) Come up to speed with Flex and implement a completely bad-ass UI/feature-set that will make all competitors bow to the awesomeness that is Pudding. Hopefully launch this mind-blowing/competitor-terrorizing version sometime before 2010.
   
2. Maintain the status quo because I just can't let go of my baby, Pudding. Essentially limp along and continue to run up my business credit card on hosting fees, while spending cash on banking fees.
   
3. Give up and stop. Focus on my day job and the skills I need to learn and enhance to one day work for a software company. (Program Manager anyone??? ;) )
   

This blog has captured a lot of this crazy "Ataraxis Software" story. I've learned so much. I've met some really nice people via this blog (Ian M. Jones, Ian Landsman, John Topley, Mike Rhode, etc...). But I think I've finally run out of steam.

To be continued.....

Pudding Video Tour

I just updated the Pudding tour page with a video tour of Pudding. I used the $20 iShowU app to record the tour and iMovie to stitch it together and handle the compression.

Now that's a video on the cheap!

I'll wait here for the, "....and it shows", jokes. :)

New Feature, Feeds!

Pudding now has the ability to deliver you an Atom Feed of your projects. You can subscribe to an "Account Feed', which will give you updates for all your projects, or you can chose to subscribe to specific projects.

I've decided to hold off on the "History Manager" I mentioned in a previous post. All the entries are stored (for the Feed), but I'll wait to put it into the app's UI until I feel like there is a real need for it.

"Thanks" goes out to the Rails HTTP_AUTHENTICATION plugin and the blinksale.com guys for this ATOM Feed snippet.

And..... just in case you missed the announcement, Pudding launched!

Next for Pudding

I've got a lot of very interesting things going on with Pudding, but unfortunately I can only say so much publicly. For the stuff I can't talk about, let's just say I'll be much more competitive it in the "visual collaboration market", and I'm expecting development to be able to move a lot quicker than it has in the past.

Now for what I can talk about!

I've been working on a RSS feed/History Manager feature for Pudding. The more I use Pudding, the more I really really really want to be able to subscribe to a feed of the projects I've got in there. The History Manager will be a nice addition too. It will be the same information that is provided in the feed, but you won't need to be subscribed to see what the heck has been going on in the project.

A feature like this is where Ruby on Rails really helps out. I downloaded the http_authentication plugin (I couldn't install it from the command for some reason), and I found this .rxml template. The security and delivery of the feeds is already available to me. I just need to (finish) implement(ing) the data model.

Pudding Launched, Thank You

I first announced the idea for what has become Pudding on October 19, 2005. Yes, I said 2005. :)

It was a long journey to launch, and there are several people I'd like to thank for helping in some capacity.

• Ian Landsman, for inspiring me to start blogging and being a continual microISV inspiration.
  
• David Heinemeier Hansson, for creating the super-productive Ruby on Rails framework.
• Steve McConnell, for writing Code Complete - a book that helped me move from programmer to programmer-who-now-knows-how-bad-the-code-he's-writing-is. ;)
• Maxim Porges and Brian LeGros, for teaching me a ton about writing software and their feedback during the Pudding beta.
  
• Joel Spolsky and Eric Sink, for writing countless articles on how to run a software company.
• Jason Muscarella, for helping me with the graphics on ProjectPudding.com.
• Christopher Scalici for creating some graphical elements in Pudding.
  

Last but not least, my wife, Amy Sica. We've sacrificed a lot of time together so I can pursue the dream of creating my own software company and launching my first product. Amy, I love you and thank you!

Pudding Ad

Thanks Jason!

Pudding Launched!!!

It's official, Pudding has launched!!!

I want to write a huge blog post thanking everyone under the sun, but it's late and I need to get to some sleep! :) I'll take care of the nice big post before Monday.

Please help me get the word out about Pudding!

Pudding is a simple visual collaboration tool. You upload images and invite people to review, comment on, and approve your work.

Pudding Launching Soon

I've fixed the last known bug for the release version of Pudding. I've got to do some more testing, write a few "help" items, and get the marketing site completed. I'm hoping I can launch on Friday!

Round 3 of Beta!!! Radical New Permission Setup - Easier, More Collaborative!

