HTTPS

Last week we converted DropBoks to HTTPS (SSL).

In case you don’t know what this means, basically it’s iron-clad security for websites. It means that DropBoks is verified by a secure third party and issued an authentication certificate.

In simple terms, all files that are transferred to and from our system are encrypted as well as authenticated.

This is a HUGE deal for us!

When we launched last month, the number one concern that was raised by our users was security. And in retrospect I can understand why. You see, we are not a household name yet. We are so new that not too many people know about us. Therefore, some people had no reason to trust us completely.

See, we know that we are an honest company with high levels of business ethics and so on, but some of our users didn’t know that. HTTPS is a way of letting users know that. It’s sorta like the Better Business Bureau for online security.

Anyways, we are super stoked about it. The peace of mind that it gives our users gives us peace of mind

Tweaking

As some of you may have noticed, we’ve changed our suggested donation amount from $1 to $5. There are a couple reasons why we did this…

First, we are getting donation amounts ranging everywhere from $1 to $10, even though we only ask for $1. This is a HUGE complement to us that people feel our service is worth more than we even ask! We feel that putting the requested amount in the middle will be more targeted toward the average amount that people are already donating.

Second, if the suggestion of $5 regulates our donation amounts, then we will be able to lock down the amount. This will allow the user the ability to skip the step in the payment process where they are currently required to enter an amount.

Please keep in mind that we are doing this primarily to make the process simpler for the user (just like everything we do with DropBoks). We are by no means trying to be donation whores just to make more money. As I’ve mentioned before, our primary concern is making an amazing product, money is secondary.

Tweaking

As some of you may have noticed, we’ve changed our suggested donation amount from $1 to $5. There are a couple reasons why we did this…

First, we are getting donation amounts ranging everywhere from $1 to $10, even though we only ask for $1. This is a HUGE complement to us that people feel our service is worth more than we even ask! We feel that putting the requested amount in the middle will be more targeted toward the average amount that people are already donating.

Second, if the suggestion of $5 regulates our donation amounts, then we will be able to lock down the amount. This will allow the user the ability to skip the step in the payment process where they are currently required to enter an amount.

Please keep in mind that we are doing this primarily to make the process simpler for the user (just like everything we do with DropBoks). We are by no means trying to be donation whores just to make more money. As I’ve mentioned before, our primary concern is making an amazing product, money is secondary.

How It All Began – Part II

Once the technology was agreed upon, we slowly but surely got the ball rolling. Keeping momentum was quite difficult I must admit. We kept hitting snag after snag as far as getting the app to behave exactly how I was envisioning. For example, you honestly wouldn’t believe how difficult it was to get all the drag-and-drop nuances nailed down and behaving correctly. It would be perfect in Firefox, but screwed up in IE or vice versa. And that’s just one aspect of the functionality, and there are literally hundreds. I guess the point I’m trying to make here is that just because the interface looks so simple doesn’t mean it was simple to create.

As development was progressing I was always keeping two websites in the forefront of my mind. Google and Craigslist. In fact I had these sites in mind even before I started the design of DropBoks. Here’s why…

Google- The first time I saw the Google home page I was a little bit confused. Where was all the other stuff that is ‘supposed’ to be on a portal homepage? Where was the news, sports scores, stock quotes, horoscopes, banner ads, etc? All that was there was a logo, search field. And then it hit me. Google only had one search field on their home page because that was all that they did. They didn’t care about fluf. It was genious. I was hooked. The whole concept of a service doing only one thing and doing it extremely well made a very big impression on me. When I started designing DropBoks I knew that I wanted to emulate that same philosophy- do one thing and do it very well.

Craigslist- When I think about Craigslist I immediately think of the “I don’t care what the experts say, I’m gonna do it my way” type of attitude. You see, when Craig Newmark started Craigslist he never did it to make money. He simply saw a need and filled it. At one point he was actually considered a fool (by some) for not having banner ads on the site. He could have made millions! But he said “screw you” to the squares in the suites and kept Craigslist non-commercial. He did it his way. And you know what, Craigslist is one of the top websites in the entire world now because of it. If he hadn’t stuck to his guns he probably could have made a couple million, but then Craigslist would have looked just like other sites of the day and would have probably turned into a colossal nothing.

So as crazy as it sounds, I made the decision that I would focus on trying to make a really amazing product that filled a need for a lot of people, and not have money be the focus of DropBoks. I simply wanted to make something that had an impact on peoples lives. That probably sounds cheesy in a way, but it’s true. And yeah, maybe I’m a little crazy but so be it.

The next problem that presented itself was money. As in “I don’t have a rich uncle so how the hell am I gonna pay for this?” type of money problem. I decided to take a gamble. More specifically, I took a gamble on human nature. I had a very strong feeling that there were people out there that would donate for a service if they found it truly valuable.

After doing the math, I realized that this venture wouldn’t cost that much money at all. Server space as well as bandwidth are extremely cheap now-a-days. I wouldn’t need that much capital to keep this thing running. So even if I got lets say 5% of people donating I would be able to cover my costs. With the numbers laid out, there was no turning back.

Part III coming soon…

Slammed!

Wow. So it’s been barely over three weeks since our launch and already our application servers are feeling the pressure. I never dreamed we would be experiencing so much popularity so quickly. It’s a strange problem to have. I love that we have tons of traffic and loads of people using our application every day, but it is extremely stressful when we get a large spike and the app slows down significantly. I guess part of the reason for my stress is because I actually visualize someone uploading their files and the app hanging on them. I am all about the user experience, so when I know that users are potentially getting frustrated I tend to wig out just a tad.

I want to personally thank our users for their patience as we solve our traffic issues. We are working frantically to solve this ASAP! Very soon we will have migrated our system to a very large server cluster with powerful overflow capabilities. Yay!