Interview With Ben Kittrell
After being very impressed with DoodleKit, I contacted Ben Kittrell and asked if I could interview him.
Ben and Heath Huffman started Doodlebit, the parent company of DoodleKit, last January. Originally they planned on it just being a web consulting business. After realizing that most of their customers wanted the same basic features for their websites, they created DoodleKit.
DoodleKit has been successful enough that Heath quit his dayjob as a Java developer to handle design and marketing full-time, while Ben continues his dayjob as a J2EE consultant.
The interview is below, with minor editing for clarity:
me: First question, can you tell me a little about yourself, how you got your start as a developer, and how you got into Ruby On Rails? You said in your e-mail you started as a designer, how did you make the transition to developer?
ben: When I started I didn't know what I was doing. I was creating websites for friends, and I wanted to extend their functionality. Back then CGI was king and you either used C or Perl. I wasn't about to learn C, so I picked up Perl and started writing some scripts.
The reason I made the transition was that I was a bad designer, and a good programmer. I guess that's just how my brain works.
Over the years I worked with PHP, ASP, ColdFusion and Java, and each of them will always have a special place in my heart. However about a year and a half ago, I started thinking, someone should write a language or framework that makes it super easy to tie web forms to relational databases, and that's exactly what Ruby on Rails is.
I'm 25 years old, married for four years. I own a house in midtown Kansas City that I've been renovating. I've been doing web development for over 7 years now. I'm a J2EE consultant by day, and a Rails hacker by night.
me: Any kids?
ben: No, not unless you count 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 birds and a rabbit.
me: heh. I only ask because I have two myself, and I find it really affects my ability to stay up all night working on side projects.
ben: Yeah, we've decided to wait, so we have time to do thing things we want to. We're both young.
me: Right. Get the awesome stuff done now, have the kids while you're rolling in your millions.
ben: Hehe, I hope so.
me: Back to designers turning into developers, do you see more and more blending of design and development, and when do you think we'll reach the tipping point, where the tools are easy enough designers will start getting involved in programming in large numbers?
ben: I think it's definitely blending, in both directions. I believe this because both design and development are maturing, and we feel more comfortable in our roles. This makes it easier to reach out and extend your skill set.
I think it's rare that you find someone that is both logically and visually proficient. It happens, but the problem is that there so different, it's hard to hone your skills in both directions. I could be a better designer if I worked on it, but I'm too busy becoming a better developer.
However, I do think tools like Ruby on Rails make it very easy for design minded professionals to step into the development space. This is the beauty of Rails. At the surfaces it's super easy to use and understand, but thanks to the awesomeness of Ruby, you can do more complex things if you need to.
I've read about quite a few designers that have been able to pick up Rails without actually learning Ruby. I think there's even a book on this subject, "Rails for Left Minders" or something.
me: Let's move on to DoodleKit. You said over e-mail that you and Heath created it in response to customers asking for the same kind of sites over and over. How has response been since you created it? Are you seeing that it has the right amount of flexibility to cover what most people want from a website?
ben: It's been incredible. Almost every site that's gone up has used it in a different way. The great thing about the tools we have is that they can be used in a number of ways. The Blog can be used as a Newsletter, or for product updates. The Photo Gallery can be used to post recipes, or product photos. The idea is to let the customer figure out how to use it themselves. The tool is simple enough that they can get in and figure this out very quickly.
The one thing that people have requested that we don't have yet is a Shopping Cart. But I'm already working on that. I've created a system for "add-ons" or plugins that we can create to extend the functionality. The core features stay the same, but the add-ons can be created as we get requests for more features. For example I recently finished the Form Builder add-on.
I really feel like the core features will cover 90% of our customer base.
me: Very cool. Beyond the form builder and shopping cart, what other features do you anticipate adding?
ben: We have a few ideas, including a Calendar, Newsletter Emails, and possibly some sort of Mapping add-on. One add-on that we've started to consider lately is internationalization, to support sites in multiple languages.
me: You allow custom CSS with your Advanced package, any plans on extending that to the other packages, or creating some way for people to submit more templates?
ben: Actually the custom CSS is available on all packages. It's very cool, and something we hope that more designers will start using. You can either override one of our pre-made layouts, or use one of our base layouts.
We've started a resellers program where designers can create their own designs, and resell doodlekit sites. The designer can charge the customer whatever they want, and just pay us the normal fee.
