Third time lucky - 69% sexier than my other sites :)

tr1stan

Perch
Dearest Jodoiens,

Here is my first attempt at designing a site to solve a problem instead of just entertaining.

http://www.billster.net has been up for a month or so now, and we are still in the testing phase before we brave it and go totally public.
I thought I'd let you guys have a sneak preview (seeing as you?ve helped me with my other sites).
Please bear in mind that there might be a few bugs (or as microsoft call them, features) so if you find anything that is a little peculiar, let us know using the feedback form. People who help us by providing suggestions will get a bronze account, as we believe that you should always remember who helped you get where you are.

Stephen, I expect that you'd be the first to sign up from this forum; I look forward to having your feedback as it?s normally worth reading.

Tristan
 
:) I am looking through it, I am packing up some items today but will check it out in the next few days.

I really like the clean crisp colors that you always use however, I will give more input later
 
Hi Guys,

It might seem a bit rude but I'm not actually hosting this particular site with Jodo (at the moment), we are hosting with another company this side of the Atlantic as that's were we are based and the UK is our target audience at present. When we start hitting the US we will have a version hosted in the US, probably with you guys - and I think we'd have to go for a dedicated service too :)

I do however host ALL my other sites with Jodohost but we weren't getting the response times that the team required from your side of the pond :(

There we go, don't hate :p

Tristan
 
Its OK, I can understand the reasoning, having things closer to intended audience for some items can be good.
 
Wow, the GUI is really pretty :)

I'm curious, how are you hosting this? Is it on a dedicated server?

Thanks, I'm glad you like the interface - this is actually v3 so it's gone through a lot of changes, we are not hosting on a dedicated service yet as we are waiting for a server to be setup. If all goes well we should have one in the next week or so.

Have you signed up for an account, if so, what did you think once you were in?

Tristan
 
Have you signed up for an account, if so, what did you think once you were in?

Yeah, just signed up :)

I haven?t had much time to play with it yet, but so far I?m really impressed by it.

I really like the showing of bills between a certain period via the drag-able timeline. That was really neat. Though initially I didn?t notice that ?Apply? link. I was thinking that as I dragged and let go, it would automatically change.

The RSS for each of the bill categories is really nice :) Is it working right now though? I?m using RssBandit and I couldn?t access it.

Some Initial Issues:
1. Even though I selected the ?$? for my preference, I still see the ?pound? sign.

2. Initially for bills, I wasn?t quite sure what the ?reference? field was for (I think it might have to do w/ the terminology). Also, I didn?t know it was required until after I hit the Save button.

I?ll try to test it out some more soon. But great job you guys! Very impressed :)
 
Thanks Liming, I'm glad you like what you've seen so far.

The RSS for each of the bill categories is really nice Is it working right now though? I?m using RssBandit and I couldn?t access it.

This is an interesting one, did you choose to keep yourself signed into the system? The RSS requires authentication, and at the moment this realise on you checking the "Remember me" check box. I will install RssBandit and have a play!

Even though I selected the ?$? for my preference, I still see the ?pound? sign.

Ah yes, we are still working on this, we're also trying to solve a much bigger issue, which is the "multiple people, multiple currency" problem, we've got the solution, we're just implementing at the moment.

Initially for bills, I wasn?t quite sure what the ?reference? field was for (I think it might have to do w/ the terminology). Also, I didn?t know it was required until after I hit the Save button.

Agreed, and we will probably rename this to NAME and identify as required with a *, what do you think?


Tristan
 
I get

Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)

when I try to visit the site (I'm in England too)

????

That's because we're not using Jodo as our hosting company ;) The hosting company we are using (who are very well know) can't get their fingers out and sort our sites, roll on our dedicated server.

Tristan
 
This is an interesting one, did you choose to keep yourself signed into the system? The RSS requires authentication, and at the moment this realise on you checking the "Remember me" check box. I will install RssBandit and have a play!

Hey Tristan, I just clicked on the "remember me" checkbox, but I still get an error. This is the error I get on RssBandit: Refresh feed 'Billster' failed with error: This XML document does not look like an RSS feed."


Agreed, and we will probably rename this to NAME and identify as required with a *, what do you think?

The '*' would definitely help. As for changing "reference" to "name" that might be good, but could it be a cultural issue? Perhaps English people would understand "reference" better?

Or perhaps you could add an example like, "e.g. McDonalds" or something like that (I'm not sure if that would fit your design).

But it's not a big deal though. It was only the first time I got confused, but afterwards I'll knew what it was :)
 
Thanks for getting back liming,

This whole issue with the authenticated RSS is a little larger than first thought and is being reviewed, thanks for your input.

I'm not just putting the finishing touches to an improved in-line help system eg: when the occurrences box appears, a little bubble pops up to tell what it's used for - and there will be help button along side all the form elements so that a user can quickly see what a section is used for. This is only on the dev server at present, i'll let you know when the changes go live.

Tristan
 
...
Some Initial Issues:
1. Even though I selected the ?$? for my preference, I still see the ?pound? sign.

You'll be pleased to know that the currency issues have now been resolved.

All your bills will now show with the correct symbol :)

Tristan
 
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