1/21/2016 12:50

I'm going to write a bit about the launch tools.

I've been working hard on the new web site to replace the crappy single page web site, and I realized that if I waited till it was perfect, I would never be done. Best is the enemy of better, better is the enemy of good, good is the enemy adequate, etc... I think I am somewhere between adequate and good. Please have a look at www.oshchip.org

Mailchimp

So pulling the trigger involved taking all the emails that project followers have been sending me based on the request that was at the top of the project page. There were 126 of them. Chris Gammell recommended mailchimp as a way to handle sending out that many emails. I was certainly worried that my ISP would probably shut my normal email down, if I sent that many email over a short time from a normal email account.

Mailchimp was a delight to use. Very straightforward, good explanations, very clean layout, easy navigation, and after pulling the trigger (about 45 minutes ago) , I got to see their analytics, and for a free service, it is amazing. I can believe I was contemplating emailing from my personal account (actually I can, but you get the picture) Here is the email, please share this URL: http://eepurl.com/bNhGnP

Google Forms

Google Docs has a Forms creation capability, and I needed a "Register for a monthly newsletter" type form. It was relatively easy to create, and you end up with a link to the form (for filling it out mode) that does not require you to be logged into anything, which is what you would want for this type form. So you include the link to the form in the outgoing mail, and recipients click it and fill in the form, hopefully. The form results are then added to a spreadsheet, that you need the account password to login and view. Pretty nice integration, relatively easy to setup and use, but not as easy as Mailchimp

The New Website: Jekyll

I probably wasted 2 months last year trying to get my new web site up and running with Wordpress. It was a constant frustration as I was always trying to figure out how to get it to do what I wanted. I needed something clean and easy to use. I saw a web site I likes http://electronut.in/ (On Hackaday https://hackaday.io/electronut He has a real cool project snapVCC) and read his blog: http://electronut.in/switched-to-jekyll/ and wow did it resonate with my painful experience. So I asked if he could make a copy of his web site for me, strip out all his content, just leaving the scaffold for me to build my web site on. The result is the new website. I could go into details, but there is more than enough info that Google will find for you.

Still to do: A forum, examples, tutorials, FAQ, .... But good news is I am getting orders.