Hi everyone. Instead of a closed test we've decided to make Interspire Email Marketer 6 beta available to all existing clients, regardless of which product(s) you own.

To get started just login to the client area and follow the orange notice on the main page. We're looking at a 1-2 week public beta period before release because the product is already quite stable after our 6 week internal testing cycle.

The beta is encoded with ionCube so you'll need to make sure your web server has the free ionCube loaders installed. Also the beta doesn't require a license key and expires on the 3rd of December 2009. Complete details are included in the client area and bugs can be reported directly from the application.

On Wednesday night from 5pm-7pm we held the first of many BigCommerce (BigCommerce is the hosted, fully managed version of Interspire Shopping Cart) partner events in Austin at Union Park. Judging by the attendance and interest in the BigCommerce platform, as well as the non-stop conversation and questions, I’d say the event was a definite success!

Around 75 web designers and business owners attended the meetup, curious to learn more about BigCommerce and mingle with our Austin team. Chris did an excellent job running the BigCommerce demo/Q&A stand and was overwhelmed with questions, interest and lots of “ooooohhs” and “ahhhhhhs” as he showed what BigCommerce can do – specifically how easy it is for web designers to roll out completely customized and fully functional stores for their clients quickly.

Lee, Dave, Scott, Travis, Amanda, Ryan, Luke, Brian and Caroline entertained guests and answered questions about BigCommerce (and our new partner program) while everyone enjoyed complimentary food and drink. I’ve included some pictures below that were taken on the night. A big thank you to everyone who attended, and we look forward to working with you through the BigCommerce partner program to grow your business!

#gallery-1 { margin: auto; } #gallery-1 .gallery-item { float: left; margin-top: 10px; text-align: center; width: 33%; } #gallery-1 img { border: 2px solid #cfcfcf; } #gallery-1 .gallery-caption { margin-left: 0; }

Hi everyone. We're extremely close to completing Interspire Email Marketer 6, which includes surveys, dynamic content and user groups, so I thought I'd put together a video showing you the new features in action. Just click the image above to watch the 12 minute video. It's a Quicktime video so if you have iTunes installed you shouldn't have any problems watching it.

As we wrap up our internal testing on Interspire Email Marketer 6 we're also looking for existing clients who would like a first look at the new features while participating in our closed beta program.

Please email iem6beta@interspire.com if you're interested - you'll need to include your existing Interspire Email Marketer order number as part of the email. We're looking for around 20 beta testers.

As I mention in the video, we're hoping to have Interspire Email Marketer 6 released in no longer than 2 weeks time. It will of course be a free upgrade for existing customers with a valid maintenance period.

Thanks and I hope you enjoy the video!

Calling all talented Linux system administrators!

Have you ever wanted to flex your sys admin muscle and take control of the systems powering an entire company? If you answered YES! then we have the perfect job for you...

Here's why:

Interspire is a leader in the ecommerce, knowledge management and email marketing spaces, with over 40,000 clients and growing. We develop software that businesses and organizations of all sizes rely on every day, including NASA, Virgin, Yale, Kraft, MediaTemple, SoftLayer and more.

Here at Interspire you'll enjoy:

• The opportunity to build, install and support a variety of servers – where your daily tasks will vary each day
• A great salary package commensurate with your skills and experience
• Extend your knowledge of open-source frameworks and technologies
• The opportunity to work in a great company alongside other Linux System Administrators and Web/IT professionals
• A relaxed and supportive work culture
• Ongoing professional development and potential career advancement as well as the chance to work in a dynamic evolving company that is well respected within the industry.
  

Other perks you'll love:

• All day access to a kitchen stocked full of free food and soda
• Work with like-minded people and managers with technical backgrounds
• Regular outings to celebrate company milestones and holidays
• The knowledge you're working to build something big
• Excellent career path for the right candidate
  

To be a perfect fit for this role you will need the following skills/attributes:

• Linux (Debian) experience
• MySQL database administration experience
• Experience configuring and maintaining Apache
• LDAP experience
• Postfix configuration and maintenance
• Configuration and troubleshooting of DNS, routing and connectivity issues
• Version control (svn, git)
• Experience with iptables firewalls
• Understanding of caching, load balancing, and high availability
• Demonstrate a good understanding of server security issues and web protocols
• Shell scripting
• A security-first attitude
• Demonstrate skills for proactively identifying and resolving potential problems
• A “can do” attitude and professional work practices
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills
• The ability and experience to work well independently as well as part of a project team
• You can take control of a technical situation and resolve it quickly and professionally
  

