Launching your web app can be a stressful process. Beyond the obvious challenge of writing all that code and setting up the back office processes that will support the app (credit card processing and customer support, mainly), you are faced with the terrifying prospect of being forced to let go and release the application to real, live users. We know the feeling; over the last two years we’ve launched two apps, Jumpchart in October 2007 and Staction just a few weeks ago in January 2009. Keep Reading

This morning, at approximately 11:30 am Eastern Time, both Jumpchart and Staction were unavailable for approximately 25 minutes. This was due to a complete outage of our hosting provider, Media Temple. The issue appears to have been caused by a problem at one of their data centers. According to their network status page, they are looking into the problem in detail and will post more details as they become available. Keep Reading

After living with Staction for quite a while now (We’ve been using it, almost a year internally) some hidden things are emerging. Lots of good things, – a few kinks. Here’s where we’re at:

A sense of place
Most productivity, and organization apps don’t have a sense of place. You log in, and you have the sense that other people are there, but you never see them. You return to a page you just checked, and new content is there, mysteriously left by the person inhabiting the same virtual space as you, unseen, unheard.

We think Staction is an improvement on this. Staction feels like a place to go to. We’re a dispersed team, and we like that it has an atmosphere like an office. You can work quietly, have a private conversation, or yell over the cubicles. Productivity doesn’t have to be so lonely. Keep Reading

This morning we pushed out an update to Staction that added SSL security to the Super and Deluxe plans. If you are on either of these plans you can now turn SSL encryption on and off from the new Security tab on the accounts page. This is a free update for existing users – just something we thought our Super and Deluxe plans deserved – so you won’t see any change in your month to month billing.

SSL encryption does a very good job of protecting the data that you send through Staction; however, you will notice a slight decrease in the performance of Staction with SSL turned on, inherent to the encryption and decryption step added to every transfer. If the stuff you talk about on Staction is very private (and needs to stay that way) turn SSL security on. If it isn’t confidential we’d suggest leaving SSL turned off in order to keep Staction performing as fast as possible on your account.

We’ve made one small, but very helpful, addition to Staction today. Time logged this week. In the upper right hand corner of the person report page (If you don’t know what this is; check out the recent Reports in Staction post) there is a tally of the total amount of time that you have worked in the week so far. Simple right?

We’ve found that looking up this information had become such a common task that it really warranted it’s own permanent view. We hope it makes your life just a little bit easier!

We’ve gotten a lot of questions about text formatting in Staction since the start of the beta, and now with the full release we’ve gotten quite a few more. From the beginning, we’ve tried to keep Staction limited in features in order to stream-line the process of documenting your workflow. But over time we’ve always come back around to one bit of formatting that would be helpful in cleaning up updates – line breaks. So as of today, Staction now recognizes line breaks. Just hit return and the the break will show up in your update. We hope you find it helpful!

Now that Staction is out in the wild, we wanted to highlight a few of the lesser known features. In this first installment we focus on Staction’s reporting capabilities. Simple, concise and straight-forward. Everything you want, without any of the work. So sit back, relax and enjoy.

Or download the really big version.

The day has arrived, Staction has launched. First off, we’d like to extend a huge thank you to all the beta testers that helped us work out the kinks over the last few months. We couldn’t have done it without you guys, so pat yourselves on the back – job well done.

Staction is simple group communication that focuses on people, not projects. It’s a great way to get a birds-eye view of your workflow and because it is organized chronologically it feels much more natural than digging through hierarchical folder structures.

The pricing for Staction is dead simple, just three paying plans and a free one. All three paying plans are based on number of users, disk space and wether or not time tracking is included. Just choose the one that suits your needs and you ready to go. As always, if the free plan fills your needs we’re happy to let you use it as long as you want.

One more thing; we’re going to be offering the same deal as we did when we lauched Jumpchart. If you write a quality blog-post, review or other article about Staction send it to us and we’ll hook you up with a free month on Staction. We’ll continue to honor this through March.

So please, a warm welcome to the world for Staction. (Cue the applause)

What is a wireframe? There is a surprising amount of confusion on the answer to that question, and this is understandable, because the answer you will receive all depends on who you ask. User experience people will say that wireframing is all about mocking up semi-working copies of your interfaces for clients to click around and experience. To designers, wireframing brings to mind static sketches and page layouts, replete with color swatches and flashy images. And project managers will tell you that a wireframe is a detailed document telling you where, and in what order, everything in a website is supposed to go. Indeed, the largest problem you run into when trying to define what wireframes are, is that all of these answers are correct ones. In essence, a wireframe is nothing more than an organization tool used to help you manage, categorize and utilize information about the site you’re working on, whatever your job title may be. For the sake of semantics though, today we’ll be talking about wireframing content. Not interfaces, nor design, just content. Because, as you’ve probably heard before, content is king.

