Build up to BuildorPro – come join us

As we build up to launch the beta version of BuildorPro, we’ve decided to focus our blogging efforts over at http://buildorpro.com/blog/

Come and join us over there and sign up for the Beta list if you like.

James

Buildor at thenextweb

So yesterday we were on stage at thenextweb in Amsterdam launching BuildorPro to the public for the first time.

When we say launching we really mean access to the beta group as we’re still a couple of weeks from pushing out version 1.0 – sign up for beta access here…

The pitch seemed to go well and was received positively by the judges and audience – winners are announced at the end of day 2 of the conference.

Here I am doing the do – in mid flow.

Buildor choosen to pitch at TheNextWeb’s 2010 conference

Buildor are heading over to the Netherlands at the end of April to attend and pitch on stage at TheNextWeb ’10 conference.

We will also be given a startup booth to show BuildorPro in action so if you’re coming to Amsterdam be sure to check us out.

If you want to line up a meeting with James Law just send us an email to james [at] buildor [dot] com

Some VC questions answered

Recently we had a VC fire us an email with some direct questions about Buildor.  It was really interesting in that the questions give some insight into people’s knee-jerk brain assessments of the product so I thought I’d share them Q&A style here.

Have you got any questions about Buildor?

*Will the Company offer hosting solutions?

We see partnerships with companies such as MediaTemple and Rackspace very much on the horizon, but part of the beauty of Buildor is that we don’t impose fixed hosting requirements on our users – you can publish anywhere.  BuildorLite customers already have live content  - moving hosts is an additional barrier to entry for them.

*Will the Company allow SEO “key word” manipulation?

Buildor is brilliant at facilitating the technical elements of SEO. You can edit the meta tags of your page (click Page Properties in the top menu in BuildorLite) very easily, and use structured H1, H2 etc tags and indented H1 image backgrounds with rich keywords etc etc in BuildorPro.

*Is the code produced  WC3 compliant?

Fundamentally, Buildor is all about producing W3C compliant code. We go to huge lengths to ensure the code we create is clean and the same as writing the code by hand.  We can do this as we are creating a natural interface to the fabric of the web, HTML and CSS, from the ground up.  Other products in the past have attempted to create a proprietary code base for managing WYSIWYG web design – we rejected this path on day one.

*Why does the site fall over on www.amazon.co.uk?

Amazon uses swathes of server side code to deliver very dynamic content.  They still use HTML and CSS for the core markup of their pages, but wrap all sorts of other code around it.  BuildorLite is only interested in your markup which is why it’s perfect for SMEs without an installed CMS.

BuildorPro, in future versions, will be able to upload content containing PHP etc.

*What customer support will the Company offer: IM, phone?

One of our key hires will be a community manager.  Their task will be to develop our support program and IM is a possible route.  I think phone support (unless we can create at least a revenue neutral position) is unlikely at the early stages.

*Will the Pro Version run more slowly – how will the Company stop this from becoming clunky?

Pro is just as fast a Lite.  Our core code is incredibly nimble and the file sizes we are working with (in terms of HTML and CSS) tend to be small – mostly under 100k.

*Will ASP sites work on the buildor.com site?

As a Microsoft language, support for ASP will be further down the track given our LAMP structure.

We got Scobleized!

Now that we’re back from SXSW it’s long time I updated how we got on.

First off SXSW is H.U.G.E

I can understand why people describe it as “spring break for geeks” and in the future when we have a huge hardworking team we might just treat it as such. It’s a great way to hang out with like minded people, drink some brewskies, listen to some music and have fun.

In terms of out and out networking though – meh…

I’m not the world’s most natural networker.  Give me structure, a focused event, a speaking engagement or a meeting and I’m fine – sometimes I’m even on fire – but SXSW is so huge you have to really throw yourself in and make a bit of a nuisance of yourself to get results.  It’s not like you’re stood in a room of 100 people all there for the same reason – it’s much more disparate than that.

So by the 4th day I decided I had to make my trip count – I was learning a lot but not making many connections (the brilliant Mok from EverySpace.com being one notable exception).  I had sent a number of emails before arriving trying to hook up with some very influential people, one of the main targets being Robert Scoble (or the Scobleizer as he’s known).  I decided I wasn’t leaving Texas until I had met and pitched him Buildor.

