Boomla
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@Grunnen You're probably not the market he is aiming for.
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Do people still pay for website CMS'? The only ones I've seen that do are people who had proprietary classic ASP sites built years ago by one man companies that change exorbitant annual fees for "licensing". I only see them because those people come to the companies I work for so we can build them new websites without the pointless licensing fees.
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This is one usecase for sure, other times you need all fancy features. You will be able to embed anything. I didn't expect people will find this by now, lots are not explained, all coming.
Have you met @SpectateSwamp ?
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@candlejack1 said in Boomla:
@Grunnen You're probably not the market he is aiming for.
Then who do you think is the market that he is aiming for?
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@zupa If I'd consider buying your software, I'd have at least the following questions:
- Can I make a back-up of the data and restore it?
Yes. In Boomla, everything is a file, which you can connect to via FUSE, SFTP, or use the
boomla posix export
command to export your filesystem. Same goes for restoring, there is also aboomla posix import
command.- What if an exploitable security leak is found?
Right now Boomla is not to be considered secure at all. It's a toy, use it for anything where security is not an issue. It's great for blogs and content websites.
As for the future, same goes as for any other proprietary software. Let me turn this question. What do you expect from me?
- Can we realistically expect to get continued support for a long term and/or is there an easy way to get the data out and adapt the user-written apps to another platform?
An advantage of open-source is that the answer to these questions is generally "yes", because you have the fallback option of doing things yourself or hiring an independent consultant. With closed source, the vendor needs to have convincing answers. Especially for the support thing, big vendors like MS or Oracle have an advantage, simply because they are more likely than a startup to still exist 5 years from now.
As for long term support:
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I started working on Boomla in 2005. It started as a link collection site for my father and it evolved from there. I decided to turn it into a Website OS in 2008. I can't tell you how many times I was told this is not a one man project and I won't be able to build it. This is people's natural first reaction. But I love doing this and I won't quit, period.
The earliest proof I quickly found is 2012, note "Boomla is Windows for websites" in the top right. http://web.archive.org/web/20121107102447/http://dev.boomla.org/
The fact I've been doing this for long should lower your risk. -
If you look at my release log, you can see I was releasing continuously for almost a year. I started releasing exactly to boost your confidence I will be around. Really what I call v0 is v7, its only that the previous ones were only used internally.
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Now I have a part-time job as a consultant that makes me cash-flow positive. I still spend about 80 hours a week on Boomla. As it stands, my runway is infinite.
If that's not enough, you stand by watching and jump on the train once it reached your satisfaction. I would love to know where it stands.
Edited: remove irrelevant stuff.
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Do people still pay for website CMS'? The only ones I've seen that do are people who had proprietary classic ASP sites built years ago by one man companies that change exorbitant annual fees for "licensing". I only see them because those people come to the companies I work for so we can build them new websites without the pointless licensing fees.
I want to make Boomla freemium. In the end, you still need to pay for hosting, I hope to monetize that to support development. If you want to host it on your own server, as it stands you will be able to host 1 website per server for free. I assume not everyone will want to manage their own infrastructure.
Also, I plan to host open source websites for free. That's useful because you will be able to save a website for reference, use offline, collaborate, etc.
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@antiquarian said in Boomla:
This is one usecase for sure, other times you need all fancy features. You will be able to embed anything. I didn't expect people will find this by now, lots are not explained, all coming.
Have you met @SpectateSwamp ?
No, I just landed here, well, today in my timezone. Should I meet him? Can you elaborate?
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No, I just landed here, well, today in my timezone. Should I meet him? Can you elaborate?
Enjoy.
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@antiquarian said in Boomla:
No, I just landed here, well, today in my timezone. Should I meet him? Can you elaborate?
Enjoy.
Care to elaborate? I'm clueless why you are pointing me there. :/
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@zupa What do you think of his approach to software development? I'm curious about your opinion.
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@antiquarian said in Boomla:
@zupa What do you think of his approach to software development? I'm curious about your opinion.
is this a joke?
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@antiquarian said in Boomla:
@zupa What do you think of his approach to software development? I'm curious about your opinion.
is this a joke?
I don't think so. I'm also interested in your opinion.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Boomla:
@antiquarian said in Boomla:
@zupa What do you think of his approach to software development? I'm curious about your opinion.
is this a joke?
I don't think so. I'm also interested in your opinion.
Great, than pls rephrase the question in a form without external dependencies.
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Boomla:
@antiquarian said in Boomla:
@zupa What do you think of his approach to software development? I'm curious about your opinion.
is this a joke?
I don't think so. I'm also interested in your opinion.
Great, than pls rephrase the question in a form without external dependencies.
.... Okay then.
With regards to the following user's opinions of software development, what do you think of their approach to software development?
@SpectateSwamp said in Why is Everybody so clueless on the importance of Desktop Search to the Masses?:
I have been building this Desktop Search since 1999.
