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So, one of the projects I have wanted to get going since almost immediately after I sold LifeSpy.com was another lifestyles and life tips blog with longer, more in depth articles about living a better life. Today, I want to let you all know about LifeSnips. There will be many lists, structured posts, and detailed insights into modern, happy, healthy living.
The blog now has three posts on, two of which are from possible staff writers for the blog. I e-mailed a dozen candidates early in the week to let them know they were finalists, and told them I would pay them for their submissions. Each one was sent back a notice asking them to send in a post that would display their writing style for LifeSnips. Out of these dozen final candidates, there are only four staff writer positions available, and the competition is fierce.
I have also been able to find the time to get a post up about buying a computer.
I hope you'll all check it out, subscribe, and if you have something interesting you'd like to cover, or see us cover, please let me know through the contact form on that site.
So, five more days have gone by, and due in part to my special circumstances of not having a home phone line, I haven't been able to talk to the representative they've set up to help me with the problems my wife is having with the Dell laptop that I bought her.
I have since bought a cell phone, so that should help. And I've been contacting them as often as I can through Skype, but every time I call, Sunny is on another call.
I am getting more and more frustrated, and each time I talk to my wife, she mentions about how quickly the laptop is degrading. Now, the screen is dim most of the time, with it only going to a normal brightness when she presses on the frame near the hinge. She just told me today that we should send it back, and they'll be able to see the issue no matter what this time but she forgets how narrow minded the technicians are at Dell. They'll fix the cable for the back light display, but probably won't look to fix whatever is shorting out on the wrist rest area or the other weird quirks that her laptop is quickly picking up.
I truly believe that we received a lemon for a Dell and that we should receive a replacement with the same features. The laptop isn't very old, and so I assume they still have one sitting around. My wife wouldn't even care if it had slightly less hard drive space, or was slightly slower, as long as it was mostly comparable. The goal of course is to get a machine that is built right and that will make her happy.
The longer this goes on, the more layers I am exposed to within Dell's corporate structure, the more frustrated I get. I still believe that Dell has good products, but that they do sometimes have build quality issues that need to be resolved quickly. The reason why Dell gets so much bad press isn't because their products suck, but instead because their support in dealing with products that don't work is poor.
Had Dell been wise enough to vigorously test the laptop when we sent it the first time, I am sure they would have come across our issue and been able to fix or replace the components with issues. Then all of this fall out, and negative press that I am working so hard to write, would have never occurred, and I would have continued to sing their praises.
Skipping over that, if Dell had been wise enough to put me in touch with someone that could instantly just ship out a replacement unit of similar specs, and taken back the one that I had issues with, they could have reconditioned it, and sold it as a discount. Their loss on this exchange would have been noticeable, but the good will would have been huge.
Now, I am sitting here, frustrated that I still don't have a working laptop for my wife, and she starts school in a week, and all of this goes back to Dell not being able to solve an issue that was brought to their attention more than a month ago.
Something I have been waiting for since I first used WordPress was a better way of managing user submitted data. Contact forms have always been horrible, and worked randomly, depending on the theme, other plugins and what sometimes felt like the roll of the dice. Gravity Forms is the perfect replacement for all of those horrible issue laden plugins.
I've been beta testing the plugin for some time now, and have found it useful for a variety of different needs, and the more I use it, the more ideas I come up with on what it could do for me with regards to taking in information from visitors and displaying it to me.
The first thought that people have is that Gravity Forms is "just another Contact Form plugin", but it can do so much more than that.
Want to do a visitor survey? Want to do a "send this post to a friend"? Want to have user guest post submissions? Gravity Forms can do all of that and more. I've even used it for a basic product inventory system, as well as a tool to sign players up for an online RPG. The uses for the plugin are wide, and according to the Rocket Genius team, they'll continue to expand.
Gravity Forms is a premium plugin, but I like to call it the first "extension" of WordPress, because I feel like marketing it as a plugin is too limiting. It does so much more. There are three price points for Gravity Forms, $39 gets you a one-site personal license, $99 gets you a five site license, and $199 gets you the unlimited developer license.
The Developer license comes with Priority Support and Free Add-Ons and allows you to install it on as many sites as you want. This is the license I will be purchasing, and the one I hope you'll all purchase as well.
Why go for the Developer License?
It might seem pretty pricey to shell out nearly two-hundred dollars for a WordPress plugin, but I assure you, there is more than two hundred dollars in value that you'll receive. If not from the initial 1.0 version, then from future version, the free add-ons and the priority support.
What other plugin will allow you to quickly and easily make contact forms on all of your blogs? What other plugin will make it easy for you to take feedback, guest posts and other information from your users? What other plugin will allow you to make a basic help-desk? We are just scratching the surface of the types of input and data management this plugin will allow, and you'd be silly not to try to take full advantage of what Gravity Forms is offering you.
Affiliate Offer
Yes, the links in my post are affiliate links, and you too could sign up, receiving a 20% commission on any sales you generate. I think this is very fair, and look forward to hearing from the Rocket Genius team how this does for them.
Follow the Rocket Genius Team on Twitter
If you are like me, and want to keep up to date on everything happening with Gravity Forms, make sure to jump on Twitter, and follow the following people:
Don't forget to check your server first to make sure Gravity Forms will work on it. Use their Gravity Forms Server Test plugin to double check, or just make sure your server is using WordPress 2.8+, MySQL 5+ and PHP 5+.