Matthew Palmer Top Articles Vanilla Rocket Kubernetes Book Standing Invitation

    Top Articles in 2023

  1. How to Install VirtualBox on macOS Mojave and High Sierra

    A quick guide on a couple of tricks you need to get VirtualBox installed on a Mac. Includes a bonus tip on sharing folders between the VM and your host OS.
  2. Emoji Bullet List ⚡ Behind the Scenes

    I released Emoji Bullet List, a fun web app that emojifies your bullet point lists. It went a bit viral on ProductHunt and Twitter.
  3. Anker Battery Pack for Macbook Pro Review – Anker PowerCore 20100

    While travelling around Australia and the US, I needed a good way to give my Touch Bar MacBook Pro and iPhone 5 a bit of extra charge.
  4. How to Add a Launch Image for the iPhone 6 (Plus)

    A quick guide on how to add a launch image in Xcode for the iPhone 6, 7, and 8.
  5. Remapping Keyboard Keys on Mac OS X Mavericks

    How to remap any of your keyboard keys to any combination of keys on Mac OS X Mavericks. I got hooked after remapping Caps Lock to Command+R.
  1. Create custom workouts on your iPhone and send them to Apple Watch

    I’ve created a new app called Workout Builder that lets you easily create custom workouts that sync to the built-in Workouts app on your Apple Watch.

    Download Workout Builder here for free.

    It’s only available on iOS 17 and watchOS 10.

    It has great integration with the native iOS and watchOS Workouts capabilities, it’s free to download and create custom workouts, and it comes with a gallery of premium pre-built workouts in case you don’t want to build your own.

    How to create workouts that sync to your Apple Watch Workouts app

    1. Download Workout Builder from the App Store for free
    2. Click the “+” button to create a new workout
    3. Enter a title, and optionally customize the icon and color for your workout
    4. Choose your activity/sport
    5. Choose a workout type (Simple Goal – time or distance, Advanced Workout – custom intervals, Pacer Workout – paced time and duration targeted workouts)
    6. Enter your workout details
    7. Tap “Done” and then tap “Send to Apple Watch”
    8. When you’re ready to do the workout, on your Apple Watch, open the Workouts app and choose your workout
  2. Matt’s Big Thief Unreleased Tracks Spreadsheet

    Here’s my spreadsheet of Big Thief’s unreleased tracks. This was created in February 2023, i.e. the post-DNWMIBIY period.

    The track list, URLs, and performance details are stored in a public Google Sheet linked here:

    Matt’s Big Thief Unreleased Tracks Spreadsheet

    As of March 2023, the list contains 23 tracks. The Google Sheet will get updated more regularly than this blog post.

    • A Thousand Years or More
    • Beautiful, Powerful
    • Born for Loving You
    • Branches
    • Bruiser
    • Cactus Practice
    • C U More
    • Do You Remember?
    • Forgiver
    • Free Treasure
    • Geese
    • Horsepower
    • Happiness
    • Happy With You
    • If Love is Blind
    • In Your Hair
    • No Machine
    • Once a Bunch of Times
    • Ruined
    • Sadness as a Gift
    • Vampire Empire
    • Wait a While
    • Wanted You to Stay
    • Words
  3. What is the best launcher app for macOS?

    LaunchBar vs Alfred vs Quicksilver vs FastFolderFinder compared

    Launcher apps help you do stuff on your Mac really quickly, without taking your hands off the keyboard.

    Hit a keyboard shortcut to open the launchbar, search for what you want, and hit return. They make complex tasks really easy.

    So what’s the best launcher app for macOS in 2022 and 2023?

    I’ve compared Launchbar, Alfred, Quicksilver, and FastFolderFinder in this post.

    TLDR: Alfred is the most powerful and most customisable launcher app.

    If you want something simpler and easier, FastFolderFinder makes it easy to open folders and apps.

    (Disclaimer: I built FastFolderFinder. So, like, I’m pretty biased?)

    What is a launcher app?

    Launcher apps help you do stuff on your Mac heaps faster.

    They let you set up a keyboard shortcut that triggers the launchbar to appear.

    Then you use the launchbar to to open apps and folders, execute scripts, do calculations, search the web, and on and on…

    All without taking your hands off the keyboard or navigating through a bunch of different apps.