The following skills/attributes are also highly desirable but not required:

• VMWare Vsphere and/or Citrix XenServer
• VPNS (pptp and openvpn)
• NFS
• MemCache / Redis or other key value stores
• Samba
• Various other mail servers
• Google Apps
• Plesk
• SNMP / Nagios / Cacti
• RSync
• Puppet
• Java / Tomcat
• Alternative webservers (lighttpd, nginx)
• Bind and PowerDNS
• Windows server 2008 (active directory)
  

If you think you're right for this role, please send your resume and application letter to careers [AT] interspire [DOT] com. This is a full time role based in our Austin, Texas office.


The Interspire plaque in our Austin, Texas office


Just a few of the many talented team members in our Austin office

Since launching BigCommerce (the hosted version of Interspire Shopping Cart) in August the response has been incredible. As I've discussed in a previous post, both Interspire Shopping Cart and BigCommerce are being developed side-by-side and share over 95% of the same code, so we came to the conclusion that it makes sense to offer pricing for both products from our web site as well.

Up until today you had to visit BigCommerce.com to see BigCommerce pricing and compare plans, but I'm happy to tell you that we've just integrated the BigCommerce pricing tightly into the Interspire website as well. You can compare plans side-by-side and even sign up.

For all the designers our there: we've made extensive use of the -moz-border-radius and -webkit-border-radius CSS attributes as part of the design, so if you're on FireFox, Safari or Chrome the page will appear a little prettier. We've also redone the "Compare Editions" page for the licensed version as well.

Hi everyone. It's been a long time coming but today I'm happy to announce that our bug tracking and agile project management software, codenamed Track (powered by Jira and Greenhopper from fellow Aussies, Atlassian) is now live at http://track.interspire.com and is accessible for browsing by anyone.

We've been using Track internally for the last few months to aid in our switch from an adhoc to agile development methodology and so far things have gone well. We're not all the way there yet, but we've made excellent progress on:

• Daily stand ups for each development team
• Improved project planning and estimates
• Closer communication between development and support teams
• Tracking of key performance indicators (KPIs) including time, opened VS closed bugs, etc
• Visibility into stories from team members outside of development
• Assignment and resolution of critical bugs in a timely manner
• Automated generation of changelogs

Up until earlier this year we were developing based on a more adhoc approach, and while this worked OK to a point, it was hard to scale beyond having a handful of developers on each product.

As our engineering teams have continued to grow (especially the Interspire Shopping Cart/BigCommerce development team), we felt moving towards the agile methodology was the best way to maintain our release schedule as well as per-person accountability in a larger team.

At the moment the Interspire Shopping Cart/BigCommerce and Interspire Email Marketer teams are using the agile methodology and as such they're the main projects represented and visible in Track. We also maintain projects for our internal cross-project libraries such as our template and database libraries and also our Interspire.com website, however these projects are more for reference purposes only.

For now access to Track is read only - bugs should still be submitted through the client area so our support team can verify them and then log the steps for our engineers to replicate them. We may consider opening up Track for public bug submissions early next year.

Opening up Track is part of our ongoing strategy to increase transparency with clients and partners. Simply by visiting Track you can see the status of upcoming releases and even features you've requested. You can see time logged per developer, bugs resolved and assigned to be fixed, release dates and more.

We're in the process of moving our roadmap into Track as well, so keep an eye out for that over the coming weeks. Go ahead and visit http://track.interspire.com if you'd like to see how upcoming releases are progressing, specifically for Interspire Email Marketer 6.0 and Interspire Shopping Cart 5.1.

Any questions or comments are welcome - just leave me a comment below.

As you probably know by now, we've launched a hosted version of our ecommerce software called BigCommerce. Well, we're having a special launch event for web designers, developers and agencies in Austin, Texas and we'd really like it if you could attend.



You'll get to meet the Interspire team, see a demo of BigCommerce, learn more about our reseller program, network with like-minded individuals and most importantly have a great time. Oh, and there's complimentary food and drink too.

The launch event is on Nov 11th from 5pm-7pm at Union Park in Austin, Texas. It costs nothing to attend but spaces are limited, so please click the link below to reserve your spot now:

Click here to learn more or register now!