Content wireframing serves a very specific, and incredibly important purpose: to help you create a logically laid out and connected website. It’s important to remember, people don’t come to websites based on the aesthetic qualities of the site or because the code is super-clean, they come because they are looking for some granular bit of information. Google is a beautiful example of this, their sites are famously sparse; yet, they are the most widely used search engine in the world because they provide information quickly and accurately. As web site designers and developers, it is our job to provide information quickly, logically and beautifully. Yes, you heard us correctly, beauty should be your final step. It’s important to note, while good design can help users find the information they are looking for more quickly, the aesthetics and the beauty are all wasted if you aren’t effectively providing the information in the first place. Content wireframing is all about two things, organization of information and helping to visualize logical paths to that information. At its best, your wireframe should map out the flow to specific bits of information buried in the site in a manner that, as closely as possible, resembles the way that the finished site will provide that information.

An example may serve us better. Imagine, for a moment, a client comes to you and wants a website built. They are a large company that provide high-tech hinges and swivels for the aerospace industry. In your initial talks you learn that this is going to be a fairly large site. You also learn that scattered throughout the hundred or so pages of the the site are several hundred, maybe even a thousand, .pdf spec sheets and white papers that will need to be linked to from specific products and services that this company offers. The organization and attention to detail required in a project like this is enormous. It is, in fact, so large, that no one person could ever be expected to remember where all the parts are meant to fit. Yet, without an effective plan, or wireframe, to manage all that information, that is exactly what you are expecting of someone on your team. A content wireframe serves tirelessly to do exactly what one person could never manage. By individually mapping out the small amount of information that needs to be presented on each of the hundred pages of the site you can take an immense amount of data and cut it up into manageable, and logical, pieces that are easy to work with.

Now you’re a hero. The client gets a site that makes sense to users and presents their vast wealth of information clearly and you get an easy way or organize your team around a common goal and a faster approval process from the client. You may now feel free to set your designers loose to beautify and visually organize that perfectly arranged stack of information. Using collaborative content wireframes is a technique that is incredibly popular with clients because they can understand and participate in the process. No one knows a client’s business better than they do themselves. They are experts in what they do and can ease your workload tremendously with that expertise. They just need a way in and a voice. Because wireframing content doesn’t require geek-speak to follow, clients can work with you as you create your wireframe, correcting and clarifying as you go. This participation carries the added benefit of creating a sense of ownership and investment for the client. The project isn’t just a sub-contracted job anymore; it’s their baby, and they want to see it succeed as much as you do.

Ok, Ok. We get it. You understand why you’d want to wireframe the sites you build, you want to know how to best make that happen. The main thing to remember is that, when you’re wireframing content, you don’t want anything but content. No designs, no interface buttons, you should even strive to keep images out unless they are part of the important content for the page. Perfect, useable, final draft content is what you are looking for. Every page you wireframe should represent an individual page on the website and sub-pages should be noted under their respective parent page. This is organization. Plain and simple, this is dumping out the filing cabinet and starting from scratch.

There are many tools you could use to accomplish this content wireframe, a simple piece of paper and a pencil being the most simple and limited form. Programs like OmniOutliner and OmniPlan from OmniGroup work well and can provide very detailed wireframes but don’t allow for 24/7 participation from all team members, including the client. Of course, we think our app, Jumpchart, is the best tool for content wireframing, otherwise we wouldn’t have built it. But you shouldn’t just take our word for it, go try it out for yourself. Whatever method you use, it should comfortably fit into your workflow and should be easy and flexible enough that everyone uses it, including the client. That last part is very important. The wireframe, however you produce it, must be flexible. Edits are inevitable, so stop fighting them and embrace the change. If you did your planning and organization correctly it shouldn’t be an issue anyways, right? Just make the needed change and get on with it.

Remember, content is king. The information that resides in the sites you build is infinitely more valuable than the presentation of that information. So plan and wireframe your content with every bit of love and devotion to detail that you give to your design and your code-writing and we guarantee that it will make your life 50% easier.*

• not a guarantee, but, all the same, you should give the same love and devotion you pay to your design and coding to wireframing and content planning. It will pay off…promise.

In the increasingly more sophisticated game of making recommendations based on similar likes: Wouldn’t it be cool to scrape friendfeed for links, and references, and services to make suggestions of things you might like? Links, music, friends, blogs, photos, movies, and products should all be possible.