    FastFolderFinder: Simple and easy, but not extensible

    FastFolderFinder macOS app launcher launchbar

    Link: FastFolderFinder

    Price: Unlimited free trial, $10 to purchase

    I personally use launcher apps for three things: opening apps, quickly navigating to folders in Finder, and opening my projects’ folders in specific apps like VS Code, Sublime Text, and iTerm.

    I built FastFolderFinder with those three tasks in mind. Plus it’s super fast and the fuzzy search is great.

    If you want something simple and easy, maybe try FastFolderFinder. Otherwise, use Alfred, LaunchBar, or Quicksilver.

    Pros

    • Simple, fast, and easy to open folders and apps
    • Fast fuzzy search for everything on on your Mac
    • UI blends perfectly into the native macOS UI
    • Unlimited free trial and inexpensive to purchase later

    Cons

    • Doesn’t support a lot of the extensive power-user functionality that other launcher apps have, like clipboard history, automations, plugins, music control, and calculators
    • Not customisable in terms of UI or themes, only light or dark mode
    • No support for plugins or extensibility (though you can trigger custom scripts)
    • Search indexing process isn’t as smooth as the other apps

    Alfred: Powerful and customisable but… it’s a lot

    Alfred launcher window demo screenshot

    Link: Alfred

    Price: Free to try, Powerpack is $40 for version 5 updates, $70 for lifetime updates

    Alfred is my go-to recommendation for people getting into launcher apps.

    It’s extremely powerful, very customisable, and tends to have a feeling of “it just works.”

    You’ll be able to find your files, launch apps, do calculations, search the web, and a lot more, all from one launchbar.

    The only downside is that there are a lot of settings to tweak. There are like 15 different panels within the “Features” section of the app’s preferences window. Check out the screenshot below.

    For some people, this is a good thing; for me, it’s a bit overwhelming.

    Alfred settings panel showing 15 features

    Pros

    • The search is super fast
    • Workflows and the workflow editor are really nice upgrades available in the Powerpack
    • Appearance / theme customisation is excellent
    • You can view your usage history so you can see how much you’ve been using Alfred
    • Searches everything, e.g. contacts, a dictionary, Safari bookmarks
    • Quick shortcuts to google, amazon, wikipedia
    • You can even search items that are inside System Preferences/Settings – it’s really nice and way faster than clicking through System Preferences
    • Type URLs to go to the site directly from Alfred
    • You can run new macOS Shortcuts shortcuts from alfred

    Cons

    • There are a lot of settings. This might be a very good thing if that’s what you want!
    • The preferences UI, and the default UI in general, isn’t “Mac-ish.” It’s not a deal-breaker because the UI is customisable as long as you’ve purchased the Powerpack. Plus so much of the rest of the app is excellent.
    • The Powerpack is costly, but worth it if you know you need the Workflows functionality and you want to support the app’s development

    LaunchBar: Great but the UX doesn’t quite click for me

    LaunchBar launcher window demo screenshot

    Link: LaunchBar

    Price: Free to try, $29 to purchase

    LaunchBar is the main competitor to Alfred.

    It’s a bit simpler to customise, a bit cheaper, but still offers a tonne of functionality and power.

    The only thing I didn’t like about it was that some of the “how it works” part of the design didn’t match my expectations for how an app should work. For example, hiding the launchbar takes multiple Esc keypresses, the text input box doesn’t have a cursor I-beam, and the default font feels off.

    LaunchBar actions list for search results

    Pros:

    • Really powerful and customisable. It’s not quite as tweakable as Alfred, but the benefit is that the preferences are less overwhelming
    • There are a lot of things you can with the search result – see the image above!
    • The included clipboard manager lets you track your copy/paste history (If you’re not using a clipboard manager, I’d recommend getting one like Pastebot or use the one in LaunchBar. They’re really handy once you get used to it.)
    • LaunchBar integrates with the Music app so that you can control your music right from LaunchBar
    • The built-in emoji picker and text snippet manager are really nice to have
    • The Preferences window is nice and “Mac-ish” (Though strangely the preferences window feels a lot more Mac-ish than the actual LaunchBar window.)

