Beaver Builder

Lets Kick Off the Spring – May Update

Robby McCullough - May 24, 2016

Hi there! May is here and it’s time for another update.

I love the spring because it means summer is almost here. Wildflowers are blooming. All the animals are scurrying around with their little babies. The sun is starting to shine through the clouds and some of my favorite outdoor activities are about to start up again.

There’s a bit of news to cover in our spring update. v1.8 Gordon is almost live. A new team member is joining us. We have a few resources and recommendations you and a bit of fun to finish it off. Let’s do it!

A Blast from the Past

I took a peek back at our May update from last year and it’s wild to see how much things have changed. At that point, we were still doing client work. I absolutely love this little gem from last year:

Another friend of ours, Dave Toomey, created a Facebook user group for Beaver Builder enthusiasts. Come on by and say hello!

Needless to say, our Facebook group has exploded since then. We just welcomed our 1,800th member!

The Team is Growing

jun I was kicking myself because I meant to mention this one last month, but I got carried away with our big announcement.

I’m thrilled to introduce another member of the Beaver Builder team: Jun Chua. Jun has been working with us for several weeks now helping out with support. He came very highly recommended as he happens to be Ben’s brother! I think working with my brother would drive me crazy, but Ben and Jun have been able to make it work splendidly.

Jun is a family man. He’s happily married with a very energetic 1-year-old boy. In his free time, he and Ben like to tear up the battlefields in Dota2. We’re thrilled to have Jun on board! Plus, at this rate, us long hairs are going to outnumber everyone in no time.

We’re Here For You

In our last few updates, I’ve been making an effort to shift the discussion from news about us and what we’re doing to news and updates that you can benefit from.

Of course, there’s still a need to talk about us here and there. Like the fact that Beaver Builder 1.8 Gordon is in beta! The beta has been humming along, and we’re planning to release Gordon into the wild very soon.

Beaver Builder Video Tutorials

You may have caught our last post highlighting a some excellent Beaver Builder video tutorials. As soon as I hit publish I thought of several more videos that would have been awesome to highlight. Go figure. I’ll probably end up doing another video tutorial post soon.

On a similar note, we’re hard at work on a few more instructional blog posts. Keep an eye peeled for those over the next few weeks.

Knowledge Base Overhaul

It’s a bit bittersweet, but we’re in the process of phasing out the bbPress support forums. I wrote a bit about why we’re doing this. In short, the goal is to provide a better experience for you. With that in mind, one of the items we want to tackle is improving our Knowledge Base.

I am happy to say, we’re in the process of bringing on a new team member to help us with this. We’re still figuring out details, but soon we’ll have a dedicated person overseeing this project (hopefully).

A Few Farewells

In addition to phasing out the support forums, we’re also ramping down our User Voice page. User Voice was great in the beginning, but as we grow, it’s becoming less and less manageable. We still want to hear your suggestions, though! We added feature request options to both our contact page and our support contact form.

These updated contact pages all sync directly with HelpScout and the conversations are automatically tagged and categorized. It’s really slick. Plus, it frees up more of our time so we can work on features and goodies for you!

Lastly, we were running JetPack Subscriptions for our blog and comments, but we decided to let that one go as well. If you were subscribed to our blog posts, you may want to sign up to our newsletter instead (there’s a signup form in the footer).

Recommended Resources

We often get questions about what plugins and services work well with Beaver Builder. We’ve done extensive testing and work to make Beaver Builder compatible with as many hosts, plugins, and themes as possible. For that reason, we decided to set up a page of recommended resources.

We’re also doing a bit of experimenting with affiliate marketing here. Most of the links on that page are affiliate links. This was a “kill two birds with one stone” decision. Since we’re recommending these services anyways, we might as well get a little punt back from them, right?

Agency Mavericks (formerly WP Elevation)

On the subject of recommended software and services, our friends over at Agency Mavericks are kicking off another round of their Business Training Course for WordPress consultants.

A few months back, Troy Dean and the crew made the switch from an al la carte setup to a full-fledged online course. Instead of being a “vending machine where you could login and choose whatever you wanted,” the new format follows a more traditional eLearning model.

According to Troy, since switching to the drip-fed format “the sense of community has exploded and our student completion rate is over 65%.”

