Well… We seem to be seeing a pattern in our end of year posts… It is super easy to be a doom monger and look back to the demise of Boris, the subsequent replacement of Liz Truss and the substantial economic stress that was instantly put on the country by a crass and stupid budget. Don’t get us started…
2022 has been tough. We have ground it out and invested a huge amount of time and money on our own software, we even said ‘no’ to new clients for over 6 months. But there was no way of getting close to the polish and finesse of what we wanted whilst also serving new clients as they will have deserved. Too much push and pull and fortunately we were in a financial position to be able to make that decision.
The outcome for us is that we are so very nearly there and will be launching our CMS platform Jolojo as an MVP in the very early part of 2023. If you want to find out more, head on over to our not very up to date website at www.jolojo.com
So, here is a run down of the bigger bits of what we have done over the past year.
Updates to the Svelte Jolojo CMS
As mentioned above, we have worked hard and long on new Jolojo (Svelte). All in the aim of providing a world class CMS with out of the box functionality for both site owners and SEO agencies.
Only about 1.2 man years of time…
New Templating, Content Blocks
Website templating is tricky. In the past we have spent ages creating fancy UI’s but have recently thrown this away in favour of a more traditional approach all tied into a Git repository.
Alongside this, our long thought of idea of “Content Blocks” has made good progress. This allows template areas to be added to the page with predetermined spaces to drag and drop plugins into. This makes it much easier to manage a layout of a page, as it is segmented into different horizontal layouts. Examples of this include having a 50/50 content block, in which you can drag a text image into the left column and an image into the right; or a full width column, which only has space for 1 plugin horizontally before going to the next row.
We are also starting to deal with Cumulative Shift issues (content jumping around as it loads, Google doesn’t like this very much) at the core template level without being silly about break points and image size declarations. We aren’t 100% there yet but getting close.
Jolojo - New Plugins
Alongside changes to the templating, we have also been working on a few new plugins to help add options to sites that want a bit more to them. These plugins include:
- A new timeline plugin
- Improved testimonials plugin
- Card plugin
- Button plugin
- Hero image plugin
- Improved image plugin
- Animated blocks
And quite a few more that we have no doubt forgotten about…
Jolojo: Auction Software
We are nearly 2 years into the build with of a new online auction platform (currently nameless…!) that acts as a way for auction houses to manage all aspects of a live auction. It manages the creation of auctions, management of lots, management of consignors & buyers/users, the reporting of sold lots, money owed, and money gained from all auctions.
This auction software is first being rolled out on an upgrade of an existing site: Rosan Reeves Auctions. We are working with them to understand the full extent and necessary functionality that would benefit an auction house using the software; finding the best path to take regarding changes and updates to the auction software. The auctions are currently live auctions, that provides the ability to stagger lots within the auction and allows window extensions to prevent lot sniping. We will be releasing a lot more information (and even a whole new marketing site) for this in the new year, keep an eye out!
Jolojo: Ecommerce
Alongside all that has been mentioned above regarding our new Svelte Jolojo – we have also been working on adding eCommerce into Jolojo – allowing sites to be set up with the intention of being an online shop – think Shopify.
We have also been working alongside a few of our clients on this project too, notably T9 Hobbysport & Starshine. We aim to release these new sites in the first quarter of 2023, which will also mark the release of the eCommerce platform to new clients & businesses who want to create a new, fast site that is easy to manage and sells, sells, sells!
Logic Engine
The Jolojo logic engine was finished this year. It uses its own programming language and is designed to take any logic based decisions away from deep ‘hard code’. This way, simple changes can be made without digging through code to see what is going on.
Examples of these problems:
- VAT calculations
- Shipping matrices
- Scoping (user permissions)
- Discount vouchers
- Product filtering (ecommerce)
Notable client work
Levantor
One of our newer clients, Levantor (who have hit a massive milestone in financing over $10,000,000,000 into working capital for large scale sales operations this year) have been a key client with several changes carried out to their external document processing and signing platform using DocuSign and Adobe Sign for electronic bills of exchange. We are also just a few weeks away from releasing a new marketing site for them, nearly made it for Xmas, but not quite.
Kino Cinemas
Kino Cinemas are a group of 3 cinemas located in Rye, Hawkhurst & Bermondsey. Their old system was old and very difficult to maintain.
We helped Kino find a new solution for all their operating systems – EPoS, Ticketing, Programming & Scheduling and Selling concessions. We provided training and support that the vendor was unable to provide for their venues covering all new operational procedures that will be used with the new system.
We also moved them from their old email marketing system, which had to be manually changed every time they sent out emails, to a new WYSIWYG email campaign builder. This allowed anyone in Kino to create and edit email campaigns without needing HTML knowledge and provides a much easier way of advertising any new films/venue updates/memberships to their members.
Leaderboard Golf
Lastly in our client review, we upgraded all of the Leaderboard Golf websites to the latest and greatest version of Jolojo. We are super proud to have been working with Leaderboard for almost 20 years…
2023
We have a crystal ball and we are going to use it, here is what we think will happen in 2023:
- Elon Musk will re-float Twitter and lose about 20Bn.
- We will all be using flying cars by September.
- Dogs will finally be proven to be more intelligent than humans.
- The economic crisis will be over.
- We will have a long hot (but not too hot) summer.
Well, we can but hope!