Simplifying Your Editorial Business
In June, a plugin conflict caused the Club Ed website to crash. This was after a server problem took it offline for a weekend and we had to switch hosts.
I thought I was going to lose my mind. Having Club Ed offline not only costs money but greatly inconveniences students.
The website developer said, “We can talk to the plugin developer and try to solve the problem!”
But by then I was verrrrry tired of website problems. I decided that the best way to ensure that the website didn’t crash on the next update was to remove the problem plugin entirely.
This meant that I had to do some things by hand that had previously been done automatically. But I’m not a huge conglomerate, I’m just a person who teaches editing. It’s okay if I have to do some things by hand. If it prevents the Club Ed website crashing? I’m HAPPY to do it.
Why Simple Works
It was a membership program plugin that caused the problem, so when a new member signs up, I have to send them a welcome email manually. Sure, sure, I could get something set up that would solve this (Zapier! SureTrigger!), but it’s not as if I have ten thousand members signing up every day. It takes literally thirty-seven seconds to cut, paste, and customize the template email, then send it.
An unexpected benefit of doing it this way is that I’m actually communicating in person with members when they first join. They know that. They feel like they can ask questions or tell me a little more about their reasons for signing up. No one ever did that when the email was automated.
I can add something personal to the email, like, “I know we’re connected on LinkedIn and I always enjoy your posts. I’m glad you’re here!” It creates a good vibe.
I was telling all this to a friend of mine who also runs an online business, and she said, “And you saved yourself the cost of the plugin! Seems like everyone’s making money from my website but me,” and, friend, I felt that in my soul.
So then I started to scrutinize ALL the tech tools. All the plugins, all the services, everything.
I got rid of a lot of extras that I thought people would like but which no one seemed to use. After I got rid of those things, not one single person noticed! To them, everything functions the same as it ever did, I just seem a little more relaxed.
The other great result of this effort is that I have a much better understanding how everything works. I know how all of the plugins I now use operate. I know how to do every task in website maintenance. Now I can fix things when they need to be fixed, not on someone else’s schedule while I’m on standby mode, biting my fingernails.
Take some time to consider if your processes are really serving you. A form on your website might be efficient, but would visitors feel more welcome if they could just shoot you an email? Would a simpler website serve you just as well as one with lots of (expensive and finicky) bells and whistles? We have a tendency to think that just because technology exists, we really should use it. But we should only use it if it really does make our work better, not just more efficient.