I'm so tired I'm about to pass out at the keyboard. I've been coding like a crazy person for the last 2 weeks!

The new version of Pudding is on the server, and the beta invites went out.

Check out the new web site for Pudding, with a MUCH better URL:
http://www.projectpudding.com

If you want to get in on the beta, please sign up at ataraxissoftware.com.

THANKS!

Attention Beta Testers!

I wasn't going to do another round of beta testing, but I've made some significant changes to how Pudding operates and I want to do another round of testing. The bad news is when I deploy the next round I'll have to blow away the old database and images. The changes I made were signficant enough to warrant a "do over" on the DB schema.

Look for a new invite email this week.

I've got some more news in the cooker, but I can't announce anything yet. After I launch I'll give everyone the scoop! :)

Tastier Pudding

I've just finished my plan for a looser version of Pudding. It's going to take me at least a week to get everything fully implemented, but I think it's going to be well worth it. Especially from the simplification standpoint.

My original version of Pudding had 2 distinct types of users. "Clients" and "Designers". Which makes sense, but comes with a lot of extra baggage (at least how I implemented it anyway). All the Designers in your account would see all of the active projects, and Clients would only see the projects that were associated with thier "Client Organization". What I found during my beta was that when people were jumping into Pudding they would need an explaination of how to get started. Not good in my book. I would have to explain to them that you need to create a Client Organization, and then you need to add Clients. Then you need to associate the Client Organization with a Project. (I've already lost the person by this point.) Not only is it a lot of mental "associations" to keep track of, but it only allows for 1 Client Organization to be associated with a Project.

So the rigidity came from only having Designers that could see all projects, which is bad if there is more than one creative agency involved. Additionally, each project could only have 1 Client Organization associated, and no-one outside of your account could upload stuff to the project. You could always add an external person to as a Designer, but then they could access all your projects.

It was collaborative inside of the account, but too restrictive for the dynamic world of media-centric creative projects.

I'm implementing a much easier to use system. (and UI)

I'm switching to the concept of "Contributors" and "Reviewers", and each user has either "All Projects" or "Restricted" access. This way the Administrator of the account can mix and match what people can do.

Let's say you're a creative agency, and you're collaborating with another agency for a joint media event for Pepsi Co. & Apple.

The people in your agency are already setup as Contributors with access to all your projects. You would then setup the other agency people as Contributor's, the Nike & Apple people as Reviewers, and using the Restricted access option give them access to only the projects related to this venture.

I've been pretty bored with the last month of Pudding development. I've been working on nothing but billing stuff. Planning this out, and starting the implementation has really gotten me excited again!

I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing (reading) this, but I'm almost done!!! ;)

Pudding, changing taste buds

I'm almost done with my original vision for Pudding. I've literally got some server config to do, and another night's worth of code tweaking.

I've been thinking a lot about what Pudding does, how it does it, who it's competitor's are, and how they work.

Pudding is built around the simple idea of a design group and a client organization. The design group can see all the projects, and "clients" can only see projects that are associated with their "client organization". Only people in the design group can upload, and only people in the client organization can click the "approve" button.

I had a pretty rigid workflow in my head when I made these decisions. But after a lot of thought, and trying to demonstrate Pudding to people, I'm starting to think it's too brittle.

Design projects, teams, and the work they're doing are more fluid and unpredictable.

I was planning on launching in the next day or three.

This sounds crazy, but I want to take the time now to loosen up the app a bit. I've got some ideas and I think I'll have to make some data-model changes. I'd hate to launch it and have to make these changes with people already signed up.

I'm hoping I can implement what I'm thinking of in less than 5 working sessions. That means Pudding can still launch before the end of the month.

Wish me luck! :)

The next release

I've been coding away on the next release of Pudding. The next release will be a private (as in me only) release candidate. I'm implementing all the account management features (payments, upgrade/downgrade, cancelation, etc...) so I can't have anyone in the system.

If I'm lucky the next "release" I put on the server will be the final code base that is used for the launch of Pudding!

If all the stars align I'll be live next Monday. Worst case, I'll be live May, 14th 2008. (It can't much longer than that, can it? ;) )

FYI - Server Maintenance

4/29 - Server Maintenance

Round 2 of Beta

The beta invites for the second round of testing just went out!

