Hey Reader, Whatever you sell, and however you've structured it, onboarding sits outside all of it. It isn't one of your services. It's what happens before any of them start, and it runs more or less the same way no matter what the client ends up buying. Same contract, same questionnaire, same request for logos and brand files, same explanation of how you work and how quickly you reply to things. You've probably written that explanation eight times in eight different emails. Which is a good...
13 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, A little while back, Cheryl Porcelijn had me on De Podcast voor Webdesigners - her weekly podcast for web designers. It's normally in Dutch, but this episode is in English, and we talked about Client Portal: how it got started, what it's actually for, and some of the ways people are using it that I didn't originally anticipate. Cheryl has been using Client Portal with her own web design clients for years - and more recently as a companion to her course - so the conversation felt...
28 days ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, You may have seen Cheryl's case study a few weeks back - she runs a six-month coaching programme and uses Client Portal for its delivery. Tucked into that email was a link to a free template for setting up the same kind of thing. It's actually becoming one of our more popular downloads, but plenty of you missed it the first time round. So this email is just about the template. If you're running something educational on the side (coaching, group programmes, light-touch courses) the...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, If you're weighing up client portals, you've probably noticed most "best of" comparisons are written by the company that happens to come out on top. So we wrote one too. But we've tried to be straight about it, including the bits where Client Portal isn't the right call. It covers the main options freelancers actually consider: the all-in-one suites, the project management tools, the productised-service platforms, and the free route, and where Client Portal fits in among them. A...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, The recording from yesterday's webinar is now available: Watch the recording → It's about 30 minutes. The chat and comments refused to work for the entire session (sorry!), so we never got to the Q&A, which means you're getting it by email instead. Reply with whatever you wanted to ask and I'll answer properly. What I covered: Dedicated onboarding portals. If you work with the same clients repeatedly, a separate onboarding portal keeps the first-week paperwork away from the...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Small update worth a quick mention if you let clients register for their own portals. Until now, every portal created that way got the same default name, which gets confusing fast when you've got a few dozen of them. In 5.8.1 you can have each one name itself using the client's details instead. Drop {first_name}, {last_name}, or {organization} into your portal title, and a client registering as John Smith arrives with a portal already called "John's Portal". You can set it once...
3 months ago • 1 min read
"Four of my Mastery members have bought Client Portal for their own businesses during their time in my programme."- Cheryl Porcelijn, Webdesign Mastery Hey Reader, Most people use Client Portal for client projects. But Cheryl uses it for something slightly different: as a private resource hub for each student in her six-month web design coaching programme. It's not replacing a course platform. There's no video hosting, no community, no progress tracking. It's just a clean, organised space...
4 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, Quick one — Client Portal 5.8 is out. Comments are getting a bit of an upgrade. Until now, the comments feature has been running on WordPress's native comments system, which is fairly limited for the kind of back-and-forth client work actually needs. We've started loosening that up, beginning with email notifications when a client leaves a comment on a content page (replies included). Also in this release: A proper overhaul of the notification settings page. Notifications have...
4 months ago • 1 min read
Hey Reader, We have a demo video that walks you through how Client Portal works. But instead of just embedding it on a landing page, I thought, why not deliver it through an actual Client Portal? So that's what I did. The demo video is inside a real, working portal, and as you explore it you'll see all the different features in action. You can click into content pages, browse image galleries, download files, and see how progress tracking works, all while getting a feel for what your clients...
5 months ago • 1 min read