The launch event costs nothing to attend but spaces are limited, so please click the link below to reserve your spot now:

Click here to learn more or register now!

Please note: This is a reprint of our Interspire Insider Monthly newsletter.
Go to Interspire.com | Contact Us
You are subscribed as %%emailaddress%% Interspire Insider Monthly by Mitchell Harper, Interspire Co-Founder - 29th September 2009
 
IntroductionHi everyone. Welcome to the October 2009 issue of our newsletter - it's a few days early but we've got some exciting new to share with you.

If you've visited our website in the last few days I'm sure you've seen the banners for BigCommerce, our new hosted ecommerce offering which is of course powered by Interspire Shopping Cart.

BigCommerce makes it possible for anyone to launch a beautiful online store in just a few minutes - simply signup for a 15 day free trial, pick a store design, choose your shipping and billing preferences, add your products and you've got a store live ready to accept orders!

There's nothing to install, no hosting to buy, no servers to setup, no backups to worry about and no upgrades to install. We take care of everything so you can focus on growing your business with BigCommerce.

So why did we launch a hosted eCommerce solution and how can it help you? I'm going to answer these questions and more in this issue of Interspire Insider Monthly. I'll show you why we're so excited about BigCommerce and why thousands of stores have been launched since it went live. If you have questions I'll provide you with our contact details so you can get in touch too.

Thanks in advance and we'd love to hear what you think about BigCommerce.

Cheers,



Interspire Co-Founders
 
Table of Contents

1. What is BigCommerce?
2. How Can I Sell Online Using BigCommerce?
3. Why We Created BigCommerce
4. How Does it Differ From Interspire Shopping Cart?
5. What are the Plans for Development Moving Forward?
6. How Can I Benefit From BigCommerce as a Partner?
7. How Can I Make Money From BigCommerce as an Affiliate?
8. Who Can Answer My Questions About BigCommerce?
   

 
What is BigCommerce?


BigCommerce is a hosted, fully managed ecommerce platform which includes everything you need to sell your products online. We take care of all the "tech stuff" so you can focus on growing your business. We make sure your online store is always up and running, we push new features to your store as soon as they're ready to go and we're just a phone call away if you have any questions.

There's nothing to install, no hosting to buy, no servers to setup, no backups to worry about and no upgrades to install. We take care of everything so you can focus on growing your business with BigCommerce.  
How Can I Sell Online Using BigCommerce? It's extremely easy to sell your products online using BigCommerce!

Start by signing up for a 15 day free trial (no credit card required) so you can experience everything BigCommerce has to offer. The free trial is fully functional and the BigCommerce support portal includes a user guide and step-by-step training videos if you get stuck.

After you've signed up for your free trial store, our store launch checklist helps you get everything in place to launch your online store. That's really all there is to it. You don't need any technical skills and we're just a phone call (1-888-699-8911) or email (sales@bigcommerce.com) away if you need help or have questions.  
Why We Created BigCommerce We of course created BigCommerce based on feedback from customers like you. All too often we were receiving emails and calls from business owners and partners in the market for ecommerce software who didn't want to host it themselves for whatever reason.

It started off as just a few requests a day and over the period of a few months grew to dozens and even hundreds of requests a week. Some customers and people visiting the Interspire.com website were telling us they loved our software but that they weren't comfortable finding hosting, installing software, handling upgrades, etc, so that's when we decided to do something about it.

After deciding on the architecture, setting up the hosting infrastructure and hiring a team of eCommerce superstars we launched a limited beta release of BigCommerce in June of this year. We used the 2 month beta period to collect feedback from early users and iron out any issues we found and as they say, the rest is history.

Click here to go to the BigCommerce website  
How Does it Differ From Interspire Shopping Cart? BigCommerce is a hosted, fully managed SaaS (software as a service) eCommerce platform which requires absolutely no technical knowledge to use. You simply go to the BigCommerce.com website, sign up and your store is created for you automatically. It's similar to how you might use Gmail or SalesForce.

With BigCommerce you have full access to modify the look and layout of your online store using Drag & Drop Design mode, the QuickEdit online file editor or FTP to modify HTML/CSS files. BigCommerce includes a full "pull" API to get data such as orders, products and customers out of your online store, however the PHP code isn't available for customization.

When we release new features they're automatically pushed to your store and don't affect any template customizations you've made. All BigCommerce customers also receive free phone and ticket-based support.