Thanks to the bug reports and feedback I received from the first round I was able to make approximately 26 bug fixes and improvements. I also got a couple ideas for some post 1.0 launch features!

I won't be able to launch off of the Round 2 code base. I still have to integrate the site with my credit card gateway. (I finally got everything setup with the bank and the payment processor.)

If I keep progressing at my present clip, I could have that stuff implemented by the end of next week!

Thanks again to everyone who is participating in the beta!

If you'd like to get involved, please feel free to sign up via the form on the main Ataraxis Software web site. (I'll contact you via email within 24 hours of you signing up.)

(Did I hit my exclamation point quota for the day? ;) )

IE Bug under control

Background post

Reading this made me understand what the problem was/is, and what a fix looks like.

Reading this made me understand why it's affecting me.

Reading this let me make it only appear to IE browsers.

"div" tags do not "have layout" by default. (It's an IE thang.) Thus they freak out under certain circumstances. This is how you fix them...

Put this in a file called, "ieisincrediblyghetto.css":
div { height: 0.01%; }

Then put this in your HTML right after all your other style sheets:
<!--[if lte IE 7]>
<link href="/stylesheets/ieisincrediblyghetto.css" media="screen" rel="Stylesheet" type="text/css" />
<![endif]-->

Since this is actually applying a specific height to all div's, make sure you check your web site throughly for any side affects.

IE is the devil's work

I spent the whole night messing around with my HTML tags and CSS in an attempt to get this under control.

NOTHING is working. It's happening consistently to about 3 pages.

So I started doing some googling, and came across this page on Channel which lists a ton of IE bugs. Check out this one,

Sometimes IE fails to draw some actual text correctly, but selecting the text shows it. Clicking outside the selection sometimes then shows the text properly, but sometimes text that had been displayed correctly before selection and was included in the selection also disappears when clicking outside the selection. I've often seen this on blogs.msdn.com.

WHAT?!?!?!

I found a few links that may give me a chance at fixing this problem:
http://www.positioniseverything.net/explorer/peekaboo.html
http://www.positioniseverything.net/articles/ie7-dehacker.html
http://www.satzansatz.de/cssd/onhavinglayout.html

I'm going to read them tomorrow and hopefully get past this stupid bug.

I JUST WANT TO REMIND THE IE TEAM THAT THIS IS HAPPENING IN VERSION 7 OF YOUR BROWSER.

Yes, version 7! It took you (Microsoft) 5 years to go from version 6 to 7, and these are the kinds of bugs I'm dealing with?!?!? Paul Graham is right. You've been a joke for years, and you've just put the last nail in your coffin. Vista + IE7 is a total train wreck.

....deep breath....

This may very well be the last HTML application I ever build. The Flex compiler is (finally) free. I think this guy was right when he said,

I'm done with it.

(UPDATE! IT'S WORKING NOW.)

Crazy IE Rendering Bug

I was about to push out a new version of Pudding last night, but then I came across this bizarre rendering bug in IE. I've been spot checking Pudding in IE during it's development, but I don't think I've ever hit this screen before.

Does anyone have a clue as to why IE would act like this? (Other than the fact that's a POS. :) )

The bug appears in IE6 & 7. Here is a little comparison between Safari and IE. (It looks as-expected in Firefox.) I've got the doctype tag set to XHTML Strict.

Feature Question - Comments?

I'm stuck on feature. 2 of my beta testers have asked for it, and 2 products that play in the same "space" as Pudding have it.

The feature is....

Commenting on the uploaded image.

There seems to be some open source code that will give me a huge head start in trying to implement it. But I'm not sure if it's "what's best" for designers.

Here is my sticking point.

You're a designer. You've made a creative piece for your client. You've uploaded it to Pudding, and sent an invite to your client to review it.

As Pudding works now, there is an intentionally small comment box (hidden behind a link). My hope would be that the client would leave only short comments, and not long drawn out explanations about how and where they want every pixel of the piece to be. (That's what they hired you for, right?)

If the client has the ability to comment on the piece, they'll do just that, and they'll do a lot of it.

They'll do all the things a client shouldn't!

