Category: Hardware and Software

How I built and launched a SaaS app in one month

In June of this year, I had an idea for a software-as-a-service (Saas) application that I wanted to build and launch. On July 1st, I committed the first lines of code to a git repo for the app. After about 200 hours of development time, on August 10th I launched the first version of the application into the world, ready for users and subscribers.

The service is called WP Lookout and you can read more about the service itself and why I built it on wplookout.com. This post is about the process, tools and services I used to build and launch a SaaS application in what felt like a relatively short period of time.

Here’s the short list of resources I used along the way if you just want to explore them without further commentary:

  • Laravel for the application framework
  • Laravel Homestead for my local development environment
  • PhpStorm for software development
  • Laravel Spark for scaffolding the SaaS subscription and account management
  • Stripe for subscription payment processing
  • Laravel Nova for an administrative dashboard
  • Git and GitHub for tracking code development, to-do items and feature branches
  • Upwork for hiring and paying a software code reviewer and consultant
  • Slack for coordinating with my contractor
  • TermsFeed for generating privacy policy and terms of service documents
  • Amazon Web Services for application hosting
  • Laravel Vapor for managing AWS setup and deployment
  • WordPress for building the WP Lookout marketing website
  • Matomo for privacy-focused analytics
  • HelpScout for managing user support interactions
  • MailerLite for handling new user onboarding and marketing automation

I’m not going to go in-depth on all of these tools, as some of them are pretty simple and self-evident in their value. Others are just magical and deserving of some additional observations. Here are some things that stood out and what I learned along the way:

Continue reading How I built and launched a SaaS app in one month

New WordPress and WooCommerce plugin: Harmonizely Booking Product

I’ve released a new, free plugin for WordPress and WooCommerce, Harmonizely Booking Product. The plugin creates a new WooCommerce product type that allows you to sell access to scheduled appointments on your calendar, using Harmonizely.

Here’s a quick video to show you how it works:

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Harmonizely and they did not ask or pay me to create this plugin, I’m just a fan of the service who wanted to create more ways to use it within the WordPress ecosystem. This post does contain some referral links where I may receive a small percentage of any sales that might result from readers clicking through.

There are a growing number of options to handle appointment scheduling, and if you’re in some field where people schedule things with you a lot (consultant, agency, counselor, accountant, lawyer, healthcare professional) I hope you’re looking at those tools to save you some time. One of the main reasons I like and settled on Harmonizely is because they support the open CalDAV standard for calendar connections and syncing, where as many other services only support Google Calendar or other proprietary connections. (This is especially important to me as a part of advocating for an open web.)

I also like Harmonizely because the service is simple and fast, they regularly release improvements and new features, they have a small and responsive team, and they’ve made their product roadmap public and interactive. Their basic tool is free and they have very affordable pricing for an upgraded version.

Creating this plugin to work with WooCommerce means that anyone who has an existing WooCommerce-powered store can add booking functionality in and keep using their existing payment methods, plugins and other settings. I can imagine a content creator who already sells access to video courses or other educational resources might enjoy being able to let users schedule a quick call with them for a small fee, too. Or maybe someone who offers troubleshooting services of some kind can now give their customers a quick way to pay for and schedule an appointment. There are lots of possibilities, and WooCommerce offers tons of flexibility so you can integrate with Stripe, Paypal, Square and other payment processors.

If you want to sell access to your time through a website, I hope you’ll take a look at Harmonizely, WooCommerce, and this new Harmonizely Booking Product plugin. If you have questions or need help, you can submit a support message or open a GitHub issue.

Enjoy!

WP Engine is a great web host for WordPress developers

I’ve been aware of WP Engine’s WordPress hosting offerings for quite a while now, but I only recently had a chance to dive deeply into the features and benefits they offer to WordPress developers, and I was really impressed.

(Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with WP Engine and am not being compensated by them in any way for this review. But this post contains some referral links where I may receive a small percentage of any sales that result from readers clicking through, and where readers may receive a discount on their purchase.)

Some of the things about WP Engine that stood out to me as really helpful and awesome for WordPress developers:

  1. Super-fast, comprehensive site backup snapshots and cloning. The ability to quickly make a copy of an entire production site (with a large DB and tons of media) to a staging version of that site, or just to a backup snapshot, is a huge benefit. Being able to do it at a click of a button without messing around with export/import tools, find-replace operations or similar command line intervention is just awesome, and enables all sorts of other development best practices when it comes to testing changes and having a safety net for production updates. It’s SO fast, usually completing within a minute or two, so you can make backups/clones all day long without delay. It’s better than any other site backup or environment cloning tool I’ve used in the WordPress hosting space.
  2. Deep integration with git repo management. Although the instructions and interface for setting it up needs a little expanding and polishing, the WP Engine makes it really easy to set up a git repo for a given hosting environment, where changes pushed to its main branch are quickly deployed to the associated environment. They’ve thought through the complexities of exclusions and co-existing with WordPress-initiated core/plugin/theme updates. Add in the GitHub Action to deploy to a WP Engine environment and you’ve got a really sweet development and deployment pipeline setup, all using industry best practices.
  3. Fast and powerful SSH command line access, optimized for security and WP CLI operations. WP Engine seems to understand that command line operations are an essential tool in a WordPress developer or site manager’s toolkit, and they make it really straightforward to use.
  4. Robust system status monitoring and reporting. Whereas some hosts update their system status page well after an impacting event, WP Engine seems to have theirs wired up to show a closer-to-realtime status, and that makes all the difference in not wasting time when troubleshooting or reacting to problems. I also really appreciate that they offer email, Slack and webhook-based notifications for status events, offering endless possibilities with integrating platform events into your development tools and workflows.
  5. Thoughtful tools for keeping WordPress current and secure. WP Engine clearly understands the importance of keeping WordPress core up to date and making sure no insecure plugins or themes are in place any longer than is absolutely necessary. While I think responsibility for these things generally falls to a developer and not the host, I appreciate that they’ve invested in infrastructure here, and I’m sure it benefits them and their support operations in the long run too.
  6. Great support, great communication. Whenever I’ve used the WP Engine support chat they’ve been fast, knowledgeable and straight to the point without being curt. If a question or issue needs input from another internal team, they seem to be able to do that quickly and without any resistance. Their documentation is generally well-written and organized.

In the project I was working on where I finally got to see these features directly in action, I had evaluated a variety of hosts including SiteGround, Pressable, WordPress.com Business, and WP Engine. I picked WP Engine for the above reasons and others, including their focus on WordPress-specific performance optimization.

To be clear, I’m not saying WP Engine is the best WordPress host for every use case, or even most use cases out there. Whether you’re a non-technical WordPress site owner looking for something simple and low-cost, or an enterprise-level site needing something that scales for Superbowl-level traffic with commensurate high-touch support, there are lots of great options out there that might be a better fit. (Having been a part of Automattic/WordPress.com/WordPress.com VIP and seeing the incredible investment in scalable infrastructure there, I know the details really matter at those different ends of the spectrum; I still frequently recommend their offerings too.)

But for a WordPress developer or small development team deploying custom theme and plugin code to a high-traffic site and wanting great WordPress-specific tools, systems and people to support them in that, WP Engine really stands out as worth a look.