Confusing title since "dashboard" appears nowhere on the page. Better description might be "An open-source dynamic link-in-bio" (AKA Linktree alternative)
I couldn't figure out what it was from the README, I am surprised it made the homepage of HN. If the author reads this, I suggest updating the README and resubmitting it to HN sometime in the future.
FWIW, I understand what a "Dashboard" means, never heard of a "link-in-bio" before. From the website, it seems to be something like an "About" page? But dynamic I guess.
Link-in-bio comes from social platforms where you're allowed 1 url in your profile but need to show many links (also in situations where some of the links may go to content that could get you banned if placed on site ie OF).
I'm not sure of the value of making it more than it needs to be.
And posts with links in them are punished in different ways, like getting suppressed in algorithmic feeds. So instead of just linking to a thing directly people are left with mentioning “link in bio”.
The glow.as website has more information and examples: https://glow.as/
> Glow is a single link that you can use to house all the links to your social media profiles, websites, and other content. It's a great way to share all your content in one place, whether it be your favourite songs on Spotify, or a link to your latest products.
Feedback for the team: the landing page offers me no insight into what this is. The "introduction" link points to the same file that is hosted.
At a minimum, I expect a screenshot (preferrably multiple) and example code snippets that show some of what can be done. This is general guidance for any open source repository that desires other people to use it, not limited to this project.
I'd expect the GH page to have similar content to the actual website, https://glow.as/. I only found that by searching for a link, which was the big leader image on the GH page. At the very least, add a textual "website" link to the GH landing page.
For the team: From the term "personal dashboard," I was expecting something that would allow me to track data that's important to me, locally, like if I want to track my sleep stats and my spending and my food intake and whatever else. That's what "personal dashboard" means to me, and I was excited for a self-hosted, open source, clean way to do that.
Maybe that product exists, but sadly it has nothing to do with this one.
I just so happen to be working on one! It stemmed from my dissatisfaction with the existing meal tracking apps I’ve tried.
Initially I’d wanted to track spending as well but apps like YNAB cover this use-case better than I can in the near term so I struck it from the roadmap.
I’m trying to focus on health: meal planning and workout scheduling in a system flexible enough to make suggestions as your exercise regimen (and thus your nutritional requirements) change. Will also be looking into sleep tracking and other metrics.
Let me know if there’s anything else you’d want to see from an app like this. Happy to shoot you a link to the repo when the MVP gets off the ground.
I think most of the problem I run into is that I don't use a lot of mainstream services. Like, my step count, heart rate, and weight info isn't in FitBit and Google Health. It's in GadgetBridge and openScale. And I'm not syncing it to my computer with Dropbox or Google Drive. It happens through syncthing.
Most of my "system," if I can even call it that, is held together by a whole lot of duct tape and bubblegum and commands I ran one time that I found on StackOverflow.
I haven't updated this in years but this was my attempt at building a real time personal dashboard, connecting various API's and components.
Was pretty helpful for me, basically acted as a heads up display that I could look at to track my stats over the day (steps, meditation, focus time, etc.)
A link in bio is primarily used by social media influencers. It would usually link to their other social media pages, a merch website, and stuff like that. It solves the issue of most social media platforms only allowing one link
Cool project! I clicked on it hoping it was a way to easily visualize my own personal stats. Anyone know of a project like that? Grafana for personal data :)
I made a tool for capturing data in JSON [0]. It's not in real-time but when I want to use my logs to troubleshoot something I have a local React project with https://github.com/plouc/nivo to make my own visualizations.
This is great! Really nice on the eyes and well organized. It did take me a while to figure out what to look for though - as others have mentioned. I had to find the actual link on the GitHub page then browse the homepage to understand what it was. When I saw it though, I really liked it.
I'd love to see this expanded to non-software engineers. Artists, for example, could also use this.
edit: I spoke too soon. I see that artists can use this as well. The icon gallery needs a couple more, like Soundcloud, but the basics are there for everyone. Great job!
I wouldn't say a 'link in bio' page === personal dashboard. Having said that, this looks like a really nice link in bio product, congrats on the launch!
I always see these services targeted to individuals, but have you considered targeting SMBs? So many restaurants, plumbers, etc. have TERRIBLE websites that they struggle to maintain properly for various reasons. I don't see any reason that a tool like this wouldn't be sufficient.
Also just a flag that I get a 404 when I try to see the project's license.
- It's a very cool idea, and massive congrats on the launch!
- This has been done before, but a slick looking open source version is very cool! Have you looked at the concept of now pages, as this might lean into that? https://nownownow.com/about
- Personal dashboard builder is a poor term for this, as it implies a dashboard for personal data/usage.
- Link in bio is also a poor term, I suspect it's not a popular / well-known term. Personal Homepage is probably the best I can think of. Or now page perhaps?
- This GitHub readme says very little of substance, which gives me... "unfinished side project" vibes.
Congrats on the launch, I think I'll try this out and consider it for self hosting.
If you want to connect with different segments, packaging this to make it available for things like yunohost (one click install) could be really valuable as more than a few ppl on tools like can have their own domains already setup.
I think the github landing page would remove a bunch of the questions below if you put screenshots of the steps and different kinds of outputs, and if it's really fun an animated gif that covers the entire experience in a few seconds (almost too fast).
I like it, it looks really nice. To create an account on glow.as requires either Twitter or Google and I have neither. Self hosting appears to be hosting the entire project like I run my own server like glow.as for people to create their dashboards.
I wish either to allow creating an account with an email or like a mini version to build a single dashboard.
I see that this is early. It would be nice to have a screenshot and a description. Like other readers, I suggest adding some more info to the readme and/or a link to the website. The license is also missing (there's a link but it gives a 404).
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah I think we need to play around with some different terms. A few others have suggested "personal homepage builder", or something similar along those lines.
