WPwatercooler - Weekly WordPress Talk Show

Today we are discussing “Billing for site maintenance” for our WordPress clients with Suzette Franck, Lucy Beer, Steve Zehngut, Dave Jesch, Andrew Behla, Chris Lema, Gregg Franklin, Oscar Gonzalez, and our host Jason Tucker. ** Billing for site maintenance Maintenance defined: Clients that are already launched a phase 1 of a project and now we are moving into scope increase and changes. Any hours that we are going to be spending time on. Oscar does web development and includes a support contract. Steve is talking about scope increases and feature changes. Steve does not write maintenance into their original contract. As he approaches launch he determines how much maintenance is needed for the project. Hourly, monthly & retainer. Chris upfront during the quote he quotes different rates if they want to post delivery in video format. If the customer is getting all that they need from the videos then the price will go down. If they need handholding then the development cost goes up. Handholding costs more. Steve says that he like to set the expectation up front so there are no surprises. Andrew sees this as a challenge and had some examples to share Steve explains some of his warranty on his contracts. Gregg talks about a few solutions hes looking at: Backup, Protection against malware, upgrades to core and plugins. Hes using WordFence, WPmanage, InfiniteWP, Warpit.. lots out there. Chris like being upfront with a letter. Part of his includes hosting, $8 hosting or sends them to Jason Tucker or if they want to spending $30 a month with WPEngine. WPEngine includes a lot of what Gregg was talking about. Andrew talks about how clients just don't understand how all this works and Steve talks about setting expectations. Oscar talks about multi tiered warranty plans he offers his customers. Oscar sends an email to his customers telling them about new features in a plugin or such so they can assist them in doing upgrades using his services vs dealing with it themselves. Steve talks about issues that happen at 3am and the customer doesn't have a support contract with them. ** Pricing Oscar charges $650 – $950 a year or a custom price Their mid-price $3000 which includes 1 year of basic support, maintenance and backups for 1 year. Oscar uses host gator with dedicated servers. Chris Lema talks about the Advance WordPress group. He talks about a hack repair site that provides solutions for this we haven't used it yet. hackrepair.com Google Apps – Oscar provides this service doing setup and such as well as Steve talks more about pricing, they use a sliding scale. Their hourly rates are $150 for dev, $200 for project management and less for QA. Once the site is launched they can predict what the ongoing cost will be. If there is too much of this then they go about setting up a Phase 2. Chris tries to do away with maintenance and he talks about his method. Steve says that its hard to make money doing maintenance and unpredictable. Jason talks about it being a hard sell for smaller websites. Steve itemized out his billings. Chris has a funny one, for the next 7 days he will change whatever they want for free. After 7 days it will be $1000 per item. The trick is that he wants to build an advocate in the clients end. Oscar talks about perceived value in Chris' statement.

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Today we're discussing WordCamps with: Lucy Beer, Suzette Franck, Jon Brown, Verious Smith III, Cody Landefeld, Chris Lema, Steve Zehngut, Dre Armeda, Jeff Hester and our host Jason Tucker. WordCamps * Meeting people face to face and that awkward moment when you realize you aren't following someone you just met. * Networking and social aspects are key for these events. * Observing knowledge and learning, after attending a few events you tend to pick and choose the talks to want to see. * Hallway discussions are used more with the seasoned WordCampers. * Meeting in person makes it feel more like a community then just knowing people online. * Meetups are great for local networking, WordCamps bring in talented people from all over the country/world. * Dre speaks about WordCamp San Diego and how he brings in people that make his WordCamp a great event. * Intensive learning in 1 day is important to Suzette * Best sessions for Steve Z are the ones with more discussions occurring during the talk then just a presentation. * Cody L discusses his recent talk at WPLV and how he may team up with someone else to do more of a discussion about UX than a presentation about UX. * Dre talks about the Sucuri security presentations and how they go about doing their talks at various WordCamps. Lots of interaction. * Jeff Hester talks about various ways that people do things during their talks and how you can learn more by their live demos * Everyone asked Jon Brown about his upcoming WordCamp Maui, no date yet but all 10 of use want to go! Lots of logistics to still work out. * Suzette purchased tickets to BuddyCamp Vancouver * Question: What is the farthest WordCamp you have attended: * Cody – Austin, bbq! * Steve – San Diego * Lucy – Seattle * Chris – Toronto * Question: Where is one that you'd like to attend? * Jeff Hester – Maui and Paris * Dre – Australia * Chris – He'd suffer through going to Maui * Question: Do you bring your family and kids to WordCamp if it's in a remote location? * Dre – He has 30 kids, no way. * Chris – Travels 30-40% a year, he sometimes takes them but typically local. * Jason – Wants to take his up to SF next year. * WordCamp IE? * WordCamp Fresno? Meetups * Meetup Groups we talked about: * Orange County WordPress Meetup (OCWP) * Pasadena WordPress Meetup * WordPress Wednesday * Inland Empire WordPress Meetup Group (Coming Soon) * Southern California WordPress Meetup Group * Topanga WordPress Meetup Group * Advanced WordPress San Diego * Arizona WordPress Group (Chandler, Avondale & Tucson) * Maui WordPress * Find a local meetup near you on Meetup.com * Steve talks about Zeek's meetup space for OCWP * Verious is looking for a meetup space for the IE meetup. * WordCamp Central