Since many of you are consultants running WordPress agencies, we thought we would jump on the opportunity to help promote the course.

To get a taste of what the Agency Mavericks is all about, check out this free training video where Troy teaches the Blueprint for writing proposals and gives away his proposal template.

Oh, did we mention that the course is built around using Beaver Builder for your web projects!

Beaver Tunnels

Last, but certainly not least, our friend Daniel released a really cool Beaver Builder extension: Beaver Tunnels.

Beaver Tunnels lets you easily inject Beaver Builder templates outside of the content area to other areas of your site.

It’s a bit tricky to explain, but have a look at this show and tell video with Daniel and Jason Tucker, or this demo video by Lee Jackson.

Automatic Renewals for New Orders

We have an interesting change on the horizon and we’d love to get your feedback. Currently, when you purchase Beaver Builder the package includes the software and one year of support and updates. After one year, everyone has the option to renew the license, but it doesn’t happen automatically.

Justin’s been working on an auto renewal feature for WooCommerce Subscriptions and it’s coming along quite well. We’re curious, what do you think of products that automatically renew? Compared to others in the WordPress industry, our renewal rates are exceptionally high. That said, this isn’t an attempt to swindle anyone into renewing against their will, but we’re hoping that auto-renewals will be a convenience feature.

Do you prefer if a product renews automatically or not? Would it have impacted your purchasing decision? If you can, please let us know in the comments.

It’s worth noting that automatic renewals will only be for new orders. Unfortunately, due to limitations with Stripe and PayPal, we won’t be able to offer auto-renewals to any of our existing customers. Sorry!

Beaver.builders

Here’s a fun one to wrap things up with, we’ve been swooping up a few domain names recently. A couple months ago, we grabbed beaverbuilder.com. Our pocketbook is still recovering from that one.

On a suggestion from our buddy Ben (of kimunji.online fame), we grabbed beaver.builders. 🙂

I feel like the Facebook Group gets all the attention sometimes, but we also have a lovely community Slack. It’s another great place to meet and chat with other Beaver Builders.

In Closing

Well, that about does it. As always, thanks for tuning in and thanks for your support. We wouldn’t be here without you, and we’re working harder than ever to make sure we can live up to, nay exceed, your expectations. Until next time. 🙂 ❤️

24 Comments

Carlos on May 24, 2016 at 9:53 am

Hello guys!

Things are looking great. I love being a Beaver Builder more and more as time goes by.

I would love to have the option to autorenew. It would be great if this is a setting that you can turn on or off, just like domain names.

That way people that do want to renew dont have to be worried about loosing the 2-week 40% discount window.

I hope this helps!
- Robby McCullough on May 24, 2016 at 3:27 pm
  
  Thanks, Carlos! We’re looking into the options for that. I think what we’re going to do is make it very easy to cancel the subscription after signing up. We’ll see. This feedback has been great and, as always, is helping us decide which route to take.
Lee Jackson on May 24, 2016 at 12:29 pm

I’d be very happy with auto renew so I can set and forget 😀
- Robby McCullough on May 24, 2016 at 3:28 pm
  
  Good to know. Thanks, Lee. Unfortunately, auto-renewal isn’t possible for current customers 🙁 We’ll be sure to send out an email and bug ya, though! Hehe.
Geoffrey on May 24, 2016 at 1:22 pm

Any projected date for the final release of beaver 1.8. I am so excited to use it….. 🙂
- Robby McCullough on May 24, 2016 at 3:21 pm
  
  We’re shooting for the beginning of next month.
  - Geoffrey on May 24, 2016 at 11:41 pm
    
    Robby may i just say you guys are the best. Beaver builder has taken my business to a whole new level and i am a fan for life. The only thing i am still figuring out is optimising my websites for speed. Do you guys have a guide on that ?
    - Robby McCullough on May 25, 2016 at 5:41 pm
      
      It depends a bit on your host. We don’t have a guide up, but I’ll add that one to my list. A good caching plugin is going to be a great start. You could try WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache. And or, if you have a host that handles caching, try Autoptimize for concatenation and minification. Also, CloudFlare is a good CDN option, just avoid their Rocket Load feature as it’s not compatible with BB.
    - Robby McCullough on May 25, 2016 at 5:42 pm
      
