Important Note (17/09/2007)
This is just to clarify that the program registration pages are up and running normally. They were temporarily suspended for a few weeks at the start of the summer, while I made changes to the website, but this process is complete now.
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Hi Everyone,
Some people may be alarmed to see that the Registration page is no longer available, so I would like to take the opportunity to explain why this is.
I would like to preface what follows by saying that I am still committed to improving the program and fixing any bugs that show up. I just posted the list of known bugs and suggested program improvements for anyone to comment on, and I hope that this will lead to some debate to pinpoint the ones which should have more priority.
About eight years ago I set up this company, Orphalese Data Solutions, with a friend of mine in the UK, to sell some invoicing software we had written. We both have day jobs, but it seemed like a way of making some pin money out of our common interest in computers. About five years ago, after I moved to Spain, we were going to close it down because in fact it was losing money. But also at that time I had just written this tarot program, and it seemed quite popular (it has sold about two a week from the first month it appeared on the internet), so we decided to keep the company going to see what would happen.
What happened is that the program became a hobby of mine and a great source of encouragement for my programming efforts. It is a real thrill to write something that people enjoy using. Everyone knows what I am talking about because I am sure it is the same buzz you get when you design a deck, devise a spread, or write a set of card notes. But meanwhile the company has still never generated any money, and my business partner in the UK now thinks it is time to close it down. He wants to spend his spare time with his family, not filling in forms, and after five years he thinks we have given it a fair shot.
If it was just for this I probably wouldn't even post about it in the forum. Either there could be a change of director, or we could fold the business and I could keep this website going off my own back, and either way there wouldn't really be any need to post about it. It wouldn't entail much more than a small change in the wording of the end user licence agreement.
But it goes a bit deeper than that, because after five years I am also reflecting about the direction this project should take. My biggest misgiving is that more of my time is now spent on support than it is on programming. The website and the help file, even the program itself, encourage users to email us at every turn with bug reports and suggestions. At the same time, thinking that it would increase people's confidence, I have tried to give the website a corporate feel which encourages people to think they are writing to a dedicated support person (or even team!) rather than some guy who just got home from work and needs to get his dinner on before going out to watch the footie. I think it is obvious I have made a rod for my own back by doing this, because nine out of ten people will always email before posting to a forum.
Conclusion, my plan is to:
A) Sort out what kind of entity the business side of things should be and make sure the website keeps going and the program is still available. Leave this to me.
B) Rewrite the website and help file, encouraging people to use the forum at all times to report bugs, make suggestions and generally do anything and everything, other than enquire about registration issues and lost unlock codes. The forum should be the place for everything besides that.
C) Make the program as ** as chips, to compensate for the loss of value involved in B.
I think it is very important to make sure that the website, help file and program itself are updated to reflect this change of emphasis, and to make clear that in the future the program will come with a limited support package. Until then it isn't fair to let people register under a misconception, which is why I have temporarily suspended the registration page.
I am also very aware that anyone who registered in recent months might feel that they are having something taken away from them, and where this is the case I will try to offer the level of support that the current wording of the website promises. On the other hand, I would encourage you to bring up any problems here first anyway. There may not be anyone here but us chickens, but we aren't bad as support teams go
Cheers,
Richard
