A place for everything you love, like or want to shout out about on your website.
Had to make changes to shoutouts today that doesn't let you use the account until you have confirmed your email. In the past it gave you 5 days to confirm before logging you out. So many sign ups the past few days but no confirmations.
I'll also automatically delete accounts, with zero notice, that don't have any shoutouts or themes, and are not confirmed. Best way to handle those accounts and keep the database clean.
If you're on the edge of subscribing to shoutouts, I have some good news, and it's running until the end of the month, you can get 40% off on the yearly (usually $20) using OMGWHATAREYOUDOING. Use it, share it, print it on T-Shirts 😋
It'll help keep the lights on if you're able ✌️❤️
I tweaked the shoutouts list view this morning (afternoon 😅). It takes a little bit more space, but I kinda like the room to breathe. Let me know what you think.
Guess what you can do on shoutouts now? Yeah, waste time and upload an avatar... wooo! Only used in the header and nowhere else (for now — I know I know, I have ideas... which came to me as I wrote this post).
Howdy gang! So it's been a while since I shipped anything for shoutouts, and that's OK. I believe shoutouts is a finished product, and I had so many positive comments and hardly any features requests.
Saying that, I did ship a few things, although mainly behind the scenes. One feature that is new is the ability to target a specific element on your site/page, meaning you can add the script where you want and it'll insert your shoutout where you want. You can see the documentation here (head on to the bottom of the page and see "Target specific element").
Also I'm slowly bringing across changes I made to tinylytics in terms of UI bits, but that is a slower task. I really love re-using elements across my projects. They all carry each other.
If you read my post on moving payment provider for tinylytics, it's no surprise that I moved shoutouts too. It's live right now for new subscribers 🍋
Saying that, I also looked at the pricing because it felt that the "pick your own price" was a little confusing, so I changed this around.
Now there are two plans, one is $2/month and the other, you guessed it, is $20/year.
Shoutouts is a very niche, fun, product. I also get that people are put off by spending money up front for 1 year of commitment. So I hope that the monthly will be an option to explore.
Alas, there is also a free plan giving you 3 free shoutouts (try saying that a few times) and the default theme. Upgrade for unlimited shoutouts and themes.
I don't expect to make a living from shoutouts, and as long as I can cover hosting & operating expenses, then that's a positive for me.
In general I need to make around $50 before I get a payout from my new payment provider, and $100 for the old one (so that's gonna be interesting to tell them I left). So that's my aim. $50/month... somehow.
I know I said that I think it's a finished product, but... BUT... I have ideas that did not make it into the first version. I'd still like to pursue that.
If you have any specific changes you want to see, for example an integration with tinylytics (😅), I am all ears. It can be what you want.
It's important for me to show what I make, get it out there, but then be able to pivot to feature requests, and be open to them. So please, just let me know.
✌️❤️
Ah yes, one more nice little change to shoutouts this fine 2AM, is that you can now target any specific element on your page by class name and it will insert your shoutout there (if it finds the element). Documentation here. Just a little more flexibility for you ✌️
Some bigger news for shoutouts... You can now have a free account with up to 3 shoutouts and 1 default theme. Upgrade for more, and to support the project ✌️❤️
With some tweaks to the Tinylytics UI, I also added the new style account UI to shoutouts. In addition, I hide the billing link in the header if you're subscribed already, just to keep it tidy.
Small tweak to shoutouts.lol this morning, because I didn't like all this whitespace coming through in the embed script...
Yikes! Well, no more:
A little bit more for me to do here, and you can guess what that might be 😁
Nice that Ruby on Rails includes a `escape_javascript` helper.
I'm thinking of introducing a free tier for shoutouts.lol, instead of a trial. 3 shoutouts for free, upgrade to have more. Thoughts?
Just posted about the operating costs of shoutouts.lol. If you're interested, check out the mini post.
I've switched payment provider for shoutouts.lol today. Details on the blog here.
The thing I love about shoutouts.lol is that it's pretty much a complete product. Except some very minor extras, I'd say it's complete. Does exactly, minus theme sharing, what I wanted it to do. Now it's up to customers.
There are a few intermittent DNS issues with the shoutouts.lol zone. Hopefully will resolve itself. Will monitor in the AM and provide an update. Sorry if this affects you.
Deployed some tweaks to shoutouts.lol today. Mainly around themes, which I just announced.
I've added the ability to bring in your own stylesheet for the main Themes page preview. Super useful if you want to see what it looks like on your actual site.