    Cons:

    • There are a lot of popups and prompts for permissions on first run, which can be a little overwhelming
    • I find the interaction a little clunky – you hit the shortcut, type your search, wait for a result (the length of delay can be tweaked), then if you want to close out the launchbar you have to hit Esc twice. Having to hit Esc twice is how Spotlight works, and I’ve always found that annoying.
    • Similarly, because of the font and the lack of an I-beam, the text input feels kind of strange
    • The default font doesn’t match macOS very well and I couldn’t find a way to tweak it

    Quicksilver: Old-school, reliable, and free and open source

    Link: Quicksilver

    Price: Free, open source

    Quicksilver is the oldest, most mature app launcher app on the Mac. For me, it basically defined the category for a lot of years.

    It’s free and open source, and gives you a lot of customisability.

    Pros:

    • The original old-school launcher app for Mac. It’s been around for nearly 20 years so it’s super mature
    • Open source – you can vet the code or contribute improvements
    • Used and beloved by tonnes of Mac users over the years
    • Light, fast, and very visual. All the other apps tend to be more focused on the “text” of the result (e.g. the folder name or path) whereas Quicksilver feels like it’s more focused on the “image” of the result like the app icon. This can make it a lot faster to use when opening apps.

    Cons:

    • Because it’s free and open source, volunteers have to find time to make updates and release features. This can sometimes make Quicksilver slower to update or go through periods of inactivity.
    • Looks a bit old and doesn’t quite match macOS anymore
    • On my mac (2021 14-inch Macbook Pro running macOS 12.5.1 at the time of writing) it crashes occasionally. I assume updating my Mac to the latest version of macOS would fix the issue.

    Conclusion: which macOS launcher app is the best?

    For people who want a really powerful tool, I’d recommend Alfred as a starting point.

    It’s free to download, has a bunch of powerful features, and can be fully customised to do anything you want. Its default UI style doesn»t quite “blend in” with the system, but the default theme choices are pretty good, and with the Powerpack it’s customisable enough to get it looking the way you want. And with the Powerpack you get Workflows, which are a feature that’s only available in Alfred.

    However… for people after something simpler, I personally use FastFolderFinder.

    I built it to keep things simple and do exactly what I want: I want to open my folders, and I want to open apps. Really quickly.

  4. Live Data Table for Perpetual Future Funding Rates Across Multiple Crypto Exchanges

    I’ve built a data table showing the latest funding rate for various perptual futures across multiple exchanges – including Binance, Bitmex, and FTX.

    This is useful if you want to run low-risk basis trades or arbitrage based on the funding rate.

    View the table here

    It refreshes with the latest changes from each exchange every minute. Refresh your browser to see the latest rates in the table.

    • Binance publishes realtime funding rates
    • Bitmex publishes eight-hourly funding rates
    • FTX publishes hourly funding rates

    What are funding rates in perpetual futures?

    Funding rates are payments made periodically between participants in a perpetual futures market. Perpetual futures never expire, which means that spot price and the futures price can diverge.

    Funding rates help keep these prices in line.

    If the funding rate is positive, longs will pay shorts the funding amount.

    If the funding rate is negative, shorts will pay longs the funding amount.

    You can go long on the spot market, and short on the futures market, and keep earning the funding rate if the rate stays positive.

  5. How to set up a subscriber milestone referral program on Squarespace to grow your mailing list

    Want to get more email subscribers for your site, store, or service? Generate positive word of mouth on social media? Spread organically through your biggest fans’ social networks?

    If so, you should run a milestone referral program. Encourage people to sign up for your email newsletter, and give them rewards for any friends they get to sign up as well.

    In this guide, we’re going to set up a complete milestone referral marketing program using Peach’s.

    This tutorial takes about fifteen minutes.

    What is a newsletter milestone referral program?

    A subscriber milestone referral program lets you give rewards to people who refer their friends to sign up for your mailing list or email newsletter. It’s often used for products that are pre-launch.

    Milestone referral program header

    You’ll create a landing page for your product, connect a referral program, and let people earn early access, discounts, or merch for telling their friends about you.

    Why would you want one?

    When you’re pre-launch, a subscriber milestone referral program helps you build excitement and viral interest in your products. It lets customers get a sneak peek into your business, and sign up to be notified when your product is available.

    Plus, they get rewards for sharing your business via email or on social media.

    If you’ve already got a great online store, but you want to do more email marketing, a newsletter milestone referral program will help you grow your mailing list much faster than traditional methods.

    Since you reward people for sharing as well as signing up, you’ll reach many more people than just your site’s regular visitors.