BigCommerce operates as a month-to-month subscription with plans starting from just $24.95 per month. There are no contracts to sign and you can cancel at any time. We even offer a 15 day free trial so you take it for a test drive to see if it fits the bill.

To sum it all up, we take care of all the "tech stuff" so you can focus on growing your business. We make sure your online store is always up and running, we push new features to your store as soon as they're ready to go and we're just a phone call away if you have any questions.

Click here to go to the BigCommerce website  
What are the Plans for Development Moving Forward? Both Interspire Shopping Cart and BigCommerce will continue to be developed in parallel with the exact same featureset, so no matter which product you choose, we'll help you stay competitive when it comes to selling online.

Due to the nature of SaaS software (including a controlled platform and automatic upgrades), new features will be pushed to all BigCommerce stores as soon as they're released, which is generally every 6-8 weeks. Interspire Shopping Cart will continue its current release cycle which includes 2-3 major upgrades per year. Both products will have the exact same features, but they will be available through BigCommerce first.

Because we have to support hundreds of server configurations for Interspire Shopping Cart, it takes longer to develop and tweak certain features to run on these platforms. We don't have to do this extra development for features on BigCommerce because all of the servers run an identical configuration, thus meaning a faster time-to-market.

Click here to go to the BigCommerce website  
How Can I Benefit From BigCommerce as a Partner? If you'd like to grow the eCommerce consulting and customization side of your business without having to worry about managing servers, hosting, backups and upgrades, then you should consider the BigCommerce partner program.

BigCommerce has all of the features your customers demand, including a full ecommerce platform, built-in marketing tools, search engine optimized online store, business intelligence reports, easy customization and more. We take care of the hosting, backups, upgrades and security so you can focus on turning out more stores in less time.

Just like our Interspire partner program, we offer excellent incentives for BigCommerce partners. There are two partner levels for BigCommerce - authorized and certified. BigCommerce certified partners receive qualified leads and all partners recurring 25% monthly commission on referrals. You can learn more about the BigCommerce partner program if you're interested.  
How Can I Make Money From BigCommerce as an Affiliate? Just like our valued partner network, we wanted to give you the opportunity to make significant commission on BigCommerce. We've spent weeks crafting professional banner ads, web pages and email campaigns which you can use to drive people to BigCommerce - and of course make excellent upfront or recurring commissions in the process.

The BigCommerce affiliate programs were designed from the ground up to generously reward affiliates for promoting BigCommerce. We offer two affiliate programs - the upfront bounty program which pays up to $300 per sale and the recurring commission program which pays 25% ongoing monthly commission. You can learn more about the BigCommerce affiliate programs if you're interested.  
Who Can Answer My Questions About BigCommerce? Our team of BigCommerce experts will be more than happy to answer any questions you have. Just send an email to sales@bigcommerce.com or give us a call on 1-888-699-8911 between 9am and 6pm CDT Monday to Friday. You can also find answers to common questions, watch the video tour and start your 15 day free trial at BigCommerce.com.


  Copyright 2009, Interspire Pty. Ltd. ACN: 107 422 631
Level 9, 162-166 Goulburn Street, Sydney, NSW Australia 2010.
U.S: 1800 939 5570 | AUS: 612 9262-7770

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Hi everyone. Today I want to share with you some details on how we design features and user interfaces for our products, specifically Interspire Shopping Cart. I'm going to show you how we designed the new product image features we're currently working on. They were based on your feedback from the Ideas Lab and forum so I think you'll be quite impressed...

Mocking Up With Mockup

We design all of our prototypes using both the desktop (Adobe Air) and web-based versions of Balsamiq Mockup - an excellent freemium user interface design tool we've been using for quite a while now. It includes a series of pre-draw UI components which you can drag onto a canvas and customize as required. You can then export the mockup to an XML file for later or a PNG file to print/further edit in Photoshop.

Prototyping New Image Features

We've just finished the UI prototype for images in Interspire Shopping Cart which will give store owners the ability to:

• Upload an unlimited number of images
• Use different images on the home/category/search page and product page
• Set alt text for each image
• Re-order images using drag & drop
• Zoom images to see a larger version
• Choose images from their computer, web or server
• Show a larger version of an image on the product's page

The entire UI prototype was created in Balsamiq Mockup over the series of a few days and a few meetings between our various in-house teams (product managers and developers) using feedback from hundreds of customers we've spoken to about the way they want to use images in their online stores.

