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Better Startup (Part 3): The 15 Web Apps that powers WooThemes
23. Jul, 2009 by Adii Rockstar in WooCamp
For the new Better Startup post, I figured that you may find value in knowing what web apps we use (and right highly) at WooThemes. These are the applications / services that completely runs WooThemes on a daily basis and I don’t think it’d be possible for us to get this much work done without it.
The Website
WordPress (Link)
WordPress
We’d be hypocrites if we didn’t use WP to power our main website, right? 
Basically when we set out to design & develop the WooThemes website last year, we only knew how to use WordPress, so we never really considered any alternatives. But looking back over a very successful year (and massive growth), I think that WooThemes is evidence that you can build a very efficient business (website) on WP. It’s definitely not just a publishing platform…
bbPress (Link)
bbPress
We use bbPress to power our support forums on WooThemes and whilst it is most definitely not the best or most mature forum / discussion board platform out there, it plugs into our WP setup beautifully. Also, along with the “Support plugin” for bbPress, the forum functions completely like a support ticketing system.
aMember (Link)
aMember
aMember is responsible for the magic that happens behind the scenes. aMember too plugs into our WP + bbPress setup and is responsible for the user management bits on WooThemes. So the user dashboard, downloading of themes, affiliate program and buying / checkout procedures are all controlled by aMember. We also use 2Checkout.com as our payment processor, which integrates into aMember to include the transactional functionality.
Feedburner (Link)
Feedburner
I have a tendency of thinking that RSS’ days are over, since it’s so much easier getting information from Twitter (then again, it’s all information overload anyway)… But we still use Feedburner religiously in tracking the amount of subscribers on our RSS feeds and up until now, there is no real alternative to Feedburner. If you’re into your stats then, Feedburner is a kinda non-negotiable element within your arsenal.
Pingdom (Link)
Pingdom
Beyond being online 24 / 7 and refreshing the WooThemes website every 30 seconds (to check whether it’s gone down), there’s not much you can do to ensure 100% uptime of a website (which is very important for us, as we’re actually selling something). So we use Pingdom to notify us via SMS & e-mail instantaneously if everything weird is up with the server. The SMS functionality is nice, as it then allows us just to send a quick mail to our web support guys; most of the time from our iPhones…
Communication & Project Management
Gmail (Link)
Gmail
Considering that we’re very much a virtual company, our whole team needs to have access to the WooThemes e-mail accounts, so that we can basically cover for each other should Magnus go fishing in Alaska for a week and a half (for example hehe). We’ve tried other mailroom applications in the past, but found that Gmail is the easiest and most efficient in terms of dealing with the bucketloads of mail we get on a daily basis.
Basecamp (Link)
Basecamp
Basecamp is probably the cornerstone on which we build all of our planning & communications. Whilst we probably don’t use Basecamp as much as we should, all of our most important decisions, to-do’s, ideas and data is on our Basecamp profile. The nice thing about Basecamp is that it’s always there, without getting in our way or forcing us to use it instead of e-mail / Skype.
Prologue 2 (Link)
P2
This is something new that we’ve been experimenting with in the last couple of weeks… We use P2 as an internal Twitter of sorts, where we get to keep each other updated on what we’re doing in a more real-time way. Since we don’t work from the same office all the day, it’s important for us to know what’s happening during the day. We’re definitely still figuring out how to get the best value from P2, but initial signs are promising in terms of increasing our productivity.
Marketing
Twitter (Link)
We’ve slowly been building the WooThemes presence on Twitter and whilst we don’t have a set strategy in terms of how / when we use Twitter, we find the most value from using it to broadcast our news, as well as add some interaction between ourselves and those interested in interacted with us (albeit customers, users of our free themes or just any Average Joe).
CoTweet (Link)
CoTweet
In addition to Twitter, we’ve started to use CoTweet to allow the whole WooTeam to monitor our Twitter account for @replies & DM’s. And the initial thoughts on CoTweet is that it’s an extremely sexy web app that does what it promises extremely well.