    And email marketing is one of the most underrated marketing methods. It’s cheap, super effective, and high quality – way better than running expensive ads on social media. You just need to have a solid mailing list to send to!

    Let’s get into setting up your landing page & creating your milestone referral program.

    In this guide, we’ll use Squarespace. (But Peach’s works with any website builder! You’ll just need to translate them for your platform.)

    Design your rewards

    First, think about your products and your business.

    What rewards will get people excited about your products and your brand? What’s a cool enough reward to make people want to tell their friends about you?

    For Harry’s (the company that makes razors and shaving products), they had four milestones in their program. When someone referred five friends, they’d get free shave cream. At 10 and 25 referrals, subscribers got a free razor. And at 50 referrals, they got free shaving for a year.

    If you’re unsure, I’d recommend the following milestones (reward tiers)

    Refer 1 friend

    Referring just one friend is good so that people don’t feel intimidated for sharing. A great reward here is a $5 discount code or free shipping on their next purchase.

    Refer 5 friends

    For someone who refers five friends, give them a product sample or sticker pack. This is really a nice level of sharing that balances a cool gift with an attainable level of sharing with friends.

    Refer 25 friends

    For referring 25 friends to your email newsletter, it’s worth rewarding someone with a free product. Most people probably won’t reach 25 referrals – unless they have a big following on Instagram or other social media, but if they do, a free product might even get them to post again about your site when they receive it.

    And you should consider setting up an affiliate program if you have a few people making a lot of referrals.

    Create your landing page

    In Squarespace, we’re going to create a landing page that explains our referral program’s offer. Try to make this page nice and visual, and explain the rewards as clearly as you can.

    For this example, we’ll set up a subscriber milestone referral program that rewards people for sharing the store with 1 friend, 5 friends, and 25 friends.

    For 1 friend referral, we’ll give them a free shipping discount code. For 5 friends referred, we’ll send them a free sticker pack. And for 25 friends referred, we’ll give them a free piece of merch.

    Let’s create the landing page in Squarespace.

    (Note – you don’t have to follow these steps exactly if you want your landing page to look different to this example. Just jump back in at the “Connect your milestone referral program” step.)

    This is the landing page we’ll be creating.

    Milestone referral program landing page example

    Create the content

    In your Squarespace admin, click Pages, then click the plus button to create a new page. For this example, we’ll use the “About” template.

    Squarespace about page template

    Remove all the existing blocks from the template so that we’ve just got the page title.

    Empty example page

    Now, let’s add in three images of our rewards. Create new image blocks with images that show off that reward level.

    Create image block in Squarespace

    We’ll use the “Poster” image layout so that the caption appears over our images.

    Poster image layout option

    Once you’ve added the images, drag the second image to the right of the first image. This will create a new column.

    How to create a column in Squarespace

    Repeat this by dragging the third image to the right of the first two, which creates a third column.

    You might need to rearrange the title block at this point. Once you’re set up, you’ll have a nice title and a three column layout of images with your reward levels.

    Now, let’s create space for our description of the referral program. In this spot, we need to explain to visitors how the referral program works.

    Add a text block to your page, and then add two spacer blocks to either side of the text block. (Use the same method as before to create columns).

    Three column layout for a Squarespace landing page

    If you want to resize your columns, hover your cursor between two columns and it will change to the vertical bar cursor. Then you can resize your column width.

    Now, in our text block, we’ll add a quick message to explain how the program works.

    Add the code block

    Now that we’ve set up the content to explain our program and our reward tiers, we can add the actual subscriber form.

    Add a new Code block to the page. When we connect our script, this block will get dynamically replaced with the content for our referral program widget.

    Squarespace add code block

    Leave this as “Hello world” for now. Once we’ve created our referral program in Peach’s, we’ll replace this with the actual script to get our milestone referral widget in place.

    Squarespace add code block

    Connect your milestone referral program

    We’ve got our landing page and the spot where we want our referral program widget to appear. We need to connect up our widgets.

    We’re going to use Peach’s milestone referral programs for this.

    Create your program

    Head to the website, and click “Get Started,” and then create your account.

    For the value under “Website URL” on the “Create Program” form, enter the URL of the landing page you just set up. (In Squarespace, this is under the “Slug” field in your page’s setting, or you can just view your page in a new Incognito window and copy and paste that URL.)

