Why I'm building El Hefe

• Starting from scratch (again) I didn’t want to rebuild the standard services stack I previously used (Linux hosting, auto-responder for email, wordpress for content, buggy wordpress plugins, analytics, tracking, etc) because it was a pain in the ass and there are too many black holes for data to fall through. I wanted total transparency and control of the process from first time visitor to long term customer and all the data in between pumped into my own database.
• I have been coding since the 1980's and was confident I could build the core functions I needed to restart my online business.
• In June 2019 I started swiping code from my archive, writing new code and assembling it all together to build this mobile-first web-based software that I needed to publish and monetize content as easily as possible online.

Major Features

• Email leads database to import, store and segment email leads
• Bulk emailer for Gmail and SendGrid
• Publish fast loading mobile-first short stories with pictures
• Affiliate offers database to embed offer links as blue highlighted text within short stories.
• Event-based lead tagging for events (email opens, email link clicks, page visits, etc.)

Tech Stack

• Coded in C#.net
• Developed with Microsoft Visual Studio Community Edition 2019
• Web application hosted on Microsoft Azure
• SqlServer database on Microsoft Azure
• SendGrid email service through Microsoft Azure
• Google GSuite
• GoDaddy Domain

Noteworthy

• Stories content pages are inspired by Medium.com and the Firefox “pocket” that serves stories on blank browser tabs in Firefox web browser.
• Affiliate links are served dynamically in-text and driven by keywords in stories. In-text ads can be turned ON (http://elhefe.io/stories/urban-garden-first-fruits) and turned OFF (http://elhefe.io/stories/wooden-american-flag) on the Manage Stories page.
• Email is sent in batches through SendGrid up to 500 emails per batch (as of 8/27/19). The automated process for working the email queue runs locally on development machine and will be run on Azure as a console service once in production.
• Tracking is being coded and reports built. Important email events like opens and clicks are successfully being recorded to the tracking database.
• Email user Tagging is working in a basic form. Currently the system tags users (by their email address) that open a tagged email message. So if the email message is about permaculture and opened by Sam, Sam’s email address gets a “permaculture” sticky tag in our database so we know that Sam opened a permaculture based email and may be open to permaculture offers.
• Google sitemap is generated on demand to help Google find and index all story pages. Sitemap is located at http://elhefe.io/sitemap.xml.

~ Corey Bornmann