Building Shepherd - Busy 2 weeks + vacation!
1,835 authors have turned in a book list for Shepherd or committed to writing one(amazing as always 😃).
August 23rd - September 3rd
Busy busy busy... and going on Vacation.
The last two weeks have been insanely busy. I am going on vacation for 3 weeks starting on September 6th, so I've been trying to get everything ready before I go. It is just me and Jessy on this project full time so it is always hard to go on vacation when you are a small team.
Over the last two weeks I have:
Moved our entire email system to Zendesk. This was a massive move but it needed to be done. Working out of a shared email box was not working well. The transition went smoothly but we are running a bit behind on emails and working to catch up.
Moved our FAQ to Zendesk's FAQ system here. The good news is now I can add a lot more answers which will help Jessy answer more of the questions authors have without sending them to me.
Trained Joy to handle data entry around new author submissions. This is great as it will free up more of my time for marketing and product work. She is doing great so far! And, then I can focus purely on editing/reviewing the submissions before I send them to authors.
Trained Jessy to handle new types of emails, on Zendesk in general, and some other odds and ends. She is doing amazing and just hit her 3 month anniversary with Shepherd. I could not do any of this without her.
I am still behind on pending pages and follow-ups. I am going to catch up on those today and this weekend.
Timeline for the big 3 features...
The big 3 features are the new homepage, search, and topic pages (aka shelves). I am hoping we can ship all of those by the end of November (I'll have a better ETA to share in a month or so).
What is the status of those features?
The designer is finishing up the frontend code for the search feature and new homepage. Next, he will be working on finishing mockups for the Shelf pages and then coding those. So that should be ready to go by the end of September.
The developer is wrapping up the backend work for topics and shelves now. Next, he will be looking at search and researching some of the outstanding questions around that implementation After that he will be working on implementing the frontend pages for search, the new frontpage, and topic pages. I'll share a better ETA as we get further along.
What else is going on?
I dropped my wife and son off at the airport on Wednesday, as they are going back to the USA to visit grandparents for the next month. This is the longest we've been apart in several years. I am planning to do a huge bike ride for the next 3 weeks along some Camino routes in Spain and Portugal. Wish me luck :)
Thanks, Ben