Fortunately everyone is very visible at SXSW and Robert in particular, on Gowalla and Foursquare all day and the public face of RackSpace meant I managed to speak with him and ask him for a demo.  “Call me tomorrow, I might have time in the morning” was his response.  So I called – “Try again at 1pm” then “try again at 2″.

Like something out of a bad movie I finally stalked him down to his hotel and grabbed him just as he was checking out.  He very graciously agreed to a demo, tweeting as he went along.  I had about 15 minutes and he said he thought it was great. A good result if not completely worth the trip across the Atlantic.

It was only when I logged on whilst watching Chelsea get booted out of the champions league that I saw my inbox go ballistic  with new Twitter follow requests – we’d been Scobleized!

Seeing @buildor from @James_law He pitched it as Dreamweaver in the cloud.

10 minutes later…

OK @buildor from @James_law is the coolest new tool I have seen at SXSW and even better pro version is coming.

W00t!  To have such overt praise from one of the world’s most influential tech commentators in a week when he must have seen hundreds of pitches was the best validation we could ever have asked for.

Nice…

SXSWi – Buildor.com hit Texas

Sausage Gumbo

Having had a successful trip to NYC in January to discuss Buildor with anyone who would listen we took the tough decision to head out to SXSW armed with the latest incarnation of BuildorPro.

Tough?  Only because of the cost – it’s not a huge amount but the £2000 or so is a real dent in a bootstrapped start-up’s finances.

As I worked my way through the international travel system, with Bart back at Buildor HQ cramming to get a working version of Pro ready for demoing (to anyone who would listen) the impact of SXSWi started to take shape.

1) Networking through security – I heard SXSWi was good for the all important networking but I never envisioned Chicago O’Hare security would be the starting point.  A mix up over laptops through the scanner lead me to meet with Joe from Symbian – a quick chat and a swap of business cards set things off.  Bizarrely it turned out I was already following Joe on Twitter – small world.

2) Whilst in the airport, the iphone predictive text changed my short hand for “because” (cos) to “CIA” in CAPS – I just caught it before I had the TSA baring down on me for some tech based terrorist plot having scanned my txts.

3) Meeting the sweary podcasting Buddhist – as I sat waiting for flight AA333 to Austin I was sat next to Jason Jarret also heading to SXSWi.  A lovely chap who runs a Buddhist podcast with 500k listeners but who swears like a drunken Gordon Ramsay.

4) Canned chicken and sausage Gumbo from the gas station – when I landed in my hotel I was so far up the I35 that there was not a shop in sight, let alone a restaurant.  My only option was a shell garage where I scored a can of gumbo, some pork rinds and 2 cans of Miller lite. 3 mins in the hotel microwave revealed a fruity little pottage, replete with okra and anduillette sausage.  Freakishly it was pretty tasty – which is more than can be said for the pork rinds…

Tomorrow sees the first day of the actual conference – I’m looking forward to getting properly stuck in to the festivities and the famous Austin BBQ of course.

Buildor win first prize at the London School of Business Tech Summit

It can be a lonely task launching a start-up.  Most of my contact with the outside world is over Skype and email so it’s nice to get out and go to tech events as much as possible.

Yesterday we we’re chosen to pitch at The London Business School’s Tech Summit to a room of industry bods, angels, VCs and MBA students.  It was a fantastic event as not only did we have our moment on stage but the four start-ups pitching also had a spot to demo during the coffee and lunch breaks.

This made a real difference as seeing Buildor in action is part of the battle. If you suffer from not being able to edit your site then seeing it happen right in front of you is very powerful. The Pro demos also threw up some very interesting discussions around how web design can benefit from being carried out through the browser.

The pitch to VCs from Eden Ventures (Ben Tompkins), Balderton Capital (Rob Moffat) and Seraphim Capital (Iain Darroch) went well, we had some great response from the audience and I’m happy to say we won!

