Alistair Williamson

Hi Stiofan,

Thanks & Regards

Alistair

Hi Paulo,

Understood fully, but I am not sure a ‘one size suit’ fits all in many businesses. From a marketing standpoint you have entirely different customers with entirely different needs? I am definitely not thinking about my specific needs here but the different needs of the community as a whole.

As an example I suggest we could segment your users – at a high level – into 2 distinct categories – ‘hobbyists’ who will never be concerned with VAT and ‘Business Users’ like myself who are – I am sure you have many users like myself. Some market research would reveal the user segments and their individual needs which may be simply resolved and increase satisfaction levels

For business users a recommendation regarding ‘hero plugins’ would be very useful. It is definitely not feasible for GD to cover all bases?

Also some ‘quick to fix’ areas could perhaps be beneficial? You know as well as I do that there are certain topics on the forum that are constantly raised and it could be feasible to fix them easily and save you guys time in the long run.

I was trying to be constructive and not self serving btw. I have also invested a lot of my time, faith and money into developing a commercial website using GD at the core and I need GD developments and your continuing support to succeed, for which I am most grateful.

Bests

Al

Hi Stiofan,

Any news on the invoice plug-in?

I am setting up a testing site to do some testing for you.

Another thing if I may. I have been reading through all of the requests in the ‘FRF – Feature Request Forum’ to check if I need any customizations for my development that I haven’t thought of. I am a bit concerned here because:

– I am not a developer and my business development/enhancement is therefore based upon your development programme or external customization – which I would like to avoid
– I am not sure if the FRF is working properly. For example – the VAT problem has only got 7 votes but it is being developed – thank the lord – big problem for those of us doing B2B development
– Many of the requests under ‘popular’ are 2 years old and there is no indication of when they might be completed?
– The ‘newest’ category shows top of the list ‘Rename Franchises.’ I spent days trying to resolve this and Guust finally wrote a snippet to make it easy – surely this is a basic requirement?
– Similarly I have spent days trying to provide potential subscribers with the opportunity to upload a logo – not easy for me. Guust finally fixed this problem for me. However, for a B2B directory this is also a basic requirement and surely doesn’t require customization?
= ‘In progress’ doesn’t have any information so doesn’t inform those of us who are keen to see development
– ‘Completed’ doesn’t show the completed date

I question the validity of the voting system at this point. Have you considered doing some market research within the user base to get a grasp of their thoughts? I am a Marketing profi and could help you here with some market research of the user base if you are interested? For example it would be useful to know how many users are B2C or B2B? Or whether they have small or large listing requirements?

My main point is that I think you have a brilliant product that could be fantastic if some of the small irritating/time consuming problems were knocked on the head and a clear development plan for the major developments was communicated. Many of these small requests keep appearing in the forum, when those of us non-techies, like myself seeking a solution. Avoiding these requests could save your team a lot of time?

I am speaking with Guust about some ‘basic customizations’ that could be part of the core if you wanted – is this of interest?

Some of the developments I need relate to marketing the GD product I am developing. Broadcast email solutions and an effective CRM solution are also basic requirements to market GD developments, yet there are no recommended solutions. Classified advertising ad solutions and ticketing solutions are also widely commented upon in the forum. Surely recommended ‘hero plugins’ are the way forward here?

I hope you will gather that I am trying to be super constructive here and not critical. I realize how challenging it is to balance development and support and I would like to help in any way I can as I am fully committed to GD.

Bests

Alistair