First up we've designed a new settings tab for images, which you can see below:

Then we designed the new "Images & Videos" tab when adding/editing products:


Here you can see there are three ways to add an image to a product:

1. Upload an image
2. Use an image from the web
3. Choose an image from the server

When you click the "Upload an Image" option you will be able to upload multiple images from your computer in one go because we make use of a flash-based image uploader.

When you click the "Use Image from Web" option you can upload up to five separate images like so:



When you click the "Choose from Gallery" option you can browse the folders on your server to choose one or more images, like so:


When you've uploaded your images you can then set their description (alt text) and choose which images will be shown both throughout the store and on the product page:



Conclusion

Of course Balsamiq Mockup just gives us the rough UI prototypes - we take these and apply our own design principles and styles to keep the UI consistent with the rest of the application, but it's a great way to create UI's quickly using nothing more than your web browser.

I'll post more information about the new features we're working on (including a neat way to find and add YouTube videos to your product pages, accepting payments online in real time when adding a phone order, storewide and per product/web page/category Google Website Optimizer tests, sales tax reporting, two way QuickBooks sync and dozens of new store designs + fixes) in the next few weeks, but for now the entire team is hard at work putting everything they have into the upcoming release which we hope you'll love.

Talk soon.

You told us you wanted to see some changes to our existing maintenance policy and we've listened.

Early next week we'll be launching a new and improved version of our maintenance policy, which will make it easier and more affordable to use Interspire software for your upcoming projects.

If you're a web designer or agency then our new maintenance policy makes it extremely easy to pass costs onto your client, especially since there will no longer be any charges to upgrade your client's software when we push out a new release. Combine this will the fact that all new purchases will now include 12 months of free maintenance instead of 3 months, and we think you'll be happy with the changes we're bringing in.

We wanted you to be the first to hear of the changes we'll be making to our maintenance policy as of Monday, 14th September 2009 (5 days from now):

- All new purchases will include 12 months (instead of the current 3 months) of maintenance free of charge, which includes unlimited technical support AND product upgrades.

- As an existing customer, ALL previous purchases you've made (as at Monday 14th September 2009) will receive an extra 9 months (or 270 days to be exact) of maintenance at absolutely no charge to help you transition to our new upgrade policy.

- There will no longer be a differentiation between updates (currently used to describe bug fixes) and upgrades (currently used to describe new feature releases). These will be one and the same and you will always have access to the latest release of the products you've purchased from the client area without having to pay an upgrade fee, as long as your maintenance period is valid.

- If your maintenance period expires you will have the option to renew it for an additional 12 months at 50% of the current purchase price for the license you own. Extending your maintenance period gives you an extra 12 months of unlimited technical support and access to upgrades as they're released.

On Monday, 14th September 2009 we will be releasing a change to our client area which will automatically upgrade your previous orders to the latest available release for all products you've purchased. This will be of no cost to you and will allow you to upgrade to the latest release *if you choose to* (this is optional).

If you're running an outdated release of any Interspire product and you want to keep the old zip file and license key we STRONGLY suggest you download a backup copy of the product zip and license key from the Interspire client area before Monday, 14th September 2009.

To do this, just login to our client area at http://www.interspire.com/clienarea/ and click on the "Download Products" link to download the zip file. Then click the "License Keys" link to retrieve your license key. Paste it into a text file and save it on your computer.

Please keep in mind that ALL orders you've placed will receive an extra 9 months (or 270 days to be exact) of maintenance added to them at absolutely no charge when our new upgrade policy is rolled out on Monday, 14th September 2009.

In the meantime we encourage you to continue ordering from our website because all orders you place until our new upgrade policy is implemented (on Monday 14th September 2009) will automatically receive an extra 9 months of maintenance free, as described above. This is our way of saying thanks to you for being an Interspire client - we really appreciate your business and your continued feedback - both good and bad.

As at Monday 14th September 2009 any orders you place will automatically kick over to our new maintenance policy as described above, meaning things become easier and more affordable for you, our valued client.

If you have any questions please give us a call or send us an email. You can find our details at http://www.interspire.com/contact/

Thanks,

Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper
Interspire Co-Founders
eddie[at]interspire[dot]com
mitch[at]interspire[dot]com