
Ask HN: How do you build a service? - NetOpWibby
I have an idea for an eCommerce web app that I want to launch either late this year or early next year (I&#x27;ll be testing and such before then). There will be a self-hosted solution for open-source lovers, and a hosted service for people who don&#x27;t want to deal with setup and maintenance.<p>My question is this: How do I actually get started with the hosted service? I&#x27;ve never done anything like this, so some pointers would be much appreciated. I plan to use DigitalOcean because I love their offerings.<p>Actually, one more thing! Every store would be a sub-domain, like how accounts are on deviantART. Need to figure out how to make that happen automatically via sign-up though.
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tixocloud
For the hosted service, you'll want to determine what are some of the core
functionality that your users will care about.

For folks who don't want to do deal with setup and maintenance, they could be
a completely separate crowd than the folks who will be downloading your open-
source version.

You'll have to balance the needs of both audiences. What's critical will be to
start chatting with people to get an idea of what they want.

Inexpensive options like DigitalOcean are great (we're on there as well) for
testing out ideas. However, you'll have to balance technology choice, ease of
implementation and costs as well.

Feel free to shoot me a message if you wanted to chat further.

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NetOpWibby
Actually, how do I send messages on HN?

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ddorian43
Not possible, click on their profile name and hope for a way to contact to
them personally or comment under them to request a contact or comment under
them with your contact.

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miyuru
for the sub domain part you can use a wild card sub domain

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcard_DNS_record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wildcard_DNS_record)

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NetOpWibby
Huh, that's interesting. Thanks for the link!