    Peach’s website URL

    This URL will host your sign up form, your referrer’s stats widgets, and provide easy widgets for referrers to share your site on social media.

    Add your milestones

    After you’ve created your program, you’ll be in your Peach’s dashboard.

    Click the “Milestones” tab in the left sidebar to configure your widgets.

    Peach’s milestones dashboard

    Let’s add milestones for our referral reward tiers – 1 friend, 5 friends, and 25 friends.

    Peach’s milestone reward configuration

    Click “Save” when you’ve added your milestones.

    Connect your widgets

    With the milestones set up, now we can plug our widgets into the space on our landing page.

    Click on the “Connect” tab in the left sidebar. You’ll be shown the three steps to set up your program.

    Under step 1, copy the code from the Peach’s dashboard to your clipboard.

    Peach’s copy code

    In Squarespace, paste it into the Code block. You’ll need to untick “Display Source.” Save your page in Squarespace.

    Peach’s copy code

    Then click “Test” on the step in Peach’s. If everything is plugged in correctly, and your website URL is correct, this step will succeed.

    If you view your landing page in a new Incognito window now, you should see your subscriber form appear.

    Do a test referral

    Follow the instructions under step 2 and 3 on your Peach’s “Connect” tab. It will take you through creating a test subscriber, and perform a test referral so that you can understand how the referral process works.

    With those steps completed, you’re good to go!

    Customize your program

    If you want, you can customize your program in the “Customize” tab in Peach’s. You can tweak all your email templates and your widget styles.

    Launch your program

    Everything’s done! You can click on the “Preview & Launch” tab to launch your program and make it live. You should see your referral widgets on your landing page, and everything will be working.

  6. How to Set Up an Affiliate Marketing Program on Squarespace

    In this guide, we’re going to set up a complete Squarespace affiliate marketing program using Peach’s.

    This tutorial takes about ten minutes – after that, you’ll have your affiliate program up and running.

    Affiliate program hero header image

    What is an affiliate marketing program?

    An affiliate program lets you reward influential people for sending customers to you.

    You pay a commission to your affiliates based on the sales they send to your Squarespace store.

    Add bloggers, Instagrammers, YouTubes, and authors to your affiliate program. They’ll share your store with their audience. You’ll pay them a commission on any sales.

    Squarespace affiliate program example

    Why would you want an affiliate program?

    Affiliate programs let you dramatically increase the reach of your store without buying expensive ads or running complicated marketing programs.

    Why you want an affiliate program

    Say you know an influential person in your industry – a popular blogger, an Instagram personality, etc.

    They’ve got a strong connection to your product – or maybe you send them a free sample.

    You want to reward that person for sharing your product in a way that’s incredibly beneficial to you both.

    But neither of you really know how much you should pay for a sponsored post (and sponsored posts are risky… what if they’ve bought fake followers?)

    Instead, you add them to your affiliate program, and offer them a commission on any sales they send to you.

    They share your products with their followers, their followers buy your products, you reward the affiliate.

    What businesses are affiliate programs suited for?

    Affiliate programs are well-suited to most types of businesses. In particular, industries like fashion, beauty, technology, food, and lifestyle brands.

    The key question to ask is this: does your industry have highly influential people who can organically share your products with their audience?

    If so, you want to invite those people to be your business’s affiliates.

    Affiliate programs vs referral programs?

    Affiliate programs are when you pay the affiliate a commission based on referred sales to your store. Say, you pay them 20% of sales of all the customers they send to you.

    Characteristically, you’ll have a small number of affiliates who reach a large audience.

    What is the difference between affiliate and referral program

    Referral programs are more of a friend-to-friend exchange. You can offer a customer a discount off their next order if they tell a friend about your store.

    This often looks like “Send a friend $10 off, and you’ll get $10 off your next order.” You typically wouldn’t pay a referrer a percentage commission in a referral program. (Would a referrer really be encouraged by a 10% commission on a $25 order?)

    These are much more natural, small-scale interactions between regular people. Anyone can sign up for the referral program – they don’t need to be able to reach a large audience… they just send a message to their friends.

    If you’re looking for a guide to setting up a Squarespace referral program, Peach’s has a different plugin for that.

    How to set up an affiliate program on Squarespace?

    To set up our affiliate program, we’ll use Peach’s – an easy way to set up an affiliate program sepcifically for Squarespace.

