The YouPublish Blog

A Worthy Goal

Our goal is to make YouPublish smart and easy to use. You may notice that visitors can dive right in without logging in or registering until they decide to take an action that requires them to do so.

For example, a first time visitor, let’s call her Kathy, may browse profiles and publications—even download sample files without logging in. Kathy is a Type I diabetic and finds a free publication that offers diabetes management tips. She decides she wants this publication and clicks the “Get” button. This action requires a YouPublish account so that Kathy can forever return to YouPublish and find this publication in her library. After clicking the “Get” button Kathy is presented with a short registration form. After submitting the form, Kathy’s files are immediately stored in her library and a message appears thanking her for getting the publication.

This behavior is ubiquitous throughout the site. If Kathy clicks on links that take her to her account or her library and she has not logged in yet, she will be prompted before she can continue. We hope this feels less intrusive and the expected result is clear to YouPublish users when they see the login form. Logging out however… is another matter.

The Problem

So the path for log in is clear—take the user where they asked to go or perform the action they initiated after they authenticate, but what about logging out? We discussed this recently in a meeting. Half of us thought the user should be taken to the home page, the other half wanted them to remain on the page where they logged out. In trying to build a smart, intuitive application, we stumbled upon a block we revisit frequently: one user’s intuition is another user’s confusion.

Oh, Won’t You Please Take Me Home?

If you’re at all familiar with G N’ R (Guns N’ Roses for non Gen-X’ers) hits, you may remember the tune Paradise City where the chorus ends in “Oh won’t you please take me home?!”. It was after a few minutes of dead-end discussion that I began singing this line in my best Axel Rose voice (yeah, we sing in meetings some times—keeps it real), because I felt that the user should be redirected to the home page after logging out. We ended up going with this behavior in order to meet a deadline (maybe the group agreed so I’d stop singing?), but we intend to change this.

Let me describe a scenario where being redirected to the home page would be less than ideal. Again, we’re after a smart application here—meaning one that does what you’d expect it to. Let’s go back to Kathy who just added that diabetes publication to her library. Now imagine that Kathy has two YouPublish accounts (personal and business), or maybe Kathy was browsing YouPublish with a diabetes support group and others present want the same document. Either way, it may have taken Kathy some searching to find that publication. The application could leave her on the page displaying the current application after logging out. If Kathy were in a section of the site that displays here personal information, say while editing her account settings or preferences, the application would then redirect to the home page.

The key to this approach is communication. The application will need to clearly communicate to the user that they have been logged out. So in either case: either being redirected to the home page (if Kathy logged out working with her private information on the site) or remaining on a publication’s page if she logged out there, a nice message will display informing Kathy of the logged out status

What Do You Think?

Whew! I hope that gives you a taste of the caliber of experience we intend to provide YouPublish users. If you have suggestions on how we handle user authentication (log-ins and log-outs), please comment below. Like I said, one user’s intuition is another user’s confusion—we appreciate your input to help us identify scenarios we didn’t think of.

Now Axel, won’t you please take us home… http://songza.com/z/bbrov0

For the past few days members of the YouPublish team have been at BookExpo America in Los Angeles, California. BEA is the second largest book expo in the world. And in my opinion it’s one of the more enjoyable events I’ve attended. Think of wandering through miles of good books and great people. Sounds like heaven, right? The only things missing were cafes on every corner and miles of comfy sofas and chairs so I could have dug right into some of the books I picked up. I think I’m bringing home 20 extra pounds of books in my luggage.

We’ve enjoyed meeting a lot of authors, publishers, publicists and others. We’ve made some new friends and learned a lot about how YouPublish can help augment the distribution and marketing efforts of authors and publishers.

One highlight was listening to Jeff Bezos of Amazon speak about their recent success with the Kindle. It is a remarkable device. Amazon seems to see some of the same trends in digital books that we at YouPublish are addressing. More and more readers are buying and viewing digital books. But missing from Amazon’s and most other digital media services is the breadth that we’ve tried to capture at YouPublish. Where can you publish ANY type of digital file (written, audio, video, software, etc.) in any combination you choose for any price you set or for free?

Answer: YouPublish.

It’s a great time to be a part of YouPublish!

With a team as far-flung as ours (with folks spread from Salt Lake City to Singapore), we take face time seriously. So when we hosted our first YouPublish University Authors’ Workshop last week in Irvine California, we all jumped at the chance to get together and hash-out detailed plans for the site’s next three or four months. Our first get together was in Tokyo back in January… so this second meeting was dubbed “Tokyo II”.

( I’m personally hoping Tokyo III might be in Norway! )

Anyway, the YouPublish University Authors’ Workshop was an amazing success — and it was wonderful meeting so many of you! We had great feedback from some of our earliest users, which got us rolling on the right track when we sat down at the table for two full days of white-boarding.

Most of us just got back to our respective towns this weekend, so stay tuned as we nail down a few more details… and we’ll have some sneak peaks into our plans for the site in the next week or two.

Read the rest of this entry »

So it’s been a week since the launch, and we can’t begin to tell you what a hoot it’s been hearing from so many of you! The feedback we’ve gotten — the kudos, the bug reports, and even the occasional WTF e-mail has been so very helpful.

Thanks to you, we’ve caught a couple big-hairy-bugs™, and are currently working to smooth-out a little roughness in the publishing process.

So keep ‘em coming!

Remember, though, that questions or concerns that need specific response need to be e-mailed to support.

And we promise to keep you up-to-date on developments in the pipe. This is what it’s all about: constant improvement.

We’ll have to tell you how we got here another day… but here we are. We’ve just formally launched YouPublish. And we couldn’t be happier.

What, exactly, is YouPublish?

YouPublish is our modest attempt to change everything™… To make a difference™… and to do it all while keeping a firm hand on the Holy Book of Web Development: Getting Real.

We’re a far-flung team… with people scattered from Singapore to Salt Lake City. But to a person, we’re creative people. And we don’t just write books. We don’t just make videos… We’re creative, we create. And we needed a place to not only share our creations but to sell them if we wanted to. And so here we are, launching YouPublish.

Now anyone — no matter their stripe — can share their passions with the world! No matter what file type, you can publish it at YouPublish. Sell it or offer it for free. You decide.

Do you have a book to share? An album of original music? A wicked-cool spreadsheet? What about a lesson plan? Seminar support materials? Religious tracts? Digitized sheet music? 3D models? You’re only limited by your imagination.

And soon (very soon) we’ll be adding the social networking tools that will take this all to the next level.

So, yeah… YouPublish: Publish, Find, Talk about… Whatever!