Interview with Shawn Hogan (Digital Point)

Adam Howard said:
FYI: I've visited your site and never could find the link to your forums on your site. Always thought that was odd.
Click to expand...

I must admit, I've never even visited the homepage before now and it feels like a nostalgia trip to the 90s...

Anyhow, love your site and glad that you support XF. Quite interesting to see the amount of customizations you have going on behind the scenes.
 
When I first started my forum back in 2008, Digital Point was the area I kept reading over and over regarding how to improve my SEO. It's help us succeed and I went from 0 members to now over 12,000+ and 332,000+ posts. Of course of other marketing areas helped as well, but DP helped me a ton when I first started and had no idea about seo, forums etc. Tons of trial and error...ill tell you that hah

ps: made $1,500 off his adsense resource last month too....
 
intradox said:
I must admit, I've never even visited the homepage before now and it feels like a nostalgia trip to the 90s...

Anyhow, love your site and glad that you support XF. Quite interesting to see the amount of customizations you have going on behind the scenes.
Click to expand...
There's a lot more to even the vB version of our site than what people see or realize... There are 483 plugins I've built that we are currently using. :)

surfsup said:
ps: made $1,500 off his adsense resource last month too....
Click to expand...
I feel like you need to have a six-pack of beer delivered to my house by a really hot stripper or something. :)
 
You're the only Addon Developer I like whose modifications I don't use at all. I hope I'll be able to use them some day then I can post a user testimonial on ya site or something.
 
You should all check out his posts about CSS3 on here. He dibble dabbles in everything from code and design. Makes me wonder how much CSS3 he's put into his Xenforo already.
 
John said:
1.5 mil lines of code? The program that flew and landed the Mars rover yesterday only had 500k lines of code o_O What are you doing over there lol? (besides scamming the hell out of ebay :p ;) )
Click to expand...
Well, just ONE thing is more or less an AdWords/AdSense replacement... A bidding system where publishers can sell ad space on their site. That is more than a couple lines of code. :) http://advertising.digitalpoint.com/

A huge amount of the stuff I've done are things that the user isn't going to directly notice... Like workflow stuff for staff... modified how the warning and reported items systems work and merged them together a bit (like if something is deleted or receives a warning, if it was previously reported, it closes out that reported item). Or things like our drag and drop thread movement system for mods/admins:

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Other things aren't directly perceivable by the end-user, but makes the site super fast (for example we have a post caching system where posts are stored pre-rendered, rather than spinning them through the BBCode parser every time they are viewed).

Side note... whoever thought of the way they landed that thing on mars is both really smart and crazy.

8thos said:
You should all check out his posts about CSS3 on here. He dibble dabbles in everything from code and design. Makes me wonder how much CSS3 he's put into his Xenforo already.
Click to expand...
3,054 lines of my own CSS (I actually just looked). :)

Andy.N said:
Don't forget his SVG, retina and all the eye candy stuff ;)
Click to expand...
Yeah, that was a fun side project... came out quite nice actually.
 
digitalpoint said:
Well, just ONE thing is more or less an AdWords/AdSense replacement... A bidding system where publishers can sell ad space on their site. That is more than a couple lines of code. :) http://advertising.digitalpoint.com/

Side note... whoever thought of the way they landed that thing on mars is both really smart and crazy.

3,054 lines of my own CSS (I actually just looked). :)
Click to expand...
:eek:

If your doing all that, you must be single.
 
surfsup said:
Well my girl and I will be out in LA & San Diego end of this month, let's do dinner downtown if your up for it. Our treat ;)
Click to expand...
It's a date! :)

8thos said:
:eek:

If your doing all that, you must be single.
Click to expand...
I had a gf of about 2 1/2 years up until a couple months ago (my choice btw), and to be honest, I think I get less done now that I'm single (all my friends want to hang out and do stuff now).


Off Topic-ish: forgot to point out that all the rewrite/custom stuff I do for XenForo is when I have spare time. Because I still have to run the existing site. Can't just ignore the existing site (although I did at least stop building new functionality knowing I'd have to rewrite whatever it was).
 
Thinking of all the punching away at the keyboard 1.5 mil lines of code must have taken makes me think of a line from a Floyd tune..."I've got blisters on my fingers!" (not sure how many will recognize that hehe)
 
I have to admit, I've never seen the value in your site unless I was going to purchase advertising.

When I think of Digital Point, I think ads, paid marketing, and people selling things.

Been told there is more, but never did notice any of it,
 
digitalpoint said:
Ya... I don't have the time (or desire) for high maintenance girls. I'm low maintenance myself, so...
Click to expand...
digitalpoint said:
'But I also the world's most anal perfectionist and work harder than anyone I know.'
Click to expand...
You will meet your match when you meet a woman who works harder than you... and most good women work harder than men anyway because they wear multiple hats already.
 
Adam Howard said:
I have to admit, I've never seen the value in your site unless I was going to purchase advertising.

When I think of Digital Point, I think ads, paid marketing, and people selling things.

Been told there is more, but never did notice any of it,
Click to expand...
Well here you go... 100,000 registered users using this one tool to track historical rankings for millions of keywords (their own sites and their competitors), and it pre-dates the forum: http://tools.digitalpoint.com/tracker

The popularity of it was one of the reasons we NEEDED a forum (needed a support venue).

8thos said:
You will meet your match when you meet a woman who works harder than you... and most good women work harder than men anyway because they wear multiple hats already.
Click to expand...
Maybe... not sure if such a woman exists though. But if so, great! :)
 
digitalpoint said:
A huge amount of the stuff I've done are things that the user isn't going to directly notice... Like workflow stuff for staff... modified how the warning and reported items systems work and merged them together a bit (like if something is deleted or receives a warning, if it was previously reported, it closes out that reported item). Or things like our drag and drop thread movement system for mods/admins:

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.
Click to expand...

Woah! That's super nifty. (I want :whistle: )
digitalpoint said:
It's a date! :)
Off Topic-ish: forgot to point out that all the rewrite/custom stuff I do for XenForo is when I have spare time. Because I still have to run the existing site. Can't just ignore the existing site (although I did at least stop building new functionality knowing I'd have to rewrite whatever it was).
Click to expand...
You have too much free time it seems, even after hanging out with friends :p
 
Top Bottom