    Follow our guide and you’ll have your affiliate program up and running in ten minutes, and you’ll be able to invite influential affiliates to help grow your store.

    1. Visit the Peach’s affiliate programs page and sign up for an account



      Sign up
    2. On the “Create Program” screen, enter the details for your campaign name, your website’s URL, and your Squarespace store URL.

      Everything should be straightforward, and you can set a default commission of no commission, a percentage amount, or a fixed amount per order. You’ll also be able to customize this on a per-affiliate basis later.

      Create affiliate program

    3. Follow the first three steps on the Peach’s dashboard to connect your program to your store.

      The setup guide on the site links you to the relevant parts of your Squarespace admin settings, and you can copy and paste values from there.

      Squarespace Connection setup

    4. With the last two steps, you’ll verify that your affiliate program is connected to your store and that your affiliate’s referred orders are getting tracked correctly.

    5. After you’ve finished those steps, all your checkboxes will turn green, and you can click the button to make your program live.

      Squarespace marketing program preview

      You can tweak the dashboard styles (what your affiliates see) and templates (affiliate emails and notifications) for your program before you go live.

      Squarespace affiliate program customization

    6. Click the button to make your affiliate program live. You’re done!

      Live affiliate program on Squarespace
  7. How to Set Up a Squarespace Referral Program

    This guide is going to teach you how to set up a referral program (like “refer a friend and get $20 off your next order”) for your Squarespace store.

    If you’re looking to set up an Affiliate Program on Squarespace, check out my tutorial here.

    (What’s the difference between a referral program and an affiliate program? A referral program lets regular customers share your store with their friends to earn rewards. An affiliate program lets influential people earn commissions from sharing your store with their large audience.)

    Successful Squarespace referral program

    Why set up a referral program for Squarespace?

    People trust their friends more than ads

    Studies have shown that 9 out of 10 people trust recommendations from their friends above any other source when it comes to making purchases. So if you can get one of your customers to recommend a product to their friend, odds are pretty good

    Rewarding your customers builds loyalty and repeat customers

    I’m a small business owner, so I know first-hand that you’re probably not in business for the drive-by customers. What keeps you going are the people who come back, who love your products, and who rave about you. You need to reward people like that! First rule of economics is that people respond to incentives – so it makes sense that you should thank and reward your biggest fans.

    It’s waaay cheaper than old-school advertising

    Hands up – who’s burnt some money trying out AdWords? Or – shudders – you paid for a TV ad. Outdated. Modern businesses with modern products need modern marketing. There’s a reason Uber, Dropbox, and fast growing tech companies have refer-a-friend programs. They work. They’re a million times cheaper, and a million times more effective than buying ads.

    Reward your customers for sharing your store, don’t pay huge advertising corporations to do it.

    Okay – on to the guide.

    How to set up a referral program on Squarespace

    We’re going to use a Peach’s Squarespace referral program to set this up. Peach’s is a platform that plugs right in to your Squarespace site and adds refer-a-friend functionality.

    This whole thing takes you about 10 minutes, and after that you’ll have a working refer-a-friend program.

    1. Sign up for a Peach’s account

    Head over to the Peach’s site and click ‘Get Started’, then fill in your details.

    Sign up for peach's refer-a-friend account

    2. Create a new Squarespace referral program

    After you sign up, the site will take you through to the form where you create your referral program.

    Squarespace referrals

    Start by entering your store’s name, your website’s URL, and your Squarespace dashboard URL.

    If you use a Cover Page as your home page, you’ll need to set a different URL as your website URL.

    Switch the toggle on if you’re using Squarespace Commerce Advanced.

    3. Configure your program with a few options

    In the next step, tweak your referral program so that it fits how you want to reward your customers.

    For me, I’ve found that keeping it simple is best for my customers to understand.

    I usually set my referral programs up like “Reward customers who refer a friend with a $20 discount on their next order of $30 or more.”

    Customize your program

    The other popular option for stores that want to grow more quickly is used by companies like Uber and American Express.

    It’s called “Two-sided referrals.” It lets you do offers like “Send a friend $5 off and get a $5 reward after their first order.”

    I don’t think any of the other referral program platforms can do this with Squarespace, so it’s worthwhile upgrading to one of Peach’s premium plans if you want this.

    4. Add the Peach’s account to your Squarespace store

    Once you’ve set your rewards, click “Create.”

