Archive

(Hello! It’s been around eight months since I’ve sent out a monthly newsletter. If you’re not interested in Buttondown any more, no worries — click here to unsubscribe.)

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Subscriber cohort analysis

👋 Hi! Remember me? I’m Justin, the guy who writes about Buttondown.

September was a lovely month in Buttondown-land. I bounced around on a handful of different fun projects (and even did some marketing, the bane of my existence, to boot!)

Confirmation reminders

If you’re using Buttondown’s feature to get folks to confirm their email address, it’s now a little bit easier to make sure the funnel of folks confirming stays flowing.

Howdy! I hope you’re doing well. After a reticent start to the season, Seattle’s summer is truly underway — I am in the process of moving into my very own house (and by “in the process” I mean “creating a Google Doc with various odds and ends that need to be done and bar carts that need to be purchased and stocked”), and air conditioning and a surplus of tower fans is top of mind. I have been biking a lot; I have a terrible farmer’s tan.

There has been lots of administrative work on Buttondown that probably does not concern you: I am setting up a new way to answer feedback & support concerns (so if emails from yours truly look different, that is why); I am setting up metrics dashboard in a foolish attempt at maturity; I am cleaning up lots of code.

Here’s what does concern you: your emails, as voluminous and lovely as ever, are getting delivered faster and more accurately than any point in 2019. I’ve done a lot of boring (well, I find it fascinating) backend work to reduce your time-to-inbox by around 30%; it’s still far too slow, and there is work to be done there, of which I will keep you apprised.

Howdy! After a month off (from writing a monthly update, that is, not running Buttondown 😉) I have a couple quick updates I’d love to share with you.

Mailchimp archive importing

If you migrated over to Buttondown from Mailchimp, you either had to deal with a very janky migration from yours truly or just go without. I’m happy to announce that there’s a much cleaner, elegant archive import process — you can access it from your settings page.

Welcome to May! I wrote this from two places:

1. the lounge of Seattle’s Sorrento Hotel, counting down the minutes until Silent Reading Party (a truly insufferable city tradition that I love dearly) begins;
2. the promenade of Cal Anderson Park, on a particularly sunny Saturday.

Howdy, friends! I’m writing this belated update having just arrived back in Seattle from a week of leisure and wine in Paris. Apologies for the sluggishness in responding to emails and DMs; rest assured, I’ll be spending the next few days getting back to folks.

What’s new

March was a big month for Buttondown.

Hi, friends!  This was a great month in Buttondownsville (Buttondownia?).  I was able to take care of a huge number of paper-cut issues and build out some exciting infrastructure for the next few months.

Even nicer analytics graphs

Look at these new graphs!  They’re beautiful.  They’re wonderful.  They’re straight-up_lovely_.  And they are all thanks to the c3 package, which I’m slowly migrating our visualizations to.  (Sorry, .)

Welcome to February, y’all! Seattle saw its first snow of 2019 last night, which is always an event worth celebrating. I’m writing this from a friend’s couch and watching a very slow Super Bowl (and a very mediocre Maroon Five performance.)

Some new stuff from January:

Howdy! Sorry this is getting out so late — June has been a fun and lovely month, and sometimes I forget to send things.

Here’s what’s new this month! (Er, last month.)

Analytics

Howdy! April had a lot of stuff — 184 commits, to be exact! — and a lot of that was laying groundwork and paying off technical debt, as well as some general performance improvements and housecleaning. Still, we’ve got three exciting things to share:

YouTube embeds

Hey there! March has had a bunch of stuff arrive in the ol’ Buttondown codebase, mostly on the smaller side of things. Here’s the quick laundry list:

Sort your subscribers

Howdy and Happy New Year! We had a quiet but productive start to 2018; I’m pumped to share what we’ve been up to.

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