
The Side-Project Project - sgdesign
http://sachagreif.com/the-side-project-project/
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milesokeefe
10 hours seems far too short for most side projects. Maybe I'm too
inexperienced as a developer, but I consider a lot of my projects to be "side"
projects, and they take at least 30 hours.

I just don't see how you can create a full, well designed, functional website
based off an original idea in under 10 hours.

For those that have side projects that you made in under 10 hours, could you
share them?

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sgdesign
I created The Toolbox in about 10 hours (<http://thetoolbox.cc>). If you feel
like a project will take more than 10 hours, I would suggest scaling your idea
back.

Of course, if you have more than 10 hours available then go for it, but a lot
of people never start precisely because it seems like too big a task. So I
thought the 10-hour rule could be a good way to get past that.

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navs
That's a nice side project. I can see this being useful. Can I ask if the site
looked this good on the very first release or have you gradually improved it
since its first post 10hr release?

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sgdesign
It pretty much looked like this, the only thing I added later was the filters
and rankings.

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sgdesign
If you've built side projects before, post them here! I'll start:

\- <http://patternify.com> – A pixel pattern generator that produces CSS
Base64 code (made with jQuery)

\- <http://thetoolbox.cc> – A directory of useful web apps and tools (made
with WordPress)

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PhilipA
I built among others <http://recovermywebsite.com>, which can retrieve your
page from the Yahoo or Bing cache. It took more like 100-300 hours instead of
10 :)

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jameswyse
That's cool, my mate cancelled his hosting recently and forgot to download his
files. The website needs replacing anyway but if this works at least he'll be
able to get the old one online again.

Thanks!

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kamaal
One question: how many of you have side projects, whose main purpose has
nothing to do with the web? I mean do you build/play wth furniture, micro
controllers, cooking etc kind of stuff.

I know that monetizing them is far more difficult compared to web ones due to
default advantage of distribution on the web.

But what are your successful projects which are non-web?

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simonbarker87
I built a room temperature monitoring system with an mbed microcontroller and
29 maxim digital temperature sensors to show how heat is distributed in a room
- made a nice 3D visualisation of the data with a Processing Sketch.
Completely non-web but a total success in what I set out to do

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Pyrodogg
Interesting, was this developed for something like a generic room in a home or
something with many sources of heat like a data center?

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simonbarker87
It was developed for a generic home room, I wanted to see what the room looked
like thermally and determine where the heat was collecting and how that could
be improved

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michaeltoth
What hosts does everybody use for these side projects? I'm interested in
working on some of my own, but I'm just wondering if everybody is paying for
hosting and as you expand into multiple projects how you keep it from getting
too expensive. I'd really appreciate any information.

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davesmylie
I use rimuhosting - pretty reasonable service for a decent price.

I had performance issues with my last host that resolved completely when
jumping to rimuhosting.

I've got two main apps hosted there (one large, one small), with a number of
other random sites that don't do much.

It's costing me about $US40 a month for hosting, which is a reasonable chunk
of cash to put down for a hobby/side project every month, but once this amount
is offset against ad income it's not really a problem.

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frownie
I have a side project which is writing a production management plant for my
brother in law's company.. That's not exactly "a quick website", took me
around 600 hours (six hundreds) so far. I've worked 2 hours a day, 4 days a
week on average for more than 1.5 year now... Still doin' great. No web site
so far. Not even github (what for? I'm the only one working on it :-))

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udit99
Any reason for not releasing an MVP with frequent follow-on releases instead
of a big-bang release? I ask because I suffer from the problem of not
releasing often enough. Saw matching symptoms in your post that made me wonder
what your reasons were.

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frownie
OK, you have good insight. So here's the deal...

I'm rewriting an old, limited BASIC (!) application. So my "customer" knows
quite well what he needs (he needs the same, but better). So requirements are
rather easy to grasp. I also demonstrate progress every now and then so that
he can get a good feeling of what I do. Now, the code has become good enough
that I can give it to him to test it (and he'll behave as the usual customer :
he will not test enough :-) ). Moreover, I have access to its current database
=> i've got a lot of data to validate the business rules side of the program.

Concerning the big bang now... The program is quite a "whole" so it's pretty
hard to release a part of it. I basiacally made two parts : the classical ERP
stuff and the time reporting (machines/humans). Also, working for a small,
privately owned company, to replace an existing software is different than a
brand new "super idea" web site. That is, the room for error is super small.
And since it's a side project, I cannot provide on site support within 8
hours. Therefore, I think the big bang is the only option (well, for both
parts of the program). As said, I'm working on a stable requirements basis =>
I'm confident I can manage the application development and code quality with
standard testing...

In retrospect, I think the project is nice but a bit too big. 2 years, day in
day out, is quite an endeavour. And although I like it, I feel it has to
finish now...

In case you wonder : I didn't use an existing ERP solution because after some
tests by my brother-in-law-customer, it appeared that they are either too
expensive, too complicated/slow or they impose too much of an administrative
burden (eg. ned to declare every single stocks before being able to actually
write some production orders...) Hopefully, what we're doing will prove more
efficient for our case (and, let's dream, there might be other people
interested, I mean, rich people :-)))

stF

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