    Then you’ll need to plug the referral program into your Squarespace store so that discount codes and referred sales get sync‘d up.

    It’s pretty easy – the site guides you through it. Although you might need to wait up to a minute for the spinners to get the “completed” tick.

    (If you get stuck at this point – Peach’s email support address is [email protected])

    Connect Squarespace referrals

    5. Customize your program

    Once you’ve connected your account, you can customize your website pop-up and customer emails.

    Click “Customize” in the sidebar to go to the customization section.

    This is handy because it makes the referral experience more ‘seamless’ with the rest of your store – so people use and trust it more.

    Customize Squarespace referral program

    You can add a new banner image, tweak the verbiage, and even set custom CSS for your pop-up.

    6. Launch your program

    You’ve created your referral program, and now you’re ready to launch.

    Head to the “Launch” tab in the sidebar, and then click “Go Live.”

    Peach’s will run some checks to make sure everything’s connected properly, and then your program is live!

    Note: Order Confirmation Emails – if you’re using the Order Confirmation Emails integration (which is a great feature, it plugs right into your existing post-order Squarespace emails) – it will prompt you to add the widget to your emails. Simply copy-and-paste that code at the end of your order confirmation email when you get prompted.

    Successful Squarespace referral program

    If you get stuck at any point, Peach’s support email is [email protected].

  8. Set Up a Free Refer-a-Friend Program on Gumroad

    Uber, Dropbox, and a zillion other companies run promotions like “Tell a friend about us and get a $5 credit when they sign up.”

    Those programs work really well to increase sales. Those companies are smart. Turns out.

    But referral programs are very difficult to create and maintain yourself, especially if you’re not a software developer.

    Luckily, if you sell things through Gumroad (or a bunch of other services), Peach’s free refer-a-friend software lets you set one up. It takes like ten minutes. It’s free. It increases sales.

    I wrote a book about Kubernetes that I sell through Gumroad, and I wanted to set up a refer-a-friend program. Here’s how I did it.

    1. Add a custom field in Gumroad

    You need to add a custom field called ‘Referral Code’ to your Gumroad checkout form.

    Open up your product in Gumroad, navigate to the checkout configuration, flip the little toggle that says ‘Preview’, and under ‘More information’ add the field for ‘Referral Code’

    Embed Peach's form

    2. Create a free Peach’s account

    Go to peachs.co and create a free account.

    Create Peach's account

    3. Set up a new gambit

    Once you’ve logged in, click ‘New Gambit’ to get started creating your refer-a-friend program.

    Fill out the fields in the form, putting in your product’s details.

    Create Peach's account

    On the next step, enter the URL of the page where you sell your product and how many friends need to be referred for your customer to get rewarded.

    Create redirect

    On the last step, authorize Peach’s to use your Gumroad account. It uses this to create coupon codes and track who has been referred.

    4. Embed your refer-a-friend form

    You’re ready to start integrating your refer-a-friend program with your website.

    Somewhere on your site (for example) paste in the form embed code from the Peach’s console. This code loads the form that people will use to sign up for your refer-a-friend system.

    Embed Peach's form

    Once you’re done, reload the page where you added the code. Your page will get a fancy new form where people can sign up for a refer-a-friend program.

    Peach's form result

    5. Configure your product and discount

    In the Peach’s console, choose which product you want to set up the refer-a-friend program for, select the custom field you created in step 1, and enter your discount. Then click ‘Save’.

    Peach's form result

    6. Set up your checkout button

    The last step is to integrate Peach’s with your Gumroad checkout button.

    There are two steps.

    One, add the data-gumroad-gambit attribute to your existing Gumroad checkout button.

    Two, copy and paste the code from the Peach’s console to your site, right below your Gumroad checkout button.

    Embed Peach's form

    After that’s done, fill out your form from step 4 where people sign up to your refer-a-friend program. Grab the link that’s generated, and visit it. Then start the Gumroad checkout process. You’ll see a neat little pop up that you’ve been referred by a friend.

    Peach's button result

    7. Check your discount works

    Back in the Peach’s settings screen, click the button that says ‘Send Test Email’. This will send you an email with a link to purchase your product with the discount applied. Click that link and check everything looks good!

    Peach's button result

    Congrats!

    You’ve finished setting up your refer-a-friend program. Remember to link to your refer-a-friend sign up form (step 4) from your product’s marketing so that your customers know they can earn a discount.