Peashootapp (Link)
Peashootapp
Peashoot is another of those apps that we’ve only recently started using, but we’re really enjoying the experience whilst figuring out exactly where the benefit of using the service is. We’re currently using it to track (especially) our Twitter marketing campaigns (in terms of clicks on links and re-tweets). We’ve also added our custom domain (woourl.com) for URL shortening, which allows us to use Peashoot (along with our affiliate program) to track conversions on our paid advertising (on other sites) much more accurately. Even though we’re thus still finding our feet with Peashoot, it’s definitely worth the $25 / month!
Campaign Monitor (Link)
Campaign Monitor
We’ve been using Campaign Monitor since the Premium News Themes days and haven’t looked back once. Our monthly e-mail newsletters are sent out with Campaign Monitor and beyond the ease-of-use (in terms of managing our subscriber lists & sending out new newsletters), we absolutely love the bundled analytics that we get after each newsletter. In addition, this is the newsletter software (??) for designers, so why wouldn’t we use it?
Development
Beanstalk (Link)
Beanstalk
I’ve mentioned this on multiple posts that I’ve written before, but using SVN has completely changed the way we develop our themes. In fact, it’s changed the process so much that I’d never be able to work without SVN again. So Beanstalk is just our hosted SVN repository, where all of our themes are housed. Benefits of going hosted compared to self-hosted? I dunno… We never explored that option, but having it hosted makes the admin side of things so much easier.
Lighthouse (Link)
Lighthouse
Whilst we use bbPress for a public support forum / ticketing system, we use Lighthouse to track all of the reported bugs, which needs to be fixed in themes. Along with the bugs, we also have a separate list of potential new features which we review regularly in terms of deciding which will make it into the packaged themes. Since we’ve started using Lighthouse, I believe we’ve missed very few bugs and it’s also sped up our bug fixing / updating processes. We probably also need to integrate this into our Basecamp profile sometime…
Other
Vimeo (Link)
Vimeo
You may ask why not YouTube? Well, no other video service is as cool and fun to use as Vimeo. We don’t use Vimeo too often at the moment, but all of our promo, tutorial & support videos are housed on our Vimeo account. We’ve found Vimeo to be quite fast and it does exactly what we need it to do. So nothing special to rave about; instead it just allows us to focus on creating the content and then effortlessly publishing it online.
And that’s the list… Don’t think we’ve left anything out, but if we did, then it’s probably because it’s not *that* important to us. So ask us any questions about why / how we use these apps / services listed above and maybe also share some of the things that you’ve found useful in running your businesses / projects.ww
23 July 2009 at 10:41 pm #
ooowh. so these are the webapps that the big guys are using. hohoho.
23 July 2009 at 10:44 pm #
Awesome tips! I thank you for this
23 July 2009 at 11:21 pm #
Nice… there are a number of apps here I have not heard of yet.
I have to say, I’m surprised you guys went with amember – I’ve just heard a lot of horror stories about them. I’ve been playing around with Wishlist Member (a paid plugin), and while it has had its quirks, all in all it’s a great system.
Thanks for sharing your indispensables; time to go do some poking around!
24 July 2009 at 2:31 am #
Thanks for sharing Adii!
Have you ever tried using Git for source control? Github (for Git) works really well with Lighthouse. You can hook up the API’s and link your commits to your tickets in Lighthouse. You can even change the ticket state in your commit message(mark it resolved, etc.). It is really powerful stuff. We have been using them together for about a year now and I must say it really boosts workflow/productivity.
24 July 2009 at 8:29 am #
Woh !! That’s a neat rundown, it shall help other virtual companies to compare with what they are currently using. Thx.
24 July 2009 at 8:48 am #
Definitely better than SVN. Good stuff keep it up.
24 July 2009 at 2:37 pm #
Love. Love. Love these types of posts. Thanks for providing a level of transparency into your business that others wouldn’t dare even think of. This kind of thing is what separates you guys from the pack of imitators and puts you in a league of your own. Keep up the good work.
24 July 2009 at 2:42 pm #
Great list, guys!
Would be great to know how you manage your time through these app.