The visual basic code is Open Source and the exe is
downloadable.I have been blogging and yapping about search in various
forums. Only to meet with Great resistance.When I can organize my video, music, pictures and text
there isn't another program that I really need. With
Open Source and this Desktop Search the Operating System
becomes irrelevant.It started as a text search, then picture display was added
when we scanned in 5000+ old family album pictures.When a search match was found and the next line, had the path
to a picture. That picture was displayed. It runs manual and
as a screen saver. After a few seconds the caption on the picture
can be displayed or not.Then came VIDEO. With slow motion, Freeze frame with Preset or
Random start points in the video (mpeg2). Similar options were
added for music files (mp3)Video is by far the most exciting part of Search. I can video
in a book and go directly to a given page and play that back
in slow motion. I can video in forum screens.It has other important features any Search should have.
Ie EXTRACT. I do a context search for a particular "Subject:"
in my outmail file to build a mailing list from old emails. Then
I search that file in matching lines only mode; searching for "To:"
and I have all the email addresses in an output file. A little editing
removing duplicates etc and I have a clean list. I duplicate that
info with a cut and paste. resort it. The plug the required info
for my search in front of line 1 and 2 rather quickly.If the Next line is a URL or strictly text, that data can be put in
the clipboard for pasting into a browser or as a search string or for
storing passwords.It can run background copies of itself and has some primitive
navigation capabilities. That could make for a wonderful video
training tool.It has no database and can easily be explained to the common man.
All they need to know about computing is, how to use this program.
(Very Simple, I'll do more training video.)Thanks
Doug AKA Spectate Swamp
See the cluelessness manifested at:
            -30-I think there should be no unreasonable external dependencies now.
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@zupa @SpectateSwamp had or has similar ideas of doing stuff generaly done with a database without a database. He got a lot of criticism for that but stood for this. I'm also curious how similar your views are.
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@zupa @SpectateSwamp had or has similar ideas of doing stuff generaly done with a database without a database. He got a lot of criticism for that but stood for this. I'm also curious how similar your views are.
@antiquarian @clippy @Tsaukpaetra - sorry I can't make sense of his post.
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@zupa To be fair, it's not exactly a well-written, sensical post.
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@pydsigner said in Boomla:
@zupa To be fair, it's not exactly a well-written, sensical post.
is there one?
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@pydsigner said in Boomla:
@zupa To be fair, it's not exactly a well-written, sensical post.
is there one?
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@zupa So, basically, no it is not free for anyone who would actually use it the way you want them to. One website per server for free? Good luck pitching that to web shops/agencies, I can run as many (for example) Wordpress instances as I want on my servers and I don't have to pay them anything. I also get the added bonus of being able to hire people who know Wordpress already, no training required.
So, I would have to pay but your value proposition is.. what, exactly? That it's fast? That isn't a concern anymore. What else you got?
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sorry I can't make sense of his post
Congratulations, you just passed the WTDWTF insanity test.
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@zupa So, basically, no it is not free for anyone who would actually use it the way you want them to. One website per server for free? Good luck pitching that to web shops/agencies, I can run as many (for example) Wordpress instances as I want on my servers and I don't have to pay them anything. I also get the added bonus of being able to hire people who know Wordpress already, no training required.
So, I would have to pay but your value proposition is.. what, exactly? That it's fast? That isn't a concern anymore. What else you got?
Ah I think the answer I gave sounded too decided. Figuring out how to monetize this was so far the smallest problem I had. I wanted to first make the product attractive than worry about monetizing it later. The current license states it's free and I can't take the license back from you. I really wanted to worry about this a bit later.
As you say the most imporant thing for now is to show you what Boomla brings to the table. But I can't just tell, I have to show you, because telling doesn't quite cut it.
In short it saves you time and gives you more power but that sounds meaningless. Soon you will be able to experience from your browser, with very little effort. Let me get to that point first.
If you want to give me a chance to convince you, please subscribe to the mailing list or shoot me a mail to thalter at boomla com and you'll be messaged when the time has come. We are talking few months.
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sorry I can't make sense of his post
Congratulations, you just passed the WTDWTF insanity test.
I wonder what a pass means
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@zupa Your choice of not opensourcing it for now is a sound one. you may get your product in a state where its really good for a niche and get paid for it, for example.
Trying to compete directly with wordpress would be bad.
I think you'll end going to something similar to genexus.
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@zupa Your choice of not opensourcing it for now is a sound one. you may get your product in a state where its really good for a niche and get paid for it, for example.
Trying to compete directly with wordpress would be bad.
I think you'll end going to something similar to genexus.
thx clippy
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@zupa You can't show me how it would save time, or how powerful it is, either. I don't know how you'd sell software to replace something they already know and don't have to pay for, though I'm sure there are salespeople out there who would like to try.
- Saving time (assuming you're talking about developer time here). A developer who is familiar with whatever CMS you're competing against is going to know how to accomplish that task and how long it will take. Now, throw all that away. They're in an unfamiliar system that doesn't resemble anything they've seen before (I will say your idea is unique), how long will it take to learn how to do something as basic as changing the background colour of the site? What about integrating a new payment processor into the membership (assuming this already exists for the sake of discussion) component? And what about the end user, who is probably not at all technical? No time saved there, from what I've seen from your videos so far your system is nowhere near as user friendly as it's competitors.
