debuggable

Update: The plot for the using git windows screencast is now available.

Hey folks,

it has only been a very short time since I wrote about Debuggable's Screencasting business venture.

Since then I have been very busy working like crazy to improve the underlaying architecture and producing a new screencast.

Let's start with the Screencast first, it is called "Using Git on Windows". In ~18 minutes you can learn how to install and use git on Windows including setting up a local repository and making a bunch of commits.

What else is new? There are two new sites. The git screencasts site has been completely redone. Initially it was really just a bunch of HTML files with 1 PHP file handling the payment processing. In fact you might get a kick out of what a terrible copy & paste job I pulled off for that : ).

But hey, I'm really playing this by the "Make it work" and then "Make it work better" rules, and it's tons of fun. Anyway, the new site is now finally a CakePHP app which will make it easy to add tons of new screencasts in future.

The next new site is the Debuggable Store. This is the payment gateway and the most interesting change. I will write more about this in future but the new setup is kind of fancy. You go to git.debuggable.com, choose a screencast and hit the buy button. You are the redirected to the store where you can actually buy the item. The store then sends you to PayPal. PayPal ping's the store when the payment has cleared and the store sends out an email with a download link. The download link is leading you back to the store which then redirects you to a Amazon S3 download url that is signed for 15 seconds. This way I can keep track of every download, ip and browser. This saves me from having to serve my files through a PHP script (slow!) which is awesome.

Anyway, what I was actually going to focus on here is: The store is independent from the git screencasts site. I'm already talking to a bunch of people who are interested in selling videos, ebooks and other downloadable files and who are looking for a payment solution that doesn't suck and can possibly be customized in future. If you are interested in a venture like this yourself, please don't hesitate to contact me.

So, go ahead and download the free using git on windows screencast - Feedback would be much appreciated!

-- Felix Geisendörfer aka the_undefined