I guess they all are time saver, but how can you keep up with them all?
- Enrico
24 July 2009 at 5:14 pm #
Great post. Love to hear more “behind the scenes” stuff about Woo!
26 July 2009 at 12:51 pm #
I thought Vimeo was for non comercial use only? Great list and Coll to see justifications given for each.
27 July 2009 at 11:57 am #
Thank you very much for the great info. I just recently signed up for Campaign Monitor and really like it so far.
28 July 2009 at 2:57 pm #
Very interesting, and might I say its wonderful of you to share this information. Certainly helps people out!
28 July 2009 at 5:49 pm #
I’ve heard about Git a lot too, but if SVN is working so well for you, I don’t see the reason to switch. I’ve also used beanstalk with lighthouse, and I find it already works extremely well.
There are a lot of tools out there (especially on windows/mac) for SVN, and I haven’t found a great way to integrate Git on my machine.
For working in small teams internally, I don’t really see the advantage of switching, but I’d be interested if someone could show me otherwise!
Thanks for the list going to check some of those out! (Already use Wordpress,Basecamp,Beanstalk,Lighthouse,Gmail,Twitter, and Viemo)
29 July 2009 at 1:12 pm #
Great post guys thanks heaps
I’ve just been looking around and settled on the 37 Signals range to get my crew organised
if anyone has a really good invoice web app that looks great, tracks sales and works with basecamp I’m all ears.
6 August 2009 at 12:42 pm #
We’ve also started using amember and the templates are just horrible indeed. In case someone comes across a set of clean templates that can be used as a base…
18 August 2009 at 11:50 pm #
Great post. How easy was it to implement aMember with WordPress? Is there an already built plugin?
Cheers. Dean
20 August 2009 at 10:41 am #
Awesome, thanks for your story, gorgeous share of thoughts.
Btw I think there is much better project manager than Base Camp – PHP powered GNU Project Pier (www.projectpier.org)
24 July 2009 at 7:30 am #
I’ve heard good stuff from Git, but is it an easy switchover from using SVN to Git?
24 July 2009 at 7:32 am #
aMember has been great thus far and we haven’t once looked back on that decision. Also – Wishlist Member wasn’t available at that time, so it wasn’t an option…
24 July 2009 at 4:26 pm #
We use aMember as well. I will say the system powering aMember seems to be pretty robust.
The templating on the other hand is an absolute nightmare. You will end up having to scrap all the default templates and build them yourself if you want valid, clean code.
24 July 2009 at 7:33 am #
The big guys huh? I wouldn’t say that quite just yet…
24 July 2009 at 1:51 pm #
What makes it better?
24 July 2009 at 4:33 pm #
The conversion is really painless and once you get comfortable with Git you will really appreciate the flexibility of it’s distributed nature, especially working with a team. Here is a good overview of switching from SVN to Git followed by an article comparing the two:
http://git.or.cz/course/svn.html
http://git.or.cz/gitwiki/GitSvnComparsion
If you are seriously considering a switch feel free to get in touch if you have a questions about using Git for WP theme development.
24 July 2009 at 5:37 pm #
I totally agree with you about aMember being a nightmare to template!
But the system behind that is indeed very robust and Woo wouldn’t be Woo without that functionality.
24 July 2009 at 5:37 pm #
Thanks for those links! I’ll definitely do some research, since I’ve heard quite a few people mentioning Git as a better alternative to SVN as of late.
24 July 2009 at 5:38 pm #
Well, it’s really our hope that people actually find value not only in our products / services, but also our experiences in design, development and just running a business as a whole!
27 July 2009 at 7:15 am #
It was only last week brought to my attention that Vimeo was for non-commercial use only; so we’re still looking into this.
7 August 2009 at 8:57 am #
I don’t think there are out-of-box template sets available for aMember. Ours is obviously custom-designed & developed.
7 August 2009 at 1:40 pm #
Yeah I saw that and I admire it!
19 August 2009 at 8:12 am #
Yes, there are plugins. There is one by Amember and there are several options from external developers as well.