You can find more information about custom layouts at dkadvanced.com
me: My apologies, I thought it was just for the advanced package. Very awesome that it's available for all of them.
ben: No problem.
me: How do you see DoodleKit competing with other CMSes like DotNetNuke or Typo3 (Open Source), or commercial CMSes?
ben: Well, the core difference is that it's hosted, so you don't have to find your own hosting and install it. Beyond that I tried very hard to make doodlekit's content management as simple as possible. I think that things like publishing and approval workflows are great for some websites, but completely unecessary for our market. Most people just want to be able to click, edit, change something, and save it.
We also constrain the customer quite a bit, and don't allow complex hierarchies of pages. I think in the end this helps the customer create a more comprehensive and easy to navigate website.
me: Do you think you'd ever release a self-hosted version, where customers could install it on thier own machines?
ben: I don't think so, that's a large part of the value of doodlekit. I think that if someone has the knowledge and time to install it, then they're probably going to want something more complex anyway. By doing that we'd basically be creating competitors.
me: That makes sense. In the same vein, do you think you would ever get to the point where DoodleKit would be the sort of thing that larger corporate customers would be interested in using it?
ben: I see markets for corporations, but not for their main website. Coporate websites are very complex, and usually require in-house developers, which is fine. However I think that there are small temporary websites that doodlekit might be perfect for.
For example if a corporation is hosting an event, or doing an ad campaign, they could have a doodlekit site dedicated just to that. Or maybe it could be a project collaboration site, there are many possibilities.
me: You mentioned Heath works full-time for DoodleKit in your e-mail. Do you think you'll eventually just do DoodleKit, or something similar, full-time, or do you want to keep it as a side job?
ben: My goal is to be working for Doodlebit full-time. I imagine this will be partly from doodlekit revenue, and partly from Rails consulting jobs. Right now I'm sticking with J2EE consulting, because it pays well. I'm trying to get in a good financial position before I jump ship.
After that we talked a bit about the perils of starting your own company, and the importance of having great partners (something I'm still working on). Ben has an incredible idea, and a great company, please check it out.
Tags: design, web design, Ruby on Rails, content management systems, CMS, website
Ben and Heath Huffman started Doodlebit, the parent company of DoodleKit, last January. Originally they planned on it just being a web consulting business. After realizing that most of their customers wanted the same basic features for their websites, they created DoodleKit.
DoodleKit has been successful enough that Heath quit his dayjob as a Java developer to handle design and marketing full-time, while Ben continues his dayjob as a J2EE consultant.
The interview is below, with minor editing for clarity:
me: First question, can you tell me a little about yourself, how you got your start as a developer, and how you got into Ruby On Rails? You said in your e-mail you started as a designer, how did you make the transition to developer?
ben: When I started I didn't know what I was doing. I was creating websites for friends, and I wanted to extend their functionality. Back then CGI was king and you either used C or Perl. I wasn't about to learn C, so I picked up Perl and started writing some scripts.
The reason I made the transition was that I was a bad designer, and a good programmer. I guess that's just how my brain works.
Over the years I worked with PHP, ASP, ColdFusion and Java, and each of them will always have a special place in my heart. However about a year and a half ago, I started thinking, someone should write a language or framework that makes it super easy to tie web forms to relational databases, and that's exactly what Ruby on Rails is.
I'm 25 years old, married for four years. I own a house in midtown Kansas City that I've been renovating. I've been doing web development for over 7 years now. I'm a J2EE consultant by day, and a Rails hacker by night.
me: Any kids?
ben: No, not unless you count 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 birds and a rabbit.
me: heh. I only ask because I have two myself, and I find it really affects my ability to stay up all night working on side projects.
ben: Yeah, we've decided to wait, so we have time to do thing things we want to. We're both young.
me: Right. Get the awesome stuff done now, have the kids while you're rolling in your millions.
ben: Hehe, I hope so.
me: Back to designers turning into developers, do you see more and more blending of design and development, and when do you think we'll reach the tipping point, where the tools are easy enough designers will start getting involved in programming in large numbers?
ben: I think it's definitely blending, in both directions. I believe this because both design and development are maturing, and we feel more comfortable in our roles. This makes it easier to reach out and extend your skill set.