    Feel free to email me if you have any trouble or any questions.

  9. Top 4 Free Timer Apps for Mac

    Need to quickly start a countdown timer on your Mac?

    Maybe you’re looking for the best free Pomodoro timer, a great minimalist countdown clock, or a productivity time tracker.

    Whenever I’m working, I’ve got a timer running. It’s my #1 tip for staying focused and getting a lot done in a short amount of time.

    This is my round up of the best four free timer apps for your Mac.

    1. Horo

    Horo Mac timer

    Link: Horo

    Obvious disclaimer – I built Horo. Why did I build it? I believe that if starting a timer takes you more than a second, your timer app sucks.

    Horo is a simple, easy app that lets you type what time you want (“1m 30s”, “1.5h”), hit Return, and then your timer starts.

    It’s neat, it’s free, and it shows the timer in the menu bar so you can glance back at it easily.

    2. Be Focused

    Be Focused

    Link: Be Focused

    Be Focused is a great, full-featured Pomodoro-style timer. To change the time interval of an individual timer, you have to change the presets in the app’s preferences.

    This can be a bit annoying, but the benefit is that the app has awesome tracking of the number of times you’ve completed a timer. This, and the built- in break tracking, makes Be Focused a great work timer.

    (Unfortunately, the free version has ads. But they’re not intrusive.)

    3. Activity Timer

    Activity Timer

    Link: Activity Timer

    Activity Timer’s a great little app because you can save a range of custom preset timers.

    If you find yourself using the same four or five time intervals over and over again, this is the app for you.

    The app is simple, free, and works like you’d expect.

    4. Howler Timer

    Howler Timer

    Link: Howler Timer

    Howler Timer is a great option if you want the timer to pop out into a new window.

    The UI’s looking a little old, but the app itself works great. The Pro version ($2.99) gives you more formatting options for the timer in the menu bar, and you can set presets.

    The other great feature of the Pro version is that you can loop your timers, which is pretty handy.

  10. thread.soy - the best tech Twitter threads

    Today I did a quiet release of thread.soy. It’s a website devoted to curating the best threads on Twitter. Users can contribute threads they like, vote on threads, and browse all-time popularity lists. It took about a week to build.

    In the first 12 hours, @threadsoy is up to 47 followers, and the website’s had 906 users with 1,906 page views. I’m curious to see how that grows over the next few weeks.

    What turned out well?

    I was originally going to give thread.soy a brutalist design style— with a bit more of a sense of humour. But as I got into the project, I discovered that I didn’t feel good about displaying other people’s content alongside too much (potentially inappropriate) design personality.

    This restriction meant I had to discover a new, more considerate design and colour palette. I think I’m happier with this than the original brutalist attitude.

    My favourite thing is the buttons.

    popular upvote

    I also like how some of the pages turned out.

    topic

    I still need to improve on the typography of the actual thread text—it’s super important but currently feels very ”first draft.”

    How do you build a web app in a week?

    1. Cut scope. Ruthlessly.
    2. Know your tools.

      This is a simple Node.js Express web application with a Postgres database. It uses Handlebars templates, Sass for CSS, and plain no-framework front-end JS. I’ve used them dozens of times, so I could turn this project around pretty quickly.

    3. Be wise in your code-reuse battles.

      Shock and horror: I copy and pasted a shit tonne of code for this project. The question to ask is ”Will these two things always change together?” If yes, and it’s costly for them to be separate, refactor that code to be shared. If it’s not costly for them to be separate—or the additional abstraction adds no value—you’re setting yourself up for pain by overly refactoring. Your codebase is going to go through fundamental change in the early phase of a project—there’s no point adding indirection or layer of abstraction before the problem domain is fully conceptualized.

    What did I learn?

    1. Don’t include ProductHunt or Twitter marketing plan.

      Seriously, just take those words out of your vocabulary.

      I re-learn this lesson every time I make something. Those sites don’t provide that much lasting traffic, and they kill your motivation if they don’t go well. I’ve had past projects get that virality, and plenty of projects that haven’t. Your growth strategy can’t rely on initial popularity.

    2. I probably should have used an ORM.

      Minor technical note: out of curiousity, I just ended up doing raw SQL queries instead of using an ORM like Sequelize. Turns out, Sequelize is pretty nice.

  11. Visit the archive for more posts.