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Make a good website; try to get graphic and Ux designers on board so it won’t be fugly; then contact people, one at a time, using personalized emails. They’ll a

Make a good website; try to get graphic and Ux designers on board so it won’t be fugly; then contact people, one at a time, using personalized emails. They’ll agree to be on there. Eventually you’ll hit enough of a critical mass that people will start signing themselves up somehow, or asking to be on there. How do you verify? How do you keep spam out? You can figure that out next year or the year after. Then figure out why a person might want to visit your site. Curiosity? Interest in a person? To learn if a foss project is any good? To see who has traction to decide what to contribute to? Something else? Bonus points: a podcast with interviews with various community leaders; or try to encourage a volunteer to do such a thing. And try to get on other pro open source podcasts. I bet companies like purism would love any free publicity they can get Then, I’d you catch on, years from now, look out for Microsoft trying to crush you via some competing index tied to GitHub. Try to avoid the temptation to be acquired by Microsoft. Try to set up your company in a way that convinces foss people that this can never happen, Eg, put some fsf people on the board or something? Lastly, to make the gnu people happy, make your website usable without proprietary JavaScript and consider open sourcing your client and server code. After all, the valuable thing you hold isn’t the site or tech: it’s the network and traction you build

boplicity 3y ago
I'm not sure how much value making something "not fugly" really matters. Design should be based on functionality, not anti-fugliness. In my experience, design considerations should come after building a successful growth "feedback loop." (Or whatever you want to call it.) At that point, you may decide making your website look "polished" isn't even necessary. IMDB was certainly quite ugly for a long time. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20100712165326/http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000352/ https://web.archive.org/web/20100712165326/http://www.imdb.c... Other examples of extremely successful, low design sites: https://archiveofourown.org/ https://archiveofourown.org/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/
- gremlinunderway 3y ago
  >I'm not sure how much value making something "not fugly" really matters. Eh its still good advice. Far too often decent UX/UI criticism is waved aside as "who cares about making it pretty" and aesthetics and useability very often go hand-in-hand.
xianm 3y ago
> How do you verify? How do you keep spam out? An idea for this: you could require them to commit a file to their repo with a specific name and the content would contain a one time use token to add that repo to a users profile.
lelanthran 3y ago
> Make a good website; try to get graphic and Ux designers on board so it won’t be fugly; Get the designers on board, by all means, but not to make it pretty: make it easy to use, understand, navigate. If something needs to be pretty before the target audience uses it, it's almost always a vitamin, not a painkiller.

boplicity 3y ago

I'm not sure how much value making something "not fugly" really matters. Design should be based on functionality, not anti-fugliness. In my experience, design considerations should come after building a successful growth "feedback loop." (Or whatever you want to call it.) At that point, you may decide making your website look "polished" isn't even necessary. IMDB was certainly quite ugly for a long time. See: https://web.archive.org/web/20100712165326/http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000352/ https://web.archive.org/web/20100712165326/http://www.imdb.c... Other examples of extremely successful, low design sites: https://archiveofourown.org/ https://archiveofourown.org/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/

gremlinunderway 3y ago
>I'm not sure how much value making something "not fugly" really matters. Eh its still good advice. Far too often decent UX/UI criticism is waved aside as "who cares about making it pretty" and aesthetics and useability very often go hand-in-hand.

xianm 3y ago

> How do you verify? How do you keep spam out? An idea for this: you could require them to commit a file to their repo with a specific name and the content would contain a one time use token to add that repo to a users profile.

lelanthran 3y ago

> Make a good website; try to get graphic and Ux designers on board so it won’t be fugly; Get the designers on board, by all means, but not to make it pretty: make it easy to use, understand, navigate. If something needs to be pretty before the target audience uses it, it's almost always a vitamin, not a painkiller.