- More powerful. This is a marketing term that means nothing. In my experience, power usually refers to how easy it is to customize and manage your site. Your product seems to be designed for developers, which in my opinion totally misses the point of a CMS (or site builder, as you say). How does a user update the content on their site? They have to fire up SFTP and edit the file directly. I don't know about you, but I've never worked with a client who would want this workflow. Well they could just pay you to do the updates for them, you say? Some clients are ok with paying for this kind of service, some are not. All popular CMS' provide solutions for both types of client, Boomla currently does not.
It appears to be early days for your product but all in all it doesn't seem like you're attempting to solve any of the problems anyone has with web content management systems. Also, saying "I can't tell you, I can only show you" is a classic salesman tactic that only works on middle managers who would rather be sold on marketing fluff than actual functionality.
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@aapis Think about the old MS Acess applications. It made it very easy to write data entry forms and reports (and everything else harder). A lot of people used it to develop their applications. It was never accepted as a good idea, but there is a market for that. I wonder why it's still so much work to write boring data entry forms in the popular languages.
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I wonder why it's still so much work to write boring data entry forms in the popular languages.
WinForms is as easy or easier than Access, but "real programmers" would never touch it.
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I wonder why it's still so much work to write boring data entry forms in the popular languages.
Our company essentially has a DSL for printed and ui forms (the same one, ugh). 90% of our time is understanding the legal requirements and dealing with the giant static data store.
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@Magus yet, last time someone asked me to do some coding in an interview, they asked me to make data entry forms in asp.net.
It's been many years since I don't do any data entry form.
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@clippy What does something you had to do in an interview have to do with actual work? I've never heard of them being connected in any way before.
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@Magus I saw it 2 times in interviews, and didn't get the job in any of them.
Long duration interviews are very rare in these parts, enough that I decided I would only accept something like this again if I happen to be unemployed.
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@blakeyrat said in Boomla:
I wonder why it's still so much work to write boring data entry forms in the popular languages.
WinForms is as easy or easier than Access, but "real programmers" would never touch it.
I touch it all the time. Maybe just because I haven't had the need to find something else though...
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Boomla:
I touch it all the time.
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@Tsaukpaetra So you say, yet I have this odd sense that you may be wearing your reason right now.
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@Tsaukpaetra So you say, yet I have this odd sense that you may be wearing your reason right now.
I have equipped currently:
- Sky blue (Polo?) shirt, collared
- Khaki pants
- Leather shoes
Inventory currently contains:
- 1 RFID 2 badge, nominal clearance
- 1 RSA hardware token, expiration Jun 2017 [Display: 446111]
- Standard card wallet [Money: 26]
Stats:
- ATK: 16
- DEF: 7
- SATK: 22
- SDEF: 10
- INT: 81
- END: 31
- NRG: 76
- DEX: 6
- WIS: 15
- CHA: 4
- CON: 2
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@Tsaukpaetra said in Boomla:
ATK: 16
DEF: 7
SATK: 22
SDEF: 10
INT: 81
END: 31
NRG: 76
DEX: 6
WIS: 15
CHA: 4
CON: 2Whereas I'm more:
- ATK: 7
- DEF: 10
- SATK: 12
- SDEF: 15
- INT: 90
- END: 73
- NRG: 24
- DEX: -3
- WIS: 20
- CHA: 3
- CON: 22
Some kind of tanky priest?
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@Tsaukpaetra
examine exits
Filed under: I would very much be on-board with an interactive text-based adventure thread.
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Obvious exits are NORTH, SOUTH and DENNIS
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@Tsaukpaetra
examine exits
You Examine the Door.
It appears to be made of metal. There is a separate piece of gray Metal next to the Door. The Door is closed.
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@Magus +1 for Homestar Runner reference; not seen that in a while.
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I would very much be on-board with an interactive text-based adventure thread.
Didn't we have one of those with a DISTURBING PICTURE OF MORBIUSWILTERS?
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@ben_lubar said in Boomla:
DISTURBING PICTURE OF MORBIUSWILTERS
REDUNDANT WORDS!
Shit, I posted the wrong TDWTF text adventure!
https://what.thedailywtf.com/post/203590
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@ben_lubar said in Boomla:
@ben_lubar said in Boomla:
DISTURBING PICTURE OF MORBIUSWILTERS
REDUNDANT WORDS!
Shit, I posted the wrong TDWTF text adventure!
https://what.thedailywtf.com/post/203590OH GOD I DID IT AGAIN
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@ben_lubar said in Boomla:
OH GOD I DID IT AGAIN
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBFWG_I9Yf0&t=1m31s
Edit: Damn, the YT plugin completely ignores the start time in the link.
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Author here, I'm happy to answer any questions. Tibor
One of us. One of us.
Think "Fork me".
We've only just met...