Hello, everyone, I’ve finally got around to migrating this blog to my grid-server at MediaTemple. While doing so I have taken this opportunity to upgrade to the latest and most secure version of Wordpress.
Please excuse the mess and I will be back to developing and upgrading your blogs shortly 
Ok, I know everyone is probably tired of all the design changes on this site but I think I’ve finally found the one. I decided to put the focus here more on my design work and less about ranting and I think it really works. Feel free to help me test the design or to suggest ideas to make it even cooler. Thanks for reading!
When news first broke of Shopify, I was ecstatic. A fully functioning, hosted shopping cart solution was a godsend for me as a web designer. I have several clients who thank me often for switching them over to such a robust, yet painfully simple ecommerce solution. After seeing the success that they’ve had, I have been quietly building a store of my own using Shopify.
Today I logged in to find out that: 1. The stats that are usually on my dashboard are missing, 2. the option to add a coupon is greyed out and there is now a link beside of it saying “upgrade your account.”
… I was at a lost for words. After further inspection, I was now listed as a “trial member” instead of simply having a free account. I was outraged. I wasn’t warned, offered an upgrade… nothing.
For everyone that hadn’t activated their account before August 11th, 2007 you are now a trial member. You have 5 free orders to process before you are forced to upgrade. Those that had an activated account were granted a “grandfathered” tier in which everything stayed the same… unless they need SKU’s for more than 1000 products, then they will be forced to upgrade and pay the new monthly rate.
Here are the new tiers:
As you can see, things have changed. The lovable Shopify.com that I brag about to all of my colleagues and clients about is no more. To get the same features I was getting for free, I now have to pay $59 a month for.
There is hope for those who had signed up before August 11th, 2007 but had not activated the payment gateway. Today I sent the following message using the Shopify support system:
Shopify, I have carefully been planning my launch for the past few weeks and I log in today to find out that since I didn’t activate my account, I haven’t been “grandfathered”. I feel that I too have been a loyal customer by simply telling my colleagues how amazing your free service has been so far.
I don’t think this is fair and would like to request that I be grandfathered as well. This is not what I signed up for, nor what I was promised - nor what I have been working on for weeks. I hope you all have the integrity to make this right.
Please help me resolve this.
Shortly thereafter I received an email saying that I was granted a “grandfathered” account. This shows integrity (and saves me $60/month), however, what about those people who we’ve all been raving to about the “free” Shopify???
I don’t know what it is about this time of the year but I have been absolutely swamped. I don’t think I’ve even looked up once since New Year’s and I am very thankful. I have worked with some great people and have learned so much already in 2007 that I can’t imagine things getting much better…more about this in a moment.
In other news, my friend Eric (notice the sweet blog design) has nominated me this week for a Thinking Blogger Award. I’m not exactly sure on what they are all about, but I appreciate it all the same… thanks for thinking of me!
Things really kicked off in January when I was commissioned to code a site for my friend and ex Facebook / Microsoft marketer, Noah Kagan. After finishing his site, he referred me to Tim Ferriss, an entrepreneurial author, who was looking for a blog design to promote his latest release, “The Four Hour Workweek”, which was released earlier this month. Please note that I only designed the blog portion of his site.
As I was finishing up on Tim’s site, I was able to land a deal with Joe Rogan, the guy from Fear Factor / News Radio / The Man Show / UFC, to help his team develop a blog for him. He wanted to be able to have RSS feeds and a mini-blog from the road so of course I recommended the love of my life, Wordpress. I wanted to take the design in a different direction, but they were worried it would not be consistent with the work they had done… so no worries. Hopefully he’ll hook me up when I’m out in LA. Look for the launch of the New JoeRogan.net later this month.
Soon after the Rogan era, Noah came through for me again in mid-march with his friend and venture capitalist Dave Feinleib. Dave wanted a design that wasn’t too cluttered and I am pretty confident I was able to come through for him. One of my best designs in my opinion.
And if things couldn’t get any better, I was able to join the Miami based startup, OurScene.com, by designing their landing page and blog. Jason Calliero and the rest of the Ourscene crew are doing big things that are going to effect the way music is done locally and globally so definitely check them out and reserve your seat for the beta.
That’s all for now, thanks again for a great year so far.