      Oh, and thank for the kind words too! Hehe. <3 Really appreciate it.
Kevin on May 24, 2016 at 1:36 pm

I mostly do not like auto-renew because I feel like the sites that use it are mostly junk / scammers. You guys are legit, so auto-renew doesn’t seem so dastardly.
- Robby McCullough on May 24, 2016 at 3:22 pm
  
  Haha. Fair enough. Thanks for the feedback. We appreciate it.
Marc on May 24, 2016 at 2:13 pm

Hey Guys,
Just wanted to let you know that if I were a new customer I’d prefer to not auto renew my subscription and would most likely cancel it after subscribing to not get a surprise withdrawal after a year.
Thanks
- Robby McCullough on May 24, 2016 at 3:30 pm
  
  Good to know. Thanks, Marc. If we do go this route, we would definitely send out one or more “warning” emails so there are no surprises. The goal here is to make it easier for folks using Beaver Builder and not to manipulate or trick anyone.
Jerry P on May 24, 2016 at 2:58 pm

On auto updates; sucks that existing customers (those that took the early leap to BB and promote your wonderfulness) are the ones that would not get auto updates. Does not seem right.
- Robby McCullough on May 24, 2016 at 3:24 pm
  
  Hey Jerry. I think there might have been a miscommunication somewhere, auto-updates will still be available for new and existing customers. The only thing that won’t be available to existing customers is automatic renewals. This is due to how the subscriptions/payments are set up at the payment gateway level, i.e., PayPal and Stripe.
Anita on May 24, 2016 at 3:47 pm

Can you remind me how it works if I don’t renew (accidentally) and have existing clients using BB theme/plugin? Will the plugins stop working after a period, or just not update?
- Robby McCullough on May 24, 2016 at 4:41 pm
  
  Hey Anita. Yeah definitely. Everything will still work fine. You just won’t have access to automatic updates or support. Also, there will be a notification in the page builder settings area that the license key is expired.
Rafael on May 25, 2016 at 5:11 am

I look forward to version 1.8 of Beaver Builder to be able to reconstruct my site.

One question: My customers who have the current version of BB to upgrade to version 1.8 will lose the formatting of the current content?
- Robby McCullough on May 25, 2016 at 10:12 am
  
  Hey Rafael! Nope, not at all. Upgrading will not affect your current content whatsoever.
Gin McInneny on May 25, 2016 at 6:49 pm

Thanks for the WP Elevation mention guys. It’s a great course and we are proud to be able to include such an awesome product as Beaver Builder as part of the tools we recommend to our members. Keep up the great work!
- Robby McCullough on May 27, 2016 at 6:19 pm
  
  Thanks for stopping by Gin! We’re really excited for the next WPE session. 🙂
Colin on May 28, 2016 at 7:12 am

Always love reading your posts, Robby!

First of all, congratulations to Jun. If he’s even half as good as his brother Ben, he’ll be a huge addition to the team:-)

Next, is a big thank you to Dave Toomey for creating the Best Facebook Group EVER! There isn’t a more friendly or helpful place to hang out even outside of Facebook. Thanks Dave!

I’ve been using the 1.8 beta quite a bit now, and I’m really looking forward to the actual release, so that I can put it out live to the sites I regularly update. Another amazing job again Mr. Justin Busa!!

Here’s another shout out to Troy Dean and WP Elevation team. Thanks for all the free and useful information you guys share. If you’re reading this and haven’t listened to the WP Elevation podcast yet, you’d better head over there and start filling your buckets full of WP gold nuggets. It’s an awesome resource.

As for the Automatic Renewals, I couldn’t imagine ever being without Beaver Builder, so please sign me up for Automatic Renewals with the “For Life” checkbox checked:-)

Last, but not least, I just wanted to say a big thank you to all the amazing people who contribute their time and resources to make the Beaver Builder community the best place in the WordPress world. You’re all awesome!

Beaver on…
Troy on June 6, 2016 at 5:45 pm

Yeah, not into auto-renewals.
- Robby McCullough on June 8, 2016 at 9:22 am
  
  Thanks for the feedback. We really appreciate it.