I think it's rare that you find someone that is both logically and visually proficient. It happens, but the problem is that there so different, it's hard to hone your skills in both directions. I could be a better designer if I worked on it, but I'm too busy becoming a better developer.
However, I do think tools like Ruby on Rails make it very easy for design minded professionals to step into the development space. This is the beauty of Rails. At the surfaces it's super easy to use and understand, but thanks to the awesomeness of Ruby, you can do more complex things if you need to.
I've read about quite a few designers that have been able to pick up Rails without actually learning Ruby. I think there's even a book on this subject, "Rails for Left Minders" or something.
me: Let's move on to DoodleKit. You said over e-mail that you and Heath created it in response to customers asking for the same kind of sites over and over. How has response been since you created it? Are you seeing that it has the right amount of flexibility to cover what most people want from a website?
ben: It's been incredible. Almost every site that's gone up has used it in a different way. The great thing about the tools we have is that they can be used in a number of ways. The Blog can be used as a Newsletter, or for product updates. The Photo Gallery can be used to post recipes, or product photos. The idea is to let the customer figure out how to use it themselves. The tool is simple enough that they can get in and figure this out very quickly.
The one thing that people have requested that we don't have yet is a Shopping Cart. But I'm already working on that. I've created a system for "add-ons" or plugins that we can create to extend the functionality. The core features stay the same, but the add-ons can be created as we get requests for more features. For example I recently finished the Form Builder add-on.
I really feel like the core features will cover 90% of our customer base.
me: Very cool. Beyond the form builder and shopping cart, what other features do you anticipate adding?
ben: We have a few ideas, including a Calendar, Newsletter Emails, and possibly some sort of Mapping add-on. One add-on that we've started to consider lately is internationalization, to support sites in multiple languages.
me: You allow custom CSS with your Advanced package, any plans on extending that to the other packages, or creating some way for people to submit more templates?
ben: Actually the custom CSS is available on all packages. It's very cool, and something we hope that more designers will start using. You can either override one of our pre-made layouts, or use one of our base layouts.
We've started a resellers program where designers can create their own designs, and resell doodlekit sites. The designer can charge the customer whatever they want, and just pay us the normal fee.
You can find more information about custom layouts at dkadvanced.com
me: My apologies, I thought it was just for the advanced package. Very awesome that it's available for all of them.
ben: No problem.
me: How do you see DoodleKit competing with other CMSes like DotNetNuke or Typo3 (Open Source), or commercial CMSes?
ben: Well, the core difference is that it's hosted, so you don't have to find your own hosting and install it. Beyond that I tried very hard to make doodlekit's content management as simple as possible. I think that things like publishing and approval workflows are great for some websites, but completely unecessary for our market. Most people just want to be able to click, edit, change something, and save it.
We also constrain the customer quite a bit, and don't allow complex hierarchies of pages. I think in the end this helps the customer create a more comprehensive and easy to navigate website.
me: Do you think you'd ever release a self-hosted version, where customers could install it on thier own machines?
ben: I don't think so, that's a large part of the value of doodlekit. I think that if someone has the knowledge and time to install it, then they're probably going to want something more complex anyway. By doing that we'd basically be creating competitors.
me: That makes sense. In the same vein, do you think you would ever get to the point where DoodleKit would be the sort of thing that larger corporate customers would be interested in using it?
ben: I see markets for corporations, but not for their main website. Coporate websites are very complex, and usually require in-house developers, which is fine. However I think that there are small temporary websites that doodlekit might be perfect for.
For example if a corporation is hosting an event, or doing an ad campaign, they could have a doodlekit site dedicated just to that. Or maybe it could be a project collaboration site, there are many possibilities.
me: You mentioned Heath works full-time for DoodleKit in your e-mail. Do you think you'll eventually just do DoodleKit, or something similar, full-time, or do you want to keep it as a side job?
ben: My goal is to be working for Doodlebit full-time. I imagine this will be partly from doodlekit revenue, and partly from Rails consulting jobs. Right now I'm sticking with J2EE consulting, because it pays well. I'm trying to get in a good financial position before I jump ship.
After that we talked a bit about the perils of starting your own company, and the importance of having great partners (something I'm still working on). Ben has an incredible idea, and a great company, please check it out.
Tags: design, web design, Ruby on Rails, content management systems, CMS, website
posted by JJeffryes at 1:21 PM
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