This type of page is typically reserved for internal use. However, since I am a dentist and this entire project is built to support other people’s creative endeavors, side hustles, and businesses, I have decided to share the entire tech stack that I use to build this this website. I hope that you can use the same tools to build something great on your own.
Team Tools
Basecamp is how we get work done with a remote team. If you have not tried Basecamp yet, I highly recommend it. I’ve used Slack, Teams, Asana, Notion, Workspaces (or whatever Google calls it now), and Trello to manage projects online. Hands down, Basecamp is the absolute best for small to mid-sized teams who want to get real work done remotely.
The only downside to Basecamp is that it is a separate subscription that’s often in addition to Office 365 or GSuite and it does not have the ability to launch voice or video calls within the application…but we’ve found that video calls are just unnecessary. Asynchronous workflows allow us to boost productivity, and if we need to collaborate in real time, we use Teams or Zoom.
Using videos to communicate with customers and answer support tickets saves everyone time. We even use loom to communicate internally.
Freshdesk is how we manage support tickets. A great alternative to Freshdesk is Helpscout, which we use at Embrasure Space (Help Scout can also be HIPAA compliant). For this site, we chose to use Freshdesk to manage our support tickets because they offer a free tier, and the styling of the knowledgebase better suits our needs than other support software on the market.
YouTube Channel IDs
The introduction of handles on YouTube can be problematic for developers trying to pull data from YouTube that relies on the Channel ID. Fortunately, a tool is available from Comment Picker to help developers find channel IDs from video links.
PodBay
Podbay is one of the best ways to search for podcasts.
RSS Feeds
So much of what we do on this site depends on RSS feeds. Surprisingly, many guests, hosts, and publishers do not know where their feed is located. We can usually find a feed for them but some platforms make it difficult without administrative access. If we detect that the website uses WordPress, simply appending "/feed/" to the root domain usually reveals some insight. We can also look at the source code for websites using another content management system. Lastly, we can try searching the domain at www.getrssfeed.com
Feed Validator
Sometimes we need to validate if an RSS feed is working as we expect. When we need to validate a feed, we use the Cast Feed Validator powered by Blubrry
File Converter
Sometimes you just need to change one file type to another and it can be such a choir. This is especially true with custom fonts that you're uploading to your website (although Google Fonts are awesome and free). To convert files from one type to another, check out Cloud Convert
Maintaining our Brand's Image
Maintaining consistency across your brand is imperative and you can’t rely on translating your vision to every person tasked with helping you build your website without providing guidelines. The best way to communicate your brand with your employees, contractors, and partners is to build and maintain a branding page on your website. You can view ours by clicking on the button below.
