I was coding on Sunday. Mostly around fonts, sizes and faces for the main YourPCM database, and this was because I had a demonstration go horribly wrong ...
When demos go wrong, you need to think about why and fix it so it doesn't happen again!
One of the people on the call was colour-blind and struggled to see what I was showing them on screen, which really put them off. He didn't get any value from it and had to leave the meeting early as his eyes were hurting. I know they're not coming back, and that really disappointed me.
"I'd never come across this before!"
I needed to do something about it as I didn't want it to happen again. Firstly, I created a purely black-and-white theme, then reverse the process and created one that was mostly black, but with white text. Other themes will follow, but this was a start.
We've been able to change font sizes for a while now, but they only went up and down by 1pt each time. I needed to spread them out a little, so we now have 11pt (as standard) and 13pt, 15pt and 18pt available in the expanded views. This also meant I needed to check column widths and ensure that things like phone numbers fitted correctly.
I added four other font faces too. Raleway is my standard font, and I've been using this throughout YourPCM since I created it, but again, vision issues for certain subscribers, so I've added in a choice of Cairo, Arial, Merriweather and Cormorant, the last two being serif fonts. Different people can see different fonts better, so it was certainly a good idea to put them in.
Now, subscribers get a choice of themes, widths, font sizes and faces too. Fingers crossed that all this should accommodate the vast majority of people, but I've put it out there that custom colour schemes are available if someone has a particular type of colour blindness!
I realised I had some extra time on Sunday to get a bit more coding done. I didn't need to consult the feature request list as I already knew what it was I wanted to do. I'd recently added Rich Text Format into the mailer editor and it was working great, although it has a few little foibles that I always tell subscribers about. Because of this, I was recommending people open the editor and the viewer side by side and refresh the view when they update the editor.
This was a complete pain in the proverbial for them to do (popup windows would keep disappearing beneath other popups) so I decided to embed the viewer into the editor which solved the problem. Now, as soon as they update the mailer, they can see the effect it will have via the embedded viewer to the side of this. I've already had some great feedback from subscribers about how easy this makes it.
"I'm really happy with the mailer system now!"
So, all in all, and excellent day of coding on Sunday. I promised a few networkers I saw on Friday that I would take Saturday off and just relax because I've been pushing it recently, so just compressed everything into one day.
And I won't be working at all next weekend as I'll be sunning myself at the beach instead.
Love, light & logic ...
STEFFI LEWIS Independent UK SaaS Developer - Creator of YourPCM & sBlogIt!
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Based in the charming village of Hanslope in Buckinghamshire, UK, I bring over 30 years of experience in web development. From creating my first website for the Open University in 1993, through being part of the dot com boom, to my explorations in SaaS and AI over the last few years, my journey has been a rich tapestry of web projects, big and small, both funded and bootstrapped.
Originally developed during the pandemic, at the start of 2025, I released the next iteration of YourPCM, version 2, which is all about 'Easy Contact Management for Small Business Owners'. Is it a CRM? Yes, but I don't call it that because people glaze over at the mention of such things. CRMs are boring, difficult to get to grips with, and it's a nightmare to get help when you need it.
YourPCM is none of those things! It's simple to use, well-supported, feature rich and beautiful, right out of the box. It's available on a simple monthly subscription with no long-term tie-in. Book a demo or grab your own 14-working-day free trial and discover why YourPCM is all about easy contact management for small business owners.
My head is in the cloud, my heart belongs to the web, and my soul is filled with such beautiful code ��
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