Interview: David Mytton of Olate Ltd.
Published on the 18th of June 2005
Skip to the Table of ContentsLowter: What do you feel has lead to the success of iono and other Olate products?
I think people like to have a good, reputable name behind their products. Olate has been around quite a while now, and it is now a limited company. This provides added peace of mind knowing that you are dealing with a real company. This is especially true with Olate Download. I think the major barrier for many large companies to take up open source software is that they are made by volunteers. Whilst this is true for Olate Download, we have actually dedicated resources and money towards Olate Download to keep it going.
I also like to think we provide the best support you can find! I'm always irritated when it takes ages for companies to reply to support questions or it is actually difficult to get in touch. I base the Olate support services upon my past experience and then massively increase the quality (if that is possible with a non-quantative service!).
Although we don't (yet) provide e-mail support for Olate Download, both myself and David Salisbury (Olate Download developer) are active in our forums to ensure that every problem is solved. Our response times are usually several hours, even for complex queries which require code modification. This is matched with the e-mail support we do provide for iono. I also regularly chat to customers via MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and AOL Messenger. I believe it is important to build a friendly relationship with all customers.
We are trialling a new live chat support system, and are getting ready to integrate the new Kayako SupportSuite v3 system which will provide proper support ticketing systems, as well as a knowledge base. I intend to populate it with answers to every question ever asked on the forums and via e-mail. It is through this that I intend to dramatically expand the support offering that comes with all our products.
As a customer of various other companies, I know I want excellent service at all times. It is important to be able to speak to someone and get your questions answered. I pride myself on the level of service Olate provides. I think this is shown by the support we provide, and the fact that I'm prepared to go out of my way to help a customer - even if they haven't paid a thing (e.g. iono trial customers).
Looking at Olate Download, it is one of the best systems available. It is easy to use, well coded and well maintained (at least I think it is!). There are so many software products available, but how many are actually any good? The fact that it is free and open source is an added bonus.
When creating a successful company/product, you have to draw on experience from your own dealings with other companies. You can then set a benchmark for what you want to achieve, and what you want to do. I know what has annoyed me before, and I try to ensure that doesn't happen with my customers.
Lowter: What are some of the planned features in iono's future?
In the very short term we have iono Desktop, which I mentioned above and you can read about on our website (external link). In addition to iono Desktop with the v1.2 release, I'm hoping to include an API file which will allow remote access to the iono functions.
From v1.2, the next major feature will be reseller support. Software developers want other companies to sell their software, and the iono reseller features will allow this to happen.
Lowter: What's in store for the future of Olate Download?
For v3.3, which is the next release, we have some major improvements to the file edit listing and mirrors management to make it so much easier to manage files. v3.3 is very much a UI, usability improvement and bug fix release. We have had lots of suggestions to tweak the interface to make it easier to use and we have implemented the majority of these. This includes full XHTML strict compliance and CSS2 compliance. We also intend to include some detailed statistics tools, a rich text editor for the descriptions field, automatic filesize calculated, tell a friend system and leech/IP whitelisting/blacklisting.
v3.4 is going to have a small number of big changes. This will include an improved template system, caching and better searching.
We have a daily build from the CVS repository available on our website (external link) so you can see what we're working on.
Your Book and Invision Power Board
Lowter: Currently you're the author of the soon to be released book "Invision Power Board: A User Guide". Could you explain exactly what the book is about, and what it will offer IPB users?
The book is designed to be an in-depth user guide which describes every aspect of running an IPB forum. It covers everything from downloading and setup to creating your own custom skins and templates. IPB is a great piece of software and this book goes hand in hand with it to give administrators a physical reference to find out exactly how to use a specific feature.
Lowter: Why do you choose to use Invision Power Board over other forum software?
I originally used phpBB and was one of the most active members on their community forums. However development was (and still is) extremely slow. I interviewed the vBulletin Lead Developer, Kier Darby, and then reviewed vB 3.0. I decided I really liked it and so I converted from phpBB to vB3. At that time, IPB 2.0 was being developed so I obtained an interview with the Lead Developer and CEO of Invision Power Services/Power Board, Matt Mecham. After interviewing him, I wrote a review of IPB 2 and decided it was much better than vB3. So I then moved to it. Jelsoft have recently announced vB3.5 which has some extremely good features, but IPB 2.1 already has these in place. I keep in touch on almost a daily basis with Matt Mecham (and IPS have supported the book throughout, and will do so on its publication) and I have worked with the IPB code quite a bit. This includes an integration module with iono (for vB and phpBB as well).
Lowter would like to thank David for his time in participating in this interview.
