Thank bloody god.
Well… I’ve never worked so hard in all my life.
I might as well pimp off the rest of it, then…
Emailing
MBT (what I’m now calling it) will now email you if you make a new test. You get the URLs of the test and the results, which could come in handy.
When you make a new test you’re also given the option to mail out invites to take the test. Again, quite handy I think.
Unfortunately PISSING HOTMAIL (an official name) thinks I might be spam every now and then. Ah well.
Breadcrums!
Now here’s a little gizmo which turned out to be so much more useful than I expected.
It turns out that breadcrums are a bit amazing for navigation. And I’m very glad I was able to do them without any real intrusion into the design of the pages.
DATA! In CSV format
Now here’s something to tell the people about.
Data is data, and when it’s the data you’ve spent time getting people to make you want to be able to get at it.
So here comes CSV downloads. Brilliant, even I like this feature and I really didn’t see how it would be so useful.
It dumps the data, considerately, into a CSV file for you to download. Opening up Excel (or similar) will let you make a graph of any particular question very quickly indeed, which is actually really nice. That’s because it takes the pressure off of me to make a graphing application to work with My Buster Tests, which is surely going to be a pain in the neck to do.
The all-important tour
It’s quite wearing to have to explain MBT every time someone wants to know. Newsletters, emails, IM, wherever. That’s why the tour has been another thing which turns out to be very important indeed.
It took a lot of work to do - lots and lots of screenshots (coming later), but now it’s done I’m very happy for it to be the page which makes the ’sell’. Check it out.
Final tarting up
From this screenshot, you might think that MBT has a bit of a punk look to it. Well, I think that’s cool.
I’ve stumbled upon this great graphic effect which looks like rips in the page. It turns out to be a nice little thingy which I’ve used on MBT images.
Apart from that effect, there’s the order of the page… now it’s much clearer and easier to use and your important tests are right at the top for you to get at and act on.
Loud and proud! Here and… AMAZING!
At 7pm GMT, My Buster Tests went public. Proper public. It has it’s own menu item and everything!
I then went and had some sort of salmon fish pie and peas, which was delicious.
I also relaxed a bit. Because it was sort of done, and that was a massive load of my mind.
But it’s not over, is it?
Oh no. It’s never over.
Here start the marketing activities.
I sent an email to more than 100 people in my address book informing them about the release, and let’s hope they all take notice… because there’s an important mix of people in there. Friends, family, teachers, web professionals in Bristol (JOB!!!!!), etc. On that front, it’s not so much the visits as the feedback - I really need it to make the thing better.
Next week, 2500+ Buster Tests users will receive notification of the existence of MBT, and hopefully it’ll set the ball rolling.
What’s next?
Well, MBT isn’t even finished yet. There are still a few major features I can think of (coming next on Dech).
The challenge now is to add them AND integrate them without messing up the interface.
Exciting, this. But also exhausting.
Visit My Buster Tests for yourself. (Tour). Sample test.