
Ask HN: review my webapp starter project - kaffeinecoma
Hi HN, I'm looking for feedback on a project I've been working on. It's a kind of webapp starter project- the code is the product.<p>http://armhold.com/quick<p>The target customer is an entrepreneur/dev that wants to get a basic webapp up and running quickly. It doesn't do anything novel or earth-shattering; it's just a project shell that gives you some common basic features that you can use to build out your site.<p>I often see jobs posted to sites like oDesk or Elance asking for a basic website with these kinds of features. The idea is to sell this code as a starter project, so you can get your webapp running faster and not have to worry about implementing boilerplate stuff like:<p>* totally automated user accounts (sign-up/login/change-password/forgot-password, etc)<p>* login via Facebook or use local account (uses BCrypt for storing pw hashes)<p>* drop-dead easy "you must be logged in to access this page" annotations<p>* "contact us" with CAPTCHA protection<p>* smart https/http switching for secure/insecure pages<p>* uses H2 as an integrated database, so it also saves you the hassle of setting up MySQL (though it's a simple change if you do in fact want to use an existing DB).<p>Again, none of this is rocket-science, but it can take a surprising amount of time to get these basic things working properly.<p>The main downside to this of course if that you're subject to my choice of tech (Java, Wicket, JPA/Hibernate).<p>Do you think this is worth pursuing? Do you think it's worth $199?  Would you like to use it to build your next project? :-)<p>All constructive feedback appreciated, thank you.
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euroclydon
I don't think people pay money for this type of thing. They do for CMSs or
hosted solutions of any type, but no so much for starter kits.

I think it will be a long road to get traction selling this, but if you want,
you could promote and give away the starter kit for free, then sell add-ons
that tackle difficult tasks. You could make money this way.

Again, I think there are easier ways to make money, but my first steps would
be to promote the heck out of this free starter kit. Then solicit suggestions
from your user base for additional features or custom work. You could do this
with a forum. Pick the feature requests that you think would be the most
difficult for your users to do themselves and that also provide value to their
business (bonus points for value easily identified with dollar signs) and then
make them as add-ons to sell.

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kaffeinecoma
Not a bad idea. I'd be more than happy to give the kit away if it meant I'd
get some consulting work out of it. Thank you.

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kaffeinecoma
Clickable link: <http://armhold.com/quick>

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dshipper
My first thought is that this is definitely not for a developer. I can get a
site similar to this running in Rails in just a few hours for 100% free
besides time spent.

What it's really for is people who are looking to build websites but are doing
so from the business side. The people who want to have a site up with the
minimal amount of coding possible.

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kaffeinecoma
You're correct- it's more targeted for an entrepreneur who's trying to hire
someone on elance to build such a thing. You can build this in a few hours in
RoR? I was thinking it'd be more like maybe a weekend of work to replicate,
but perhaps I've underestimated the power of Rails. Thanks!

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garethsprice
As an entrepreneur:

That Java is what powers major companies (including Google) would be
interesting to know.

What's the benefit to installing this? If I install it, how am I going to find
someone to work on it? That is is based on industry standard, easily
modifiable Java that I can easily hire developers to work on would be good to
know. Maybe even pitch it as a first round product to build a prototype or
proof of concept rapidly. Would need to find some target customers and ask
them what they want, though.

How many developer hours am I saving? Showing that "most developers estimate
around 100-200 hours to set up the basic framework for a new application" lets
me work out in my head how much I'm saving.

I don't care about HTML or CSS or BCrypt or SQL, but that I can save X00 hours
reinventing the wheel and get straight into implementing just the logic of my
app is a big draw.

If it were me, I'd probably give this product away - you have nothing to lose.
The target audience will have no idea how to use it anyway, just that it can
save them money. And that's where they contact you for help, as the World's #1
Quickstarter expert. Worst thing that can happen is that other developers
download it for free and start building products on it, in which case you've
built yourself an ecosystem.

Case study: Wordpress (Wordpress.com), Drupal (Acquia), all built themselves
into multi-million dollar companies on this model. For a smaller case study,
Lovdbyless.com is a free RoR social network framework that some friends of
mine gave away and that led to millions in consulting work.

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jaz
Have you considered including code for linking up to popular payment gateways?
You should also take a look at the SaaS starter kit for rails [1] - it seems
to be similar to what you're doing and might give you some new ideas.

[1] <http://railskits.com/saas/>

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kaffeinecoma
I did in fact consider adding some hooks for payment gateways, but in the end
I felt that it would be too specialized to do in a general way. A simple site
can start easily and add a Google Checkout button (like I did) with a simple
blob of HTML. Of course that's not a solution for everyone.

One possibility I thought of was adding support for payment verification
callbacks. So you can create single-use digital downloads that are only
authorized after payment is verified. If I ever get traction, that's
definitely on my list for a future feature.

Thanks for the link to to the Saas starter kit- I'll take a look.

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garethsprice
No more features! Give it away to the first 5-10 people in your target
demographic you can find who'll take it, and see what they do with it. If they
don't end up using it, why not? If they do, what is it missing? Stick to those
5-10 like glue and they'll tell you exactly what you need to build your
business. (Read: Four Steps to the Epiphany)

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euroclydon
What' the legality of the distribution for all that OSS software?

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kaffeinecoma
Good question. It's built with Maven, so technically I am not distributing the
libraries with the downloadable product.

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catshirt
perhaps the java ecosystem is different than what i'm familiar with, but in my
experience you have to _really_ sell your framework- even if it's free. $200
is enough to make me close the page before reading the features.

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gotrythis
At first glance, it looked like something you might sell on codecanyon.net

