My article on Subversion for Designers was released today on Vitamin. I’ve been reading Vitamin for a long time, so I’m really excited to have an article on the site. Actually, I was so excited that I started refreshing the page waiting to see it. :) I have to admit, it was not easy to write. I’ve written plenty of articles in the past for publications like MarketingProfs and the Business Journal, but trying to simplify the process of using Subversion was not easy. I’m happy with the result, so let’s see what everyone else thinks.
Beanstalk: Gateway drug to your dev process
Since we launched Beanstalk, we’ve been on an amazing ride. The product has taken off more than we imagined. It’s great to see that people actually had the same pain as I did, in fact, many people. Our goal from the start was to use Beanstalk as a way to improve people’s development and design process. I see version control as the gateway drug to a better dev process. Our goal is to get you hooked.
You see, once you start using version control, so much more opens up. You can isolate work, then you realize that you could benefit from staging environments, then on to automated builds. With automated builds you can get started on automated testing and so on. It all starts with a good version control system. Before no time, you’ll be tweaking (literally?) your dev process.
I personally realized this a few years ago. At first version control was something cool, but too complicated to setup and spread across the team. I didn’t take the time to learn it. When I finally did, it really changed everything. Then I read the book Ship It! and I never looked back. It’s a great feeling to have an automated process that almost any developer or designer can jump into.
We’re rockin’ it
We have some really cool companies using Beanstalk including Digital Web, Hashrocket, and Blue Flavor. When I read Carson’s article about the 1–2% paid plan conversion rate I really took it seriously and planned for it. Today, we are seeing a 3.53% conversion rate from free to paid plans. Awesome!
I want to thank everyone for supporting us and making this a great product so far. We have a lot planned and we are constantly listening.