test 1
June 28, 2008, 4:17 pm
test 2
Almost there...
June 15, 2008, 8:18 pm
Took care of a few things today:
- Analyzed a High Stakes Poker hand where Barry Greenstein got all in vs Sammy Farha with AA vs KK. The hand is perfect because it lets me really utilize all of ALL IN Expert's major capabilities. The plan is to post a link to it on 2+2 so people can what ALL IN Expert can do. Eventually, I'd like to to do a YouTube video for the same hand, but I want to get some people testing it first. That way, if I make any major interface changes, they'll be present in the video.
- Added Google Analytics to the site. I haven't worked with it before, and will need to spend a lot of time exploring it once the site starts getting traffic.
- Made an icon for the software. This was such a pain in the ass. I wanted to make some gradient background with "AA" centered in it, but I couldn't get any of the fonts to display well in a 32x32 canvas. I settled for a green gradient background with an off-white distorted star, which kind of looks like its trying to do a ninja kick or something.
Site Redesign and PayPal
June 15, 2008, 12:50 am
When I first started designing the site, I based it on Evernote's homepage. They use a page width of 950px, which I unquestioningly adopted. I actually just rounded to 1000px, without putting much thought into it. It turns out that a fair percentage of internet users (roughly 20% or so) are still using 800x600 browsers. What this means it that whenever they view a site that is wider than 800 pixels, a horizontal scroll bar will appear at the bottom of the screen. Many popular sites (Facebook, Paypal) adopt a smaller, 750px width, allowing anyone to view their page without that scroll bar. The downside to this is that it looks somewhat small on larger browsers, but weighing everything, I think it was a good decision to size down.
I also got rid of the dark gray background, which gives the site a much more modern feel.
One of the major challenges of this project has been the registration system. I've put more time into it than I'd like to remember just to make sure that its as seamless as possible for the user and for myself. Today was one of the last legs: PayPal now automatically posts back to my site information regarding the customers and my site adds their email the registration database. This is later queried by the software to ensure the user has in fact registered.
I also made another major decision: provide a downloadable demo. While I may have gotten a few customers to purchase it that wouldn't have if they had download it, its a much more honorable way to do it. Why should I charge those people for a program that they wouldn't download if they had used it? Ultimately, I just blocked the majority of the results (only pocket pairs are visible) -- anyone who wants more will have to register. "Don't be evil" right?
I've changed my wording several times... "purchase" vs "register". Register doesn't necessarily imply payment, but as soon as a customer clicks register they're going to see the price. However, this way they don't arrive to the page and immediately see that it costs money. Hopefully they'll explore a little bit, realize the value of the software, and be more likely to follow through with a purchase.
The plan is to release the software to a few 2+2ers in about two weeks for beta testing.
Latest screenshot: June 15, 2008
Blogito
May 18, 2008, 5:13 pm
The first three blog posts on this site were hardcoded into an HTML document. I had to type all the paragraph tags so everything displayed properly... it was a pain and it really discouraged me from making updates.
The better solution is to have some sort of blogging platform. Coding one is not terribly hard to do, but my PHP and MySQL experience are/were a little rusty. Many hours and syntax errors later, this site now has a database driven blog. The mess of posts in that screen shot are from testing and debugging it. You'd think I was mentally challenged reading through it...
Despite the occasional frustration, I'm glad I spent the time doing it. I'm pretty comfortable with PHP and MySQL now, which are important skills to have for developing modern websites.
Branding
May 18, 2008, 4:42 pm
(First posted May 10)
Learning how to design this site has given me a much better appreciation for the little things. Consider the name of this site:
ALLINExpert
ALLIN Expert
ALLinExpert
ALLIN expert
Allin Expert
AllIn Expert
All-In Expert
After going through several of those I wound up with ALL IN Expert, which I think looks great. Seems obvious now...
Preventing Piracy
May 18, 2008, 4:37 pm
(First posted May 10)
I never really considered how hard it is to prevent software piracy until I started planning how to distribute ALL IN Expert.
The goal is two fold:
- Ensure that only people who purchase ALL IN Expert can use it
- Don't burden legitimate users with the anti-piracy system
I think I've got a good system worked out:
Custmer's Perspective:
1. Customer clicks 'Buy Now' and purchases with PayPal.
2. He's redirected to allinexpert.com where he downloads the software.
3. When the software is first run, he enters his email address to unlock the software.
Behind the Scenes:
1. Customer clicks 'Buy Now' and purchases with PayPal.
2. He's redirected to allinexpert.com where he downloads the software.
3. The customer's email address is also sent back to allinexpert.com, which saves it (encrypted with SHA) into a database.
4. When customer runs software, he enters his email address.
5. The software queries the database to see if he actually purchased it. If he did, a unique Computer ID is added to the database, which essentially says "this computer is associated with this email address". That way, if someone else attempts to use the same email, the software will know that it is a different computer. Customers who want to use ALL IN Expert on multiple computers I'll have to work with on an individual basis (should be a small percentage of people).
6. If everything went well, a unique activation key is generated which permanently unlocks the software.
Too easy ;)
Latest layout:
Hey, a Blog
May 18, 2008, 4:23 pm
(First posted May 3, 2008)
Here you'll be able to keep track of the projects I'm working on related to All In Expert.
Its important to understand that I'm primarily creating this website in order to learn about web development. I have a background in computer science, but until recently my focus has been on writing software, not on designing websites. In the past few weeks I've been learning about HTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL, and Ajax. I've also had the displeasure of teaching myself Photoshop CS3... but I think I've got the hang of it.
The design of this site has changed on a daily basis and will probably continue to do so until the day I'm read to release it to the public, hopefully sometime in June or early July. I'll try to keep this updated regularly both for myself, and for the people following my work.
Thanks for reading.
Matt
Current homepage layout:
