In 2020, Salesforceben.com turns 6 years old. Looking back, it’s funny to see how far the blog has come, especially in terms of look and feel – what was once a no-frills site, is now a recognisable brand in the Salesforce Ecosystem.
What a journey it’s been! Here’s to the next decade of Salesforceben.com, and all its spin-off brands.
Setting up a Salesforce Blog
For people that are interested in setting up their own Salesforce blog, I thought it might be useful, alongside my “Setting up a Salesforce Blog” post to show you the evolution of Salesforce Ben and how it started out life as a simple text-based blog. I’ll also go into detail about the features I added at each level to engage visitors more.
SalesforceBen 1.0 – April 2014
This was my first iteration of SalesforceBen back when I first started the blog in April of last year. I didn’t spend a huge amount of time setting up this template and found a free one via wordpress.com. The main reason for this is that I was completely new to blogging and was eager to start writing ideas and thoughts down. When you are first starting out with blogging, always focus on the content and not your site as much. The only things you need to focus on are making it readable to your viewers. As long as your site is clear and easy to navigate, readers aren’t going to mind about the design or how many fancy features you have.
Features
- Simple free WordPress Theme
- Home page contains previews of all posts.
- Jetpack WordPress Mailing list
- Social Icons
- Contact me form (Not visible)
SalesforceBen 2.0 – Dec 2014
This was my second iteration of SalesforceBen that went live back in October 2014. The main reason for me wanting to pursue another design was because I had out grew the first. I had a need to create more diverse and complex posts and wanted to feature a more interactive homepage with multiple plugins and post images. The first design had a very thin page width that did not allow me to add too many items to the page. This WordPress theme is actually called “2012” which was made by WordPress themselves.
Features
- More advanced template
- Top pages & posts section
- 2 sidebars instead of 1 to show more information
- Featured App section
- Images added to post preview
SalesforceBen 3.0 – Sep 2015
This is my most current version of SalesforceBen that went live back in April 2015. The reason for the change was once again outgrowing the previous template, it also did not fit in with my vision for where I want the site to go. My vision for the site changed from a personal blog to more of an industry Salesforce blog featuring guest personal bloggers as well as companies coming on to show off features and Apps. The main reason I went to this choice of template was to be able to fit more into the homepage to give readers a choice of options of the most popular and featured posts at that time, as well as making it look a lot more professional. This site took a great deal of time to design and customize compared to my previous two.
Features
- Redesigned simplified, thinner logo that takes up less space
- New template
- Featured section of posts
- Image based popular posts section
- Editors Choice section at the bottom of the page
- Mailchimp integration
The DRIP 1.0 – Nov 2017
The DRIP is a section of Salesforceben.com dedicated to Salesforce Marketing Automation – Pardot, Marketing Cloud, and Salesforce for Marketers. We saw Marketing Automation an area of high-growth potential in the Salesforce landscape, with these products so distinct from the rest of the Salesforce platform.
SalesforceBen 4.0 – June 2019
5 years in, we knew it was time that Salesforceben.com had a facelift and site performance boost. Our traffic had grown so considerably, that the servers were slowing, and navigation was not as intuitive as the higher industry standards. The multi-month project finally paid off, and we are so proud of the outcome. Here’s a quick summary:
- Modernizing the look and feel of the site – We’ll miss you Salesforce Ben superhero!
- Upgrading our servers – Our previous servers were being pushed to the limits, we’ve migrated to a much more scalable platform – no more waiting around.
- Spotlight on the author – You will notice that at the top of each post the author is highlighted, with links to their Twitter & Linkedin to connect.
- The DRIP – Our Marketing side of the blog has got an upgrade inline with our rebrand of SalesforceBen.com
- Mobile Friendly – With the site being built from scratch, we ensured that the site was better optimized for mobile.
What a journey it’s been! Here’s to the next decade of Salesforceben.com, and all its spin-off brands.
Comments: