Thinking of building an "app" for WSO but basically all I'm really looking for is people to easily be able to read and comment on the content from their mobile devices. We tried creating a mobile version of the site that would load when people pulled it up from their smartphones but that was buggy and not consistent. So would building it an App fix this? I assume the app could pull a bunch of feeds off the site into an independent framework that would make it easier to read / participate?
Also, how much do these typically go for? Is it normal to charge like $2 to download or do you run ads on it? How much do these things cost...
Clearly my age is showing because I sound like a moron...any help from you young chimps that are more technically savy and can outline various options / ideas for me would be much appreciated. some of you sent me a PM but I'm still kind of confused how to proceed.
Thanks guys,
Patrick
If you run ads through your app, you can make it free. I think Apple takes 50% of ad rev though. It's probably best to ask an expert though: http://wapple.net/
yeah, i mean we already have these feeds ready: http://www.wallstreetoasis.com/sitemap
I am just not sure, once someone reads something and wants to participate, can the app handle them logging in and commenting as well?
An app will handle someone logging in and navigating their account better than a simple mobile site version would. Personally, I'd be far more willing to throw small dollar at a one-time app purchase fee and get headache-free, ad-free browsing on the go than deal with adverts at the top and bottom of WSO on my iPhone. Make it $2 and I'm sure mad heads will buy it, $5 if you have to but unless you take your dev request to a third-party developer and have them map it for you, there's little chance of it costing you so much that you need to jack the price that high.
Don't bother with an app. You'd have to create one for multiple platforms (iOS, Android, BB, etc). Plus app developers for a single platform can charge significantly upwards of $5k for the app ($5k is probably on the cheap side).
I'd recommend looking again at a mobile version of the site. Maybe using CSS configs/hacking, instead of a full blown distinct mobile version. This will give you the freedom to develop once and deploy to multiple devices (ish), without having to worry about app approvals, different platforms or OS versions within a platform (there are a significant number of people that still use Android 1.6, when the latest is 2.1/2.2).
My 2 pence.
You should make a poll and ask people what they would spend for an app if and when you get to that point. You have a pretty devoted audience and you could do the poll earlier rather than later and use that info to help guide your decision on how much (if anything) you should spend on development...just a thought
I feel like you are asking this to the wrong community entirely as it has been my experience that the majority of users here are not tech savvy nor do they have a basic understanding of smart phone OS's or how apps work.
Would people like to have an app for the iOS and android OS? Yes, probably. If done correctly, it could be a lot more efficient than simply pulling up WSO on your phones browser.
I would suggest going to www.reddit.com/r/android and start by asking that community. There are a lot of tech savvy people there, including programmers and devs that might be able to help you and answer questions in a much more in depth format. Specifically, pay attention to an app called 'Reddit Is Fun.' It is an app created by a dev that uses reddit. It essentially does everything you would want the WSO app to do: Browsing the forum/commenting, giving silver bananas/throwing monkey shit, etc. There is a free version and more in depth pro version which costs money.
I would go ahead and say try not to charge for the app as all it is essentially doing is allowing you to view/navigate the boards, which can be done by using the browser already. Make the app free, but pair it with minimalistic ads. To support my reasoning behind this, I would like to remind you that Rovio, the company that made Angry Birds, pulls in $1MM a month just from ads. Their app is free. Now will you have a global user base as large as theirs? No, probably not, but the ads will still generate money.
I'd feel pretty comfortable paying $0.99-$1.99 for an app. Adds are more annoying.
App is a great idea though --- don't forget the Blackberry!
I love it when Patrick uses the boards he created for advice!
I cover mobile devices and apps. I'd advise on building an app later on, and keep it to a mobile site for now. Think m.facebook.com -- when you reach critical mass, hire developers for the app. There is extreme money/revenue involved if you put some value to it: currency calculator, interview "cheatsheet" (feed for today's DOW, price of guild, etc), and have perhaps a subscription to WSO guides on the phone (like Google eBooks on the browser). Charge 99 cents on the App Store, and put it on GetJar, Android market. Top 100 apps on Apple's App store: 70% are games, at a 99cent price. Add a donation button too. It's all going to mobile, and that's what we're investing in.
I don't even get a thank you?!? JK...not really. Anyway, people here would pay $5 because it's not a game that you'll get bored of. It's an app that people would continually use. You already know I know a developer, let me know if you want to see his work.
I highly doubt people would pay 5 dollars for an app when they can do almost the exact same things in the phones browser. He would have to be offering some major stuff that the user base could not get from the wso site alone.
We can help, but it'll cost ya ;)
Before I give out specific advice to the Drupal install that you have, I'd like to preface this by saying the drupal as a discussion forum platform SUCKS ASS. Trying to code for drupal's mess of a code base and dealing with scalability with this platform is a total pain in the ass. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, vbulletin (the new version is awesome) coupled with vbCMS. phpBB and vBulletin dominate because they're just better. (well, maybe not phpBB though I haven't looked that code base in awhile).
As for your Drupal questions, you basically have three options here (I'm going to speak purely from a technical perspective - if you want business ramifications, well, that's another post):
a) Create a mobile version of the site
This can be accomplished a couple of different ways ranging from simplistic (having a mobile stylesheet) to more advanced (detecting a mobile browser string and then switching themes). The advantages here is that apart from your programming cost, there isn't much required. With proper styling, you could have it look pretty consistent across platforms. This is probably the easiest and what I'd recommend (revisit how you did the mobile site if you did it one way in the past).
b) Creating your own WSO app
This would allow you to basically do everything that one could do on the site (e.g. sign up, login, post, browse discussions, etc). The problem you're going to run into here is that you're going to have to support three major platforms (apple, android and blackberry). That's a fricking pain in the ass to maintain especially since apple is objective C and android and blackberry are in java. The chances of you finding someone who is good at both are pretty slim (this is based on my hiring experience with candidates in the industry).
You could sell the apps, but let's say you sell the apps at $2 each. Assuming you spend $5k to develop an app PER platform, do you really think you're going to sell 2500 licenses per platform. I'm going to go with.. unlikely.
Oh, by the way, good luck getting Drupal's APIs (how the software communicates with other software) to work nicely by providing clean data.
c) Using a third party app
I'm not familiar with what drupal is offering, but with vbulletin, phpBB and invision, there are third party companies that offer you a free plugin that once enabled, allows users to access a mobile version of your site. Tapatalk is something that I use on another site that just plain rocks. You also benefit from not having to maintain that software.
Hope this helps and feel free to pm if you have any other questions.
hey tyler
a) we did this but I think with all the caching we use for scalability, some people started getting the mobile version on their desktops. We have a stripped down version of the site for phones, we just couldnt get it to consistently pull up on mobile devices and once it started pulling up on desktops I just pulled th plug.
b) yeah, sounds like a nightmare
c) I will dig around drupal.org
Thanks, Patrick
I don't know what you were using as a cache, but squid works well (we use it for vbulletin) for sites that require browser detection.
Having said that, given what you've told me, I'd dump the browser detection completely. Instead, I'd make use of drupal's multisite capabilities to have to instances of drupal pointing to the same database (just point your config file to the same database). Keep wso.com as the main site and then m.wso.com as the mobile site. I've linked to some resources here for serving up mobile skins.
http://drupal.org/node/192183
http://drupal.org/project/mobi
To inform users of the mobile site, have a div in your code that says
'Hey, we have a mobile site at m.wso.com'
Then use stylesheets to hide or show the content (media="screen,print"; div#handheld display:none), (media="handheld"; div#handheld display:block}
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