23press

Wow! It can be easy to forget how hectic the first few months of a startup can be!

Roughly 6 weeks ago, we announced the launch of 23press. The support from the community, friends and family, and our growing partner network was phenomenal. Since then Terry, Jason and I have been pushing hard on marketing prep, conference schedules, building out our full product roadmap and getting Move That Blog 2.0 out (more on that further down!).

But before we get into that, we want to talk about some top line changes over the last few weeks!

Save Some Money! Make Some Money!

We’ve done a few things recently to help you save money. First up, we’ve introduced a Tweet for Discount upgrade. Simply put, when you’re buying a 23press product just authenticate to Twitter, customize your tweet (or use our default) and get 20% off your purchase!

Second, we are currently in the process of beta testing our affiliate program. Sign up, and whenever one of your readers or clients (or yourself, hah) buys, you’ll get 20% of the proceeds from their purchase. Of course, you could combine these if you wanted to ;-)

Move That Blog Upgrades

For those of you who aren’t aware, Move That Blog was the product that kicked 23press off. It solved a “simple” problem: moving a blog from one host (like GoDaddy) to another (say, WPEngine) can be challenging. More challenging than you think it will be if you haven’t done it before! WordPress’s built-in Import/Export really just moves core data (posts, categories, tags, authors, etc). It doesn’t move themes, theme options, plugins, plugin options, widgets, widget options, etc. In short, it moves the “backend” of your blog, but not many of the items users interact with on a daily basis. Boo!

Move That Blog turns a 5 hour task into a 5 minute task. Not bad for $10, right? ;-)

Version 1 of Move That Blog was functional: solve the problem. Version 2, available now, makes several significant changes (obviously if you bought Version 1, the upgrade to Version 2 is free so feel free to download now!):

1. Login: Instead of supplying two keys to authenticate to your account, we’ll allow you to simply login with your 23press ID. This should be easier, but will also allow us to give you discounts in the future as we launch more products.
2. Progress info: Version 1 gave you a simple progress bar, while version 2 gives you much deeper information on where your move is at. Included in this is detailed logging, that way if something goes wrong with the move we can help you figure out what more easily.
3. Resume move: We’ve retooled the entire moving engine, including allowing you to resume a move that stopped or failed for some reason. Simple is good.
4. Support for more hosts: Several of our customers experienced issues with file transfers, and we’ve overhauled our entire file transfer process to make our plug-in work with as many hosts as possible.

Move That Blog: Host Edition

This is a big deal for us, and I talked about this high level in our last post, but we’ve now released our first custom version of Move That Blog to our first hosting partner. It allows them to either move a blog FOR a customer, or give them some quick instructions on how to do it directly themselves! Now that this is out, we’ll be reaching out to more hosts to allow them to offer their customers one-click moves to their platform. This will allow users to sign up, install the plugin on their side and have the host move and configure their entire blog for them.

Easy! (just the way we like it)

We’ll be continuing to release host tools as we release more products, to allow for simplified management of WordPress installs, greater security and speed for all users, etc.

If you’re a host interested in our Host Suite, let me know at jeremy@23press.com.

New Product Heads Up: BackupPress

Now that we have released Move That Blog 2.0, we are setting our sights on the next overly complex problem in the WordPress space: backups. We’ll be releasing our alpha to our internal testing team in the next week, at which point we’ll get everyone more updates on this. But suffice to say we believe this will be simpler (our motto!), faster, better and more cost effective than other solutions out there. And, as a bonus, all BackupPress customers get Move That Blog for free!

We’ll be launching this product publicly at BlogWorld LA, so come by our booth to see more if you’re around!

Funding

Since our last post, we’ve had several inquiries around our funding plans. As we mentioned last time, the founders put in the first round of money for technology, so Terry could work on 23press full time, and for us to amp up partnerships and marketing efforts (expect announcements on some of these in the next few weeks).

Our original plan was to raise an angel round in early 2012, however significant interest has meant we’re currently putting together a small convertible debt round with one or two investors with the angel round moving out to March/April. Given the number of folk who’ve asked to be involved, if you’re interested just drop me a line and I can fill you in quickly on our top line plans. Since we don’t need the money, we  want to make sure we don’t distract ourselves!

Conclusion

Phew! Not a bad 6 weeks, eh? We’re looking forward to more announcements later this week and next week, so keep an eye out here and on the upcoming 23press blog!

Thanks again everyone for your support! We’re looking forward to continuing to grow the WordPress ecosystem and, hopefully soon, to move beyond the walls of the WordPress community to begin working with folk in the MovableType, Tumblr, Posterous and other communities!

If you’re interested in any of the above, or other discussions, say hi@23press.com!