

Ask HN: My project IsItRails.com — what should I do? - rmoriz

Started two years ago IsItRails.com is a very small app that is able to identify if a site runs Ruby on Rails or not (at least to some 90%). It's the outcome of a lazy three days hack has an horrible ugly design (I know…) and currently over 4000 known Rails sites.<p>But it does the job and saves some "curl --head" and "view source" actions for curious persons like myself (when using the bookmarklet).<p>As not only the design sucks I'm considering a relaunch from scratch but I'm not sure about if and how much time and money (e.g. for design) I should invest et all? Can this be run as "a business"? Is there any commercial potential in this app or its data? I'm not currently sharing the database which might or might not be interesting for hosters/PaaS, add-on/monitoring providers and consultancies?<p>I'll continue running the service as it currently is, even if there's no revenue possibility… so please be honest in your opinion: What do you think? Thank you.
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jacquesm
hey Roland,

That's a very tricky thing. I think that a 'service to the community' has its
own kind of pay-offs but they won't be the kind that you can measure in direct
dollar value. It would come back in goodwill, which is notoriously hard to put
a sticker price on.

This particular one also doesn't seem to cost much to own & operate. If you
want you can host it on on one of my machines in case you're worried about the
costs (free of charge), I think that it's useful but I would expand it a bit
to make it more useful, where you analyze not just if it is rails but also
what it is if it isn't. That would also increase the usefulness of the site.

That way you can give something back to a visitor regardless of whether or not
a site runs rails.

If you feel like taking me up on my offer let me know.

greetings, & good luck, whatever you decide to do with it.

Jacques

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rmoriz
As you've mentioned hosting isn't a problem so that's not an issue.

My experience after running (resurrecting) the local ruby user group
(<http://ruby-muenchen.de/> all done/run by me) and <http://IsItRails.com/>
for two years are disillusioning: At least here in Germany nobody gives a sh*t
if you do something to the community.

So having some flattrs/tweets per month is already a positive feedback that I
appreciate much :)

~~~
jacquesm
Well, here is my compliment to you then, in spite of other parties here asking
what the 'use' is, the URL was easy enough to remember that when I was
wondering if a bunch of websites might have been written using rails (they
weren't) that I used your service and it worked well enough.

So thank you for running isitrails.com :)

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joshcrews
I use your site, I'm a fulltime Rails developer, and I would think all your
traffic would be from Rails developers or at least the Rails-curious.

You might be able to get some money (I have no way of estimating how much) by
just adding the same sponsors that railscasts.com has. That could be a short
time investment up front for a passive income.

In that model, you don't need to redesign. The design is fine.

~~~
rmoriz
I've never done that "fund raising" thingy. I once had an offer to embed a pay
per lead banner but considered the low traffic it seemed not be a good idea.

It's a very specific app and probably the database is more valueable than the
visitor number…

~~~
hundredwatt
Roland,

This may be a completely useless suggestions as I'm not sure if it's even
possible, but perhaps you could port IsItRails to other open-source projects
(e.g., IsItDjango). The site could then be a useful way for recognizing open-
source projects/devs.

As the database grows, I may start using it show non-technical people that
these projects are not just fringe, non-scalable technologies.

Great work!

One last note, as far as fundraising, what's the worst thing that could happen
if you sent an email to all the sponsors of RailsCasts asking if they'd be
interested in promoting on your site?

~~~
dillydally
Or, rather, you just enter a URL and it tells you what frameworks the app is
using.

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ElbertF
I've doing pretty much the same thing with <http://wappalyzer.com> the last
couple of years. It's a Firefox add-on that analyzes source code and headers
to find out what software is being used on sites. The add-on is mildly popular
and I'm collecting a ton of data but it isn't making me a lot of money. It's a
fun side-project though, perhaps we can do something together?

Example stats page:
[http://wappalyzer.com/stats/app/WordPress|Drupal|Joomla/webs...](http://wappalyzer.com/stats/app/WordPress|Drupal|Joomla/websites)

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clint
I think you probably need to ask yourself: "would I pay for this?" then ask
your friends and people in a wider community: "would you or your business pay
for this?"

I think you'll probably find that answer is, well, no. What's my ROI on
knowing if a site runs Rails? I'm really trying hard and coming up with a
blank.

What does your site do that I can't accomplish in a simple email to the site's
owner? You're basically arguing a value proposition over my laziness to send
an email and wait a day or so for the result, which isn't a lot.

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iuguy
I would do the minimum work required and put some Amazon affiliate links up
there as a starting point.

I imagine most of your traffic is going to come from Rails developers or those
interested in getting to know Rails. If you can find out more about why your
visitors use your site, then you can develop a more effective
commercialisation strategy based on their interests.

~~~
rmoriz
Isn't there a possibility that keeps me from distracting the users? Don't you
think the database might have a value on its own?

~~~
dmoney
It's possible that your users are using the site itself as a distraction. You
could A/B test to see whether ads keep visitors from coming back.

Or are you thinking that ads or affiliate links would make the database less
valuable?

~~~
rmoriz
I personally hate sites cluttered with affiliate banners or google adsense.

~~~
dmoney
Hard to argue with you there. But advertising is how most of the web makes
money off of "free" services, and I believe it can be done tastefully.

------
rmoriz
clickable: <http://IsItRails.com/>

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symkat
You should talk to jarnold since he says that you should sell the database and
he can provide you leads, and everything you've said in the comments seems
more like, "Does anyone want to buy my database?" than "How can I monetize
this". Down to posting your sales pitch. :p

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jarnold
Sell the data to the sales staff of rails hosting companies. Seriously, the
sales folks at these companies use this data all day long. Let me know if you
want introductions.

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bullseye
Maybe you could create some additional research/marketing value by combining
your current efforts with something similar to the information available in
Netcraft's "What's that site running?" utility?
(<http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph>)

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gtani
how does it compare to, say:

<http://www.appliedstacks.com/>

<http://blindelephant.sourceforge.net/>

~~~
rmoriz
blindelephant is interesting. Was not available when I started 2 years ago.

Appliedstacks seems to be a wiki so it's entirely user generated.

~~~
rmoriz
update: blindelephant seems not to cover rails apps yet

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mike-cardwell
This is a genuine question, I'm not trying to be rude... What is the point of
the website? It doesn't seem to do anything particularly useful... Perhaps
your time would be better spent working on a website which would perform a
useful task and maybe generate some money?

~~~
rmoriz
If the information that a site is Ruby on Rails based is not useful to you,
you're completely right.

~~~
mike-cardwell
I would like a website where you enter the url of another website and it gives
you a list of technologies which it uses. One which just tells you if it uses
rails seems to be of very limited usefulness.

~~~
rmoriz
let me try a pitch:

"If you provide Ruby/Rails hosting like Heroku, Engine Yard, RightScale etc.
do, the database could contain up to 4300 potential new customers"

~~~
jaxn
Add to your database which hosting provider the site is using (for those you
can figure out). I think that really increases the value of your pitch and
saves the sales people from having to cross reference to make sure they aren't
pitching existing customers.

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kapauldo
Congratson a great site. It's useful and interesting. No, don't invest much
more into it and no, it can't be a business. It's a super niche site intended
for a supernniche audience. You've proven that you can go from idea to
production, and that's very rare in life (most people are talkers, you're a
doer). Now, do the smart thing, and heed the advice here. Move on to your next
big idea, this one only has hobby potential.