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This is Episode 2 of our WPwatercooler show. * Twenty Twelve theme released to the repo – mixed feelings from all of the panel. * WordPress 3.5 beta 1 * Overhaul of the media library * XMLRPC enabled – They did this to allow their mobile apps to work with WordPress installation without users having to enable it. * Comparing the changes to the new changes in the Facebook Images * We feel this is not finished yet, which is isn't. * Links “blogroll” functionality removed. * Privacy settings moved * Press This * Jetpack Mobile Theme * Problems with Jetpack conflicting * Quality Control – webapp for WordPress * Customizing can be a pain with most webapps which makes it harder for the developer to recommend them to clients. * AppSumo – Great place to get deals for WordPress related stuff * InfiniteWP is the new hotness * A few of us host it on a webserver * Security questions regarding it * Jason had issues with Deny ALL, Allow specific IP * Most of us charge our clients to do maint agreements by leveraging InfiniteWP * Themes that suck –  Avada | Responsive Multi-Purpose Theme * Justin Tadlock brings the awesomeness – Unique: Customizable WordPress Magazine Theme * Bloated themes * The “plugin in a theme” makes things hard for a developer to work with * Making a newly installed theme look like the demo requires lots of work and confuses users * Documentation, Documentation, Documentation and Documentation! * Woothemes take work to make them look like the demo * ThemeForest take work to make them look like the demo * It shouldn't take a consultant to make easy changes to a theme that should work “out of the box” * Not documenting the prerequisite plugins * Post Type Switcher doesn't work with Press This. * You can download this show as an Audio Podcast in iTunes.  

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This is the first episode of WPwatercooler. We recorded our first episode of WPwatercooler today. A bunch of folks from the OC WordPress community got together and joined in. Topics discussed: Woothemes. Woocommerce. InfiniteWP. pricing models. Building an managing virtual teams by Chris Lema. Done Done. WordPress TV. OC WordCamp and video uploading. Crowd sourcing ebooks? [email protected] Loud typing! 🙂 Back to woothemes and pricing with developers license and their new pricing model. Monetizing and GPL. ElegantThemes StudioPress – Genesis Framework. Darthvader on the mic. iThemes developers suite. Licensing themes and giving your clients access to forums? Client needs to get their own account with the forum. Types and Views Dynamik Theme. Dealing with Child themes and managed clients. Avada on themesforest  Themeforest themes and updates. Licensing and paying for a theme for a client. Woothemes is $200 a year + a per month charge. Pass the charges off to you client so they are kept up to date. How much are you bringing in? Is this saving you money or time? It's a no brainer. There is a value to a solution Are the themes expensive? For a user it's steep but for a developer it empowers us to provide more for less. Client is paying for your expertises AND the theme you use. Sample content to go along with themes WooCommerce documentation is good WordCamp Las Vegas Adjusting permalinks Folks around the watercooler (left to right) Chris Lema, David Jesch, Jon Brown, Jason Tucker, Lucy Beer, Suzette Franck, Stephen P. Kane, Steve Zehngut, Brandon Dove and Sé Reed

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