5 ms·

I'm a bit lost, even after trying the demo I can't understand why this should be better than, say, Discourse. Your implementation is probably not based on Ruby

I'm a bit lost, even after trying the demo I can't understand why this should be better than, say, Discourse. Your implementation is probably not based on Ruby - which makes it more interesting - but it's not open source. In terms of features, they don't seem to compare at all as this is really early stage. The idea behind the project is good, and I think this is the future. I successfully pushed the company I work for to use internally a Discourse instance to overcome the same issues you faced - and it works. We now have an "internal StackOverflow" and an engaging community. It's not a new concept (see Google's YAQS), but it's a (IMHO) working one that many more companies should adopt as it really increases knowledge sharing and productivity! Best of luck with your project, I think you're on the right path but you should definitely start comparing this to Discourse and define why should anyone get this - and why must it be SaaS (some big companies are against SaaS for their stuff).

Operyl 3y ago
Best I can tell, it is indeed Ruby on Rails. > <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://delivery.booklet.group/rails/active_storage/representations/proxy/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBb3dDIiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2lkIn19--e12c37d428fc0d7eeb20fdde67e0ae72123c31cd/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaDdCem9MWm05eWJXRjBTU0lJY0c1bkJqb0dSVlE2RTNKbGMybDZaVjkwYjE5bWFXeHNXd2hwQWlBRGFRSWdBM3NHT2dsamNtOXdTU0lPWVhSMFpXNTBhVzl1QmpzR1ZBPT0iLCJleHAiOm51bGwsInB1ciI6InZhcmlhdGlvbiJ9fQ==--92e70f514bfc8ee11235d0d8cf6b26c7a717e4cd/icon.png https://delivery.booklet.group/rails/active_storage/represen...">
- denysvitali 3y ago
  Wow, okay, then it has no advantage over Discourse as of now (:
  - philip1209 3y ago
    One difference is that you can set up a Booklet entirely for free, without a server or paid subscription! Also, it doesn't use Ember.js, which is another plus in my book.
    - Operyl 3y ago
      You’re talking to a community that hates discord and more because they don’t own it. They’re afraid of enshitification of platforms they have no control over. You’ll win people over with self hosting, not promises of free or managed here.
      - denysvitali 3y ago
        It's not only about people, but some (big) companies are more keen to have stuff on-prem than as SaaS
- philip1209 3y ago
  Yes, it's Ruby on Rails! I'm using Hotwired on the frontend, which has been great for making discussions real-time while minimizing complexity. I'm hosting on Fly.io - I had used Render for a prior product (https://postcard.page https://postcard.page), and found Render slow. Fly lets me set up multiple data centers, and they have an elegant little Ruby gem [1] to enable multi-region support on Rails without much fuss. [1] https://github.com/superfly/fly-ruby https://github.com/superfly/fly-ruby
  - alexwbi 3y ago
    Hey Philip! I'm a PM at Render. Sorry to hear about the slowness. I'd love to learn more -- my DMs are open.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - philip1209 3y ago
      I sent a response, but - the short of it is that Cloudflare + Render's proxy + lack of distributed backends was adding hundreds of seconds of latency. We use a separate asset CDN and rate limiting, and wanted to turn off Cloudflare - but couldn't on Render. Also, the custom domain pricing on Render is fairly high - probably due to the Cloudflare custom domain licenses.
philip1209 3y ago
> I'm a bit lost, even after trying the demo I can't understand why this should be better than, say, Discourse. That's a valid question - I'm pushing to launch at the "minimum viable" stage. But, I plan to mature Booklet into more of a managed service, intended for invite-only networks and internal company discussions. Discourse is a great product. However, I know of a couple very large companies that started to use Discourse and even went as far as paying design firms to customize it, only to back out due to challenges. I think a lot of the complexity of Discourse comes from its reputation system - which is designed to prevent spam. But, for an internal company use case - those tools are not useful, and become annoying. Even if there's a way to turn them off, I think it gives the software a clunky feel. There's something elegant about an "omakase" approach, where companies can use it out of the box.
- chillbill 3y ago
  [dead]
- gremlinsinc 3y ago
  you should think about trying to build this using the WordPress model, though that might work better in JavaScript, or PHP as those are more supported on cheap bluehost servers, you'd want self hostable to be one click install. you could have hosted instances and freemium plugins with paid upgrades for monetization.
tm-guimaraes 3y ago
For corporate use I actually suggest Twist (twist.com) From the makers of todoist, they made a comms tool for their async remote workflow and then made a SaaS out of it.
- philip1209 3y ago
  I've used Twist, and I've had friends use it in their companies. I know of nobody that continues to use it today. In my experience, Twist doesn't get notifications or channels quite right. I haven't used it recently, but I think it was easy to miss discussions. I'm attempting to solve this issue in Booklet by building a deep email integration. I've talked a lot about the summary email. But, one little feature I haven't discussed much is the following mechanism on threads. When subscribed to a thread, all replies trigger emails, and the emails thread in your inbox like a Google Group. (Post via email is on my to-do list, too). My vision is that people can continue to use Booklet from their email (and, perhaps other tools in the future) without needing to log in to the app.

