Ryan Glass

So far I have completed the flow for the most common scenario - where a customer has a Twitter account and they want us to set up their Twitter App (which connects to the Twitter API).

For this they need to provide us with their login details (we're not using OAuth so each customer gets their own personal app which means they are isolated from other customers).

To do this well meant using encryption to store the login details securely. After we set up the app we delete them completely from our database.

The entry point is where a new customer has signed-up and purchased a plan.

At this stage the aim is to get all the information that we need to set up their Twitter App which connects to the Official Twitter API, to manage their audience and to tweet for them.

...and to make it as easy as possible for the customer to complete.

Here's a pic of the flow:

The last job with payments integration...

Customise the dashboard pages so that if a user is logged in but hasn't purchased a plan yet, they are prompted to choose a plan.

I considered redirecting straight to the plans page but figure this is better as people get to see what they are missing and can still do things like edit their profile or change their email address.

This involved more Stripe integration but this time it was easier. It's the first time I've used their new 'customer portal' and I was pretty impressed.

It saved a lot of time - the only tricky bit was catching the webhooks and updating things at our end when customers make updates to their subscription.

This afternoons job was to add a sign-up page for #twitMate

I want sign-up to be as easy as possible so I built the plans page to create a session in case the user comes to sign-up from the plans page.

If they do, once they complete signup they are automatically logged in and go to checkout for the plan they already selected.

If they come from somewhere else, once they complete signup they are automatically logged in and then go to the plans page to make the choice.

Just spent an hour battling with Stripe docs again to integrate discount coupons on twitMate.

Hopefully it will save me time in the long-run as I should now just be able to change the coupon to change prices across the board. I'm starting with 75% for waitlist members with stepped increases working towards full price after launch.

I have completed the tricky part of customer payment with Stripe integration of checkout completed.

I know Stripe is considered the best payment processor on the market (and I have yet to find anything easier to use myself) but I always struggle with their docs and find there is a lot of figuring out to do.

The crux was passing crucial variables to Stripe from the frontend using JavaScript via stripe.js (this is required by Stripe, I assume for security) while my website forms are processed in the backend using PHP (for my own site's validation and security).

I always find using multiple languages for a single task tricky and try to avoid it as it can get messy but I got there in the end.

I'm old school when it comes to planning and prefer pen and paper.

Here is the user flow from plan choice, to payment, through email verification and on-boarding to the dashboard:

Used the new laptop about 3 times and just got it all set up when the wifi network adapter goes kaput.

1) Install new drivers - no luck

2) Update everything to latest versions - no luck

2) Run system restore (I have a restore point to before it stopped working) - now the laptop won't start :(

3) Clean reinstall of windows - still not working

4) Get in touch with Lenovo support - they have given me a list of things to try...

Today was productive. I managed to build these two pages start to finish in a short time, including edit profile, change password and view subscription details.

That's the dashboard complete for twitMate!

I resisted the urge to go live on Friday afternoon just before taking the weekend off :)

This is the page where you can view, edit and delete scheduled tweets before they are posted to Twitter.

The idea is that even though the work preparing and scheduling the tweets is done for you, you still might want to check tweets or change them before they go live.

It was a quicker job than I expected, largely because the front end development had already been completed for the demo page which you can see at twitmate.com

4) logged out

3) Logged in

2) Settings Menu

This evening I competed the user menu for the user interface.

Here's a sneak preview:
1) User Menu

Specifically, development of the top-menu so it changes when the user is logged in and displays their name and some icons (which will open menus).

UI development can feel a little slow but if I do it right I should only have to do it once :)

This should have been straightforward but the loss of WIFI half way through added unexpected difficulties. Luckily I had an old ethernet cable lying around which saved the day.