The ningo.me Blog

By now, more speed improvements have been implemented.

The biggest news though is the new (user-level) option to use markdown formatting when writing messages on the website. Turn on markdown formatting in your account settings and use the markdown syntax. Messages you write on ningo.me will be formatted by translating the text to HTML – for display on the website as well as in the outgoing email message, if any.

Note that email messages you send out from your email client through the ningo.me platform can be formatted with whatever your email client uses – all HTML (formatted) styling will be forwarded to the recipient’s email account unchanged. However, the text is simplified to markdown format for storage on the ningo.me platform.

Finally, you now get a notification if your PayPal top-up has been processed successfully and you have pending unpaid messages.

By now, page speed has been improved dramatically. Web Page Test and Google PageSpeed were very useful resources to improve this aspect of the site.

As a long-time and extensive user of the wonderful mailnull service, I really wanted to implement the same functionality on the new messaging platform. It is now done. Users can simply create new email addresses by mentioning one to someone or on a web form. The actual inbox for it is created as the first message is received. The added benefit to all other “disposable email address” services is that a dialog can be had through that address. Meaning that when I receive a message from that shady webshop I bought a pair of shoes from, I can answer but still remain behind the (“disposable”) email address I had submitted there. Plus, of course, I can choose to levy a postage on the new address. Be it right away, or once I am fed up with the messages I receive.

The early days are hard!

Using the platform in real life helps a lot to find user experience optimization potential.

• A huge lot has been improved about the fully responsive and clean layout of the site.
• Since transactional email plays a big role on the platform, that is also an area of constant growth in quality and quantity.
• Getting the language and wording right is key. Now that first users get on the system who have never used or worked on it before, the puzzlement and questions abound. And everytime someone asks me a question about the system, I know something is not clear enough yet. Choose simpler words, choose less words.

Starting today, the main site URL https://ningo.me is accessible to the public . Until now, outside visitors were redirected to the teaser page at http://tease.ningo.me.

 

Today is the day: after five years of dreaming and over a year of planning, concepts, and programming, ningo.me is ready to be used in real life.

I have sent out invitations to the platform to a few good friends today, and I will start using it myself in production.

I look forward to all your feedback and to all the early bugs that will surface…