On the other hand. Am I trying to fight a flood with single sandbag? I mean, my tool won't stop clients from demanding that this green dot NEEDS TO BE RED!!!

:)

Please let me know your thoughts. Comment below, or join me in the Pudding Discussion Group.

Pudding Discussion Group

John Topley suggested that I add a forum to my online presence to encourge a community around Pudding. I considered Beast, a Rails forum app. It's really nice looking. Simple and un-cluttered. (The 37Signals guys use it.) But I decided to try a Google Group first.

So here it is, the Ataraxis Pudding Discussion Group.

I like it because it took about 3 seconds to setup, and won't cost me anything in server resources. The Google Group software is nice. It's a mailing list behind the scences (I think), but you can use it like forum software. (Take a look.)

I'll be using it as my beta-feedback area for the second round of testing.

There are 2 downsides with using a Google Group.

1) It shows ads on the side.
2) Users have to create a Google Account.

I'll see how it goes. Feel free to get involved in the discussion!

Great First Round

I want to thank everyone who's been involved with the first round of beta testing for Pudding. 2 extra special thanks to Brian LeGros and Maxim Porges. These guys came through with some HUGE feedback.

Max wrote a total of 29 Microsoft Word pages of bugs and feedback. He included screen shots and some hilarious suggestions for upgrade/downgrade offers. (Pudding's tiers are named after flavors, so he was playing up on that angle. I'm so using them!)

I hope to be ready for the second round sometime next week. Stay tuned!

Still Working Toward Completion

I've got the beta in full swing, but there is still programming work left to do.

• Purchase secure certificate, set it up, and code the site to do the sensistive stuff over SSL.
• Implement the communication to the credit card processor.
• Fix bugs! :)
  

BETA!

Finally! I just sent out the URL to the people who've signed up for my beta program! This is such a huge milestone for this project.

If you're interested in participating in the beta (or you're just damn curious to see Pudding in action), sign up here.

Beta Signup Form, live

Please head over to the main Ataraxis Software web site to sign up for the Pudding beta.

Now that I've figured out how to configure everything (including Capistrano) to run one rails site, getting Pudding up and running should only take another day or two.

Merchant Account, Finally

WOW, that took a hell of a lot longer than I was expecting. A full 2 weeks to get "approval" for having a merchant account and the ability to accept credit card transactions. Now I need to setup an Authorize.net account and hook everything up. I won't be stressing too hard about that until after my beta version is live. It's been my plan all along to implement my CC processing while I'm in beta.

I'm going to be at a friend's wedding this weekend, so I won't be able to do any work.

It's driven me nuts that all this business stuff has taken so long to sort out. (bank account, business credit card, merchant account...)

This Week, Bank Account, Feature Finish

I did 3 things over the weekend (and today).

1. Performed usability testing of Ataraxis Pudding. Test subject? The Wife.
2. Spoke to banker about business account.
3. Fixing usability flaws. ;)
   

I'm going to apply for a Tax ID tomorrow, so I can open up a business account and get my merchant stuff setup. Hopefully I'll have all that setup by the end of day Saturday. Once I've got the business account setup I'll be opening a hosting account so I can get ataraxissoftware.com and ataraxispudding.com live. Once the site(s) are live I'll be contacting friends and family to invite them as beta testers. If you're interested in being a beta tester, leave me a comment and I'll get in touch with you. (I'll be posting a proper beta-testing sign up form once the sites are live.)

I've got 1 more feature to add. It came from the testing I did with my wife. I need to add an "alert" option on some of the major events in the system. I.e. When you leave a comment on a "Piece", you should be able to click a checkbox and have it notify certain people.

The first thing she asked when we she did something was, "Will all the people know something changed?"

If that's the first thought that pop's into her head, then the software better do it!

Tiers of Pudding, Yummy!

I was grabbing lunch with some co-workers the other day, and one of the guys picked up some pudding. No, not some Ataraxis Pudding, but some tasty (in his opionion) bananna pudding.

(These co-workers also happen to be starting their own software company, Protoh. I told you everyone's better at coming up with names than I am!)

It got me thinking. I should name my service tiers after flavors of pudding.

Vanilla - For freelancers, because it will be the cheapest plan I offer and compared to the other plans will be vanilla.

Chocolate - For design studios. It will cost a little more than Vanilla and EVERYONE LOVES CHOCOLATE PUDDING. (You do, don't you? DON'T YOU? It seriously rocks.) I'm guessing the plan that is in the middle price-wise will be the most popular. Just like chocolate pudding!

At the very least I'm going to have one more tier for larger "corporate" companies. A lot of large companies have an in-house design group.

Anyone have any other flavors of pudding they would like to recommend?

Left to Beta, 2

My last progress report regarding how close I was to "beta" was accurate, but it didn't account for all the bugs I'd find, and create, and then fix while working on the security of Pudding!

My new short list is:

• Add "and return" to all redirecting before_filters
• At some point my emailing code stopped working, so fix that
• Do not allow the user's Credit Card to be returned to the client (EVER!)
• Polish the Account Management page
• *Implement the credit card processing
• Setup a hosting account for the application

*Which is contingent on setting up all the "business stuff" (merchant account, etc...), BUT I might put the app into beta without that code in there and add it while it's in beta.

I'M ALMOST THERE. I CAN TASTE IT!!!

I've got to buckle down this week and get these last quirks worked out!

Pudding Update, Working on Security

I'm gutting a lot of the security code in Pudding. It's to hard to work with, and it has more holes than swiss cheese. I'm finding that having 1 controller for every model object is a lot easier to secure. There is just a lot less each controller has to worry about. I'm not going full REST routing, but I'm running away from crap like this:

/client_management/client_company?client_company_id=1
/client_management/client?client_id=1

and enjoying these:

/client_company/1
/client/1

Left to Beta

I've got to do the following to get Pudding into "beta".

• Finish up security code
• Finish the "Cancel Account" feature
• Polish the Account Management page
• *Implement the credit card processing
• Setup a hosting account for the application

*Which is contingent on setting up all the "business stuff" (merchant account, etc...), BUT I might put the app into beta without that code in there and add it while it's in beta.

Almost there!

Pudding with proper URL's

I've finally made the switch to the fancy "subdomain as account key" style of URL's for Pudding. Previously, when you signed up for an account the URL you would work from looked like this:

http://www.ataraxispudding.com/company/yourcompanyname

Kinda ghetto!

The URL will now look like this:

http://yourcompanyname.ataraxispudding.com

I just finished squashing the last of the bugs related to change. I need to make a few more tweaks to the way the application reacts to "www.ataraxispudding.com", but the internals of the app are sound.

A few things about the transition

• Setting up the server for wildcard subdomains. I've seen the configuration addition for Apache, and it looks dead simple. (It's like 1 line of configuration.) Unfortunately (for this situation) I'm using lighttpd, and the setup turned out to be a little more complicated. Luckily, Graeme Mathieson, has a really good tutorial for setting up OSX with a local name server (Thanks Tyler!), which you then use to work the wildcard subdomain magic. The write up has one small portion that confused me (and caused me to spend a hour scratching my head), so I'm thinking of writing up a super slimmed down guide to getting everything setup.
• After the server setup, grabbing the subdomain is really easy with Ruby on Rails. I've got this in my ApplicationController:

before_filter { |c| c.subdomain = c.request.subdomains.first }

def subdomain=(value)
@subdomain = value
end

def subdomain
@subdomain
end

I just do my lookup for the user's account with, "subdomain", and it works!

• Tests are your friend. The controllers that had a descent amount of functional tests (unit tests for controllers) were easy to get working with the new URL scheme - those without were a BEAR! I ended up writing a few tests along the way, which is always a good thing. But the funny thing is, the last bug I fixed was solved by accidentally looking at the command line output of the web server while I was trying to use the app in a browser.
• Routing and code simplier. Removing, "company/yourcompanyname", from the front of the URL has made my Ruby on Rails routing file a helluvalot simpler! I did a little bit of refactoring with this change, and my URL's in general are easier to work with.

Speaking of refactoring... There is a bunch of refactoring I'd love to do with the code base of this application. This is my first Ruby on Rails app!
Overall, I'm very very very happy I made this change. I think it gives Pudding a more professional feel. It only took 2 working sessions to get everything going (I'm not counting the first session where I read up on HowToUseSubdomainsAsAccountKeys).