Operyl 3y ago

Best I can tell, it is indeed Ruby on Rails. > <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://delivery.booklet.group/rails/active_storage/representations/proxy/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBb3dDIiwiZXhwIjpudWxsLCJwdXIiOiJibG9iX2lkIn19--e12c37d428fc0d7eeb20fdde67e0ae72123c31cd/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaDdCem9MWm05eWJXRjBTU0lJY0c1bkJqb0dSVlE2RTNKbGMybDZaVjkwYjE5bWFXeHNXd2hwQWlBRGFRSWdBM3NHT2dsamNtOXdTU0lPWVhSMFpXNTBhVzl1QmpzR1ZBPT0iLCJleHAiOm51bGwsInB1ciI6InZhcmlhdGlvbiJ9fQ==--92e70f514bfc8ee11235d0d8cf6b26c7a717e4cd/icon.png https://delivery.booklet.group/rails/active_storage/represen...">

denysvitali 3y ago
Wow, okay, then it has no advantage over Discourse as of now (:
- philip1209 3y ago
  One difference is that you can set up a Booklet entirely for free, without a server or paid subscription! Also, it doesn't use Ember.js, which is another plus in my book.
  - Operyl 3y ago
    You’re talking to a community that hates discord and more because they don’t own it. They’re afraid of enshitification of platforms they have no control over. You’ll win people over with self hosting, not promises of free or managed here.
    - denysvitali 3y ago
      It's not only about people, but some (big) companies are more keen to have stuff on-prem than as SaaS
philip1209 3y ago
Yes, it's Ruby on Rails! I'm using Hotwired on the frontend, which has been great for making discussions real-time while minimizing complexity. I'm hosting on Fly.io - I had used Render for a prior product (https://postcard.page https://postcard.page), and found Render slow. Fly lets me set up multiple data centers, and they have an elegant little Ruby gem [1] to enable multi-region support on Rails without much fuss. [1] https://github.com/superfly/fly-ruby https://github.com/superfly/fly-ruby
- alexwbi 3y ago
  Hey Philip! I'm a PM at Render. Sorry to hear about the slowness. I'd love to learn more -- my DMs are open.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - philip1209 3y ago
    I sent a response, but - the short of it is that Cloudflare + Render's proxy + lack of distributed backends was adding hundreds of seconds of latency. We use a separate asset CDN and rate limiting, and wanted to turn off Cloudflare - but couldn't on Render. Also, the custom domain pricing on Render is fairly high - probably due to the Cloudflare custom domain licenses.

philip1209 3y ago

> I'm a bit lost, even after trying the demo I can't understand why this should be better than, say, Discourse. That's a valid question - I'm pushing to launch at the "minimum viable" stage. But, I plan to mature Booklet into more of a managed service, intended for invite-only networks and internal company discussions. Discourse is a great product. However, I know of a couple very large companies that started to use Discourse and even went as far as paying design firms to customize it, only to back out due to challenges. I think a lot of the complexity of Discourse comes from its reputation system - which is designed to prevent spam. But, for an internal company use case - those tools are not useful, and become annoying. Even if there's a way to turn them off, I think it gives the software a clunky feel. There's something elegant about an "omakase" approach, where companies can use it out of the box.

chillbill 3y ago
[dead]
gremlinsinc 3y ago
you should think about trying to build this using the WordPress model, though that might work better in JavaScript, or PHP as those are more supported on cheap bluehost servers, you'd want self hostable to be one click install. you could have hosted instances and freemium plugins with paid upgrades for monetization.

tm-guimaraes 3y ago

For corporate use I actually suggest Twist (twist.com) From the makers of todoist, they made a comms tool for their async remote workflow and then made a SaaS out of it.

philip1209 3y ago
I've used Twist, and I've had friends use it in their companies. I know of nobody that continues to use it today. In my experience, Twist doesn't get notifications or channels quite right. I haven't used it recently, but I think it was easy to miss discussions. I'm attempting to solve this issue in Booklet by building a deep email integration. I've talked a lot about the summary email. But, one little feature I haven't discussed much is the following mechanism on threads. When subscribed to a thread, all replies trigger emails, and the emails thread in your inbox like a Google Group. (Post via email is on my to-do list, too). My vision is that people can continue to use Booklet from their email (and, perhaps other tools in the future) without needing to log in to the app.