Thanks to everyone who organised the summit, especially Shankar and Guy and I’m looking forward to following up with all the interesting people I had the chance to meet.

Buildor features coming soon…

Busy times at Buildor towers as we continue to develop, refine and release latest updates.

We’re working on some really exciting stuff at the moment:

Google Analytics manager – one of the problems with GA for n00bs is that understanding what the deuce to do with that bit of weird code they give you.  How do I open my page, where do I add that code, how to I save it back to the server, how do I know I’ve done it right, what if there’s 100x pages on my site???

So many issues… Buildorlite could just have the answer.  Open your page, select Google Analytics from a drop down, enter your UA number (basically your analytics PIN that you’re given when you sign up) and click go – bingo.

We should be releasing this new functionality in a few weeks – we’ll let you know.

BuildorMail – HTML email is a weird and wonderful corner of web dev – lots of restrictions around what css you can and can’t use (just read MailChimp’s guide over here for an idea) so although you can use the standard http://buildorlite.com to edit your html email content we’d recommend using BuildorMail when we release it.  Why you ask?  Well we’ve gone to great lengths to stick to the guidelines that http://www.campaignmonitor.com/css/ covers off to make sure your resulting content is as compliant as it can be.

‘Cos we’ve written the core Buildor engine from the ground we can control the precise functionality of the product in these ways – cool eh?

Again – coming soon, we’ll let you know!

Finally we’re making great progress with Buildor/Pro – I’ve been reading through the original Writely blogs and I reckon if we can shake up the web design space in the same way they did with the MS Office space we’ll be doin’ alright!  I’m putting together a video showing the features of Pro over the next couple of days  – think FireBug meets Dreamweaver through the browser and you’re somewhere close.

Buildor and ThemeForest

As we slowly push Buildor/Lite out into the ether, we come across fantastic uses for the application beyond “user X editing website Y”.

One such use is with the better quality HTML/CSS template libraries out there – such as ThemeForest.

The idea is, you browse ThemeForest and choose a design you like. Traditionally, you’d then buy the theme, download it and then add your content manually with an expensive software package such as Dreamweaver.

What we bring to the party is the ability to try out your chosen design before you buy. Will it look good with my images? How will my finely crafted text look in the text box? My logo in that design? Trying all that before you buy is a breeze with Buildor/Lite.

And of course, once you’ve bought your chosen template, you can use Buildor/Lite to propagate it with your content.

Have a go with this template and watch the video below for a full guide:

http://bit.ly/1SS2R5 – NOTE: If you see the Default Buildor page just hit reload to get the ThemeForest page – (bug being fixed… fixed)

http://www.vimeo.com/7432608

Introducing Buildor/Lite – web editing for the rest of us

As I type, the finishing touches are being added to the first release of Buildor/Lite with a view to launching on Monday.

Buildor Lite in action

This is the first of many steps towards the initial release from Buildor Ltd and comes off the back of what we learnt when we first took the product on the road.

It quickly became apparent that what we had was two distinct products.  The core engine that is Buildor is an immensely powerful piece of software that unlocks the possibility for all kinds of products that involve the base level manipulation of html/css. Whether that be building web pages from scratch, the easy editing of existing pages or for use in conjunction with other web apps such as email marketing tools or indeed blog platforms like WordPress.

Our original focus with Buildor was to create ‘Dreamweaver in the cloud’.  This product, now under the name Buildor Pro, will be our second release and is about 70% complete.  A product aimed squarely at designers and developers, Buildor Pro is the first web app that brings Dreamweaver levels of functionality to the browser.

The lesson that we learnt was that whilst Pro fills a distinct gap in cloud computing, a Lite version aimed at small/medium businesses could solve a huge problem for an even larger audience.

Buildor/Lite allows anyone to edit any existing site through the browser, with no downloads, installs or changes to their existing code.

As long as the site is predominantly built with HTML and doesn’t rely on swathes of script or server side code then Buildor/Lite could be the perfect editing and publishing tool.

FEATURES

• Edit any html page, through your browser, in the time it takes the page to load
• Full control over type styles, links and colors
• Full control over images, with absolute positioning and floating control
• Built in FTP for publishing and uploading new images