When launching your website, gathering interest is, arguably, the most important task. If no-one is interested in your website or what you are offering, it is a relatively safe assumption that the business would not be likely to succeed.
This realisation, for me, sparks off a few questions; How do I gather interest? Do I need to have my website up and running before I’ve even tested the market?
That takes an investment of time, energy and (possibly) large funding, which I don’t currently have. What do I do now?
Meet, See You Later.
See You Later is a WordPress plugin that helps you engage your visitors… even before your website is ready to launch!
Consisting of several eye-catching and professionally designed templates, social engagement features, a countdown timer and a newsletter subscription option, your website can help to capture leads for your business while you focus on the important task of building and launching your website.
What if I need to perform quick maintenance on my website?
Let See You Later come to your rescue. Activating “Maintenance Mode” in See You Later enables you to make tweaks to your website without losing out on potential engagement opportunities. If a prospective customer arrives at your website, leave them a quick message to let them know you’re making a few tweaks and that they can follow you on Twitter (for example) or subscribe to your newsletter to find out more and to know when you’ll be back online. Prospective customer: retained.
Maintenance Mode & Launch Pad Retirement
See You Later is the byproduct of two popular downloadable add-ons for our WooDojo plugin, namely Maintenance Mode and Launch Pad.
While both add-ons gained much interest, the WooCommunity experienced issues getting the two add-ons to play nicely together and several had issues installing them. In addition, there were features missing which we felt were required in order to take these projects to the next level.
If you are currently using either Maintenance Mode or Launch Pad within WooDojo, please note that these two modules will be retired as of 1st August 2013 (just over 2 weeks from today). This allows plenty of time to get up and running with See You Later, should you choose to do so.
Why is this plugin not free?
Attaching a price tag to this plugin enables us to assign regular development capacity to the project and to take it to the next level (and the next level after that, etc). This is done in an effort to ensure the product’s development is sustainable, going forward.
How is See You Later better?
As mentioned above, See You Later notably surpasses it’s predecessors. Being an integrated solution (rather than separating Maintenance Mode and Launch Pad), this greatly reduces the setup time of the plugin.
We hope you all enjoy what we’ve created, here, with See You Later, and that it is a useful addition to your development and website maintenance workflow.
See you later!
Grab See You Later with a $10 discount coupon, valid until 24th July, 2013. Just use SYL10 as your coupon code on checkout.
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Nice twist to Maintenance mode.
This is very similar to the SeedProd Coming Soon Pro plugin!
This is a nice plugin, and with a couple of small but invaluable improvements over Launch Pad (secret URL is a great addition).
Given that I’m now paying for something very similar to what was previously free, I’d expect to have an option to turn off the WooThemes #credit without having to resort to CSS 🙂
Oh, and what’s with the >?> at the top of the homepage?
Thanks Mark. Noted for the next release. 🙂
This looks compelling and very similar to SeedPod’s Coming Soon plugin, which we use often. Given the recent relationship between WooThemes and Wysija (awesom newsletter plugin), will you be adding Wysija to the list of newsletter subscriptions integrated in this plugin?
This is a fantastic idea, I think so at the least!
Looks great and definitely a much needed improvement over maintenance mode! I’m disappointed this isn’t included as part of the theme club though.
Nice plugin, though a bit dissapointed that you are taking free and useful functionality away from WooDojo and charging for it as a new plugin (albeit improved). That said, I think it is a great plugin and could be even better if you could use it to launch part of a website, maybe a new section, rather than the the entire site.
Hi
You can achieve this through the URL Exclude Pattern option in the settings which allows you to only show the See You Later pages on certain sections of your site.
Agreed. And at $29 (Yipes!) for a single site licence, WooThemes is showing no mercy to the local (SA) market!
Looks good – but am I missing something? I’ve activated the plugin and enabled it in Settings – but (on a fresh install of WP – no other plugins used) it doesn’t seem to close down the home page at all? I’m seeing the red tab saying it’s active, but I can still see the home page of my site. Do I need to create a page for the plugin and call the plugin from a page template or anything? Not sure what I’m missing. Thanks.
D’oh! Yes, I was missing something … the working half of my brain! Of course, I was logged in as an admin so could still see the site! Sorry … I think I need an ice cream!
Ice cream always helps, just remember if you happen across an issue to shoot us a ticket here. – http://woothemes.zendesk.com/requests/new
Enjoy some frozen treats now. 😉
This plugin isn’t responsive on mobile devices. Or am I missing something? Love the plugin but it not being responsive would be a show stopper.
Just checked out the demo on my iphone and it seems to be not responsive – is this the case or maybe just the demo?
Hi
What are the advantages using this over Obox’s LaunchPad?
Which I have been using to great success whilst waiting for this to be fixed / repackaged / improved.
Thanks
James
Just a few comments here.
1) A 2 weeks heads up before you remove the free version is not enough lead time if you have multiple websites (i need to contact all my clients and let them know that this charge is coming). And it’s not clear before the break (read more) on the blog post, or anywhere on the product page, that this is the case.
2) I’m very disappointed that you are removing the free option. I am using the WooDojo free versions on several sites and I now have to pay for something that was working just perfect for me.
I’ve loved you guys for so long but you seem to be out pricing me as a customer. At the rate you keep increasing prices (licences, free to paid, overall increases) very soon I won’t be able to afford to keep buying your products. Sad day.
See You Later exhibits synergistic result from Maintenance Mode & Launch Pad Retirement.
Looks like an improvement on Maintenance Mode & Launch Pad plugins. However, I’m surprised that it is not responsive (especially at this price). I would buy the multi-site licence if:
1. It was responsive (like Obox’s FREE LaunchPad plugin)
2. It had at least one widget area. (So I could insert a twitter feed or login form for example)
Are there any plans for these features in the near future?
+1 on this
I currently use the SeedProd Coming Soon plugin on more than a handful of client sites and the free woodojo version on others but considered switching to a single Woo based plugin.
I just can’t seem to bring myself to open the wallet for a plugin that doesn’t appear to be responsive. I’ve seen several people mention/ask the same thing with no answer so again… is the lack of responsiveness just in the demo?
I’ve bought so many extensions etc. from Woo in the last few weeks (all multi-site unlimited I might add), anticipating that another price hike has been announced with further details pending; I’m starting to cringe at new Woo releases instead of rejoice. I love Woo products but I feel the same way as tinamoreau above… “at the rate you keep increasing prices (licences, free to paid, overall increases) very soon I won’t be able to afford to keep buying your products. Sad day.”
Additionally part of the perk for club subscribers was that we used to get a discount code (which helped alleviate some of the costs when we buy in bulk); however, without notification (as far as I’m aware) that was also removed (it’s removal was only reflected in a comment in one of your blog posts). If we don’t take advantage of the current discount for this plugin will there be anything going forward for club subscribers to get discounts on these products?
Looks great, the maintenance mode would be brilliant, a feature that should probably be in WP’s core…