DroidAfterMarket [FEEDBACK REQUESTED]

[mrdroid]

So far I've received no interest from developers though... so the idea may die before it gets started.

[Se7enLC]

It's a good idea, but it's going to take a lot more than a domain-name and a static HTML page to do it. Not to be negative, but you effectively drew a picture of a car and asked people to test drive it - despite the fact that the car has no engine or interior - just a coat of paint.

The key here is the static HTML pages. You really need some kind of dynamic generation there. Probably a backend database, user accounts, etc.

Trying to do it from scratch might be a lot more work than it's worth. I would recommend looking into CMS (Content Management System). There are a number of different free versions of this, and they can generally be easily modified to look and work however you want. I recommend Drupal - I've worked with a few packages in the past, and Drupal seems to have the most active community which means that you will have a lot of help from other developers and a lot of options for modules. There is probably already a set of themes and modules specifically tailored to mobile browsers and software downloads.

Good luck! I like the idea of an alternative market, but I think it already exists. Check out SlideMe and the SlideMe Application Manager (SAM)

[mrdroid]

It's a good idea, but it's going to take a lot more than a domain-name and a static HTML page to do it. Not to be negative, but you effectively drew a picture of a car and asked people to test drive it - despite the fact that the car has no engine or interior - just a coat of paint.

The key here is the static HTML pages. You really need some kind of dynamic generation there. Probably a backend database, user accounts, etc.

Trying to do it from scratch might be a lot more work than it's worth. I would recommend looking into CMS (Content Management System). There are a number of different free versions of this, and they can generally be easily modified to look and work however you want. I recommend Drupal - I've worked with a few packages in the past, and Drupal seems to have the most active community which means that you will have a lot of help from other developers and a lot of options for modules. There is probably already a set of themes and modules specifically tailored to mobile browsers and software downloads.

Good luck! I like the idea of an alternative market, but I think it already exists. Check out SlideMe and the SlideMe Application Manager (SAM)

I honestly think that defeats the whole purpose. The intent isn't to make a pretty site. Who cares what it looks like. The intent is to make it as easy, fast and reliable as possible to provide non-dead non-spammed links to the downloads.

There is no reason to add any type of CMS when all you need a file drop. Everything else is bloated overkill that just takes longer to load on mobile.

SlideMe is a perfect example of not being user friendly, and just adding to the pain.

[Se7enLC]

I honestly think that defeats the whole purpose. The intent isn't to make a pretty site. Who cares what it looks like. The intent is to make it as easy, fast and reliable as possible to provide non-dead non-spammed links to the downloads.

There is no reason to add any type of CMS when all you need a file drop. Everything else is bloated overkill that just takes longer to load on mobile.

I beg to differ. The CMS isn't to make it look pretty - it's to make it WORK pretty. You can always make it look just as ugly as you want to :-P (Just as plain and mobile-friendly). And it won't load any slower than a static page, especially since the pipe is the limiting factor on a mobile device. The CMS would generate the page from a database on the first load, and every subsequent load would be from a cached copy (server side).

You really (at the very least) need a file-upload function and a place to type in the description and some meta-data. You want to make it easy to add files and update descriptions. If somebody has to FTP upload a file to a particular location, make note of the filename, and manually download, edit, and re-upload a large HTML page to add it in the right spot with a description and the appropriate meta data, it's just going to be a real pain. People just don't edit raw HTML anymore anywhere (which I think is a Good Thing). It will get messy, you'll end up with old copies of the HTML, long changelogs in the file description sections of the page, and eventually somebody will break the formatting or erase the wrong part of the page.

A static page would work for things that aren't changing much, and only one person has access to update it. If only one person has the ability to change it, it's just not going to scale well. That person will fall behind or not make changes as quickly and the site will become a less reliable resource.

A compromise might be to make the site run a wiki software like wikimedia. wikimedia is very mobile-friendly, as well as being user-editable friendly. It's not great for file uploads, though, as you'd still need to manually add the file to a list.

Another good example of why static pages are bad - search. With a static page, there's no way to search for the file you want, no way to order files by date, alphabetically, by popularity, or otherwise. (Perhaps with a nasty mess of javascript, but at that point, why not do it right?) If this site is going to be hosting themes or wallpapers, having thumbnails and number-of-download counters will be pretty much vital to functionality. Take a look at other theme/skinning sites to see what I mean. You have to be able to easily separate the wheat from the chaff.

If you don't want to use a CMS, you could home-roll a quick little php or perl solution that just displays all the files in a directory and uses an sqlite or even a flat-file database to tag categories and add descriptions, authors, version numbers, etc. I would be really surprised if this didn't already exist in a CMS, though.

If you REALLY just want a file drop - just get rid of the static HTML altogether and just use the automatic directory indexing in your web server. No joke - Use directories and filenames to handle the organization, add header and footer html to get other content on the page.

You can even fancy it up (a little):
mod_autoindex - Apache HTTP Server

SlideMe is a perfect example of not being user friendly, and just adding to the pain.

It's not a GREAT example, it's just AN example of an alternative market. The app is ugly because of a bug in Android 2.0 software and how it scales the "rating stars" widget.

[mrdroid]

I see what you're saying. I just disagree. I've been using the site to download files to my mobile and I honestly have never used anything easier. The lack of bulk on the site makes the site load instantly like it's running right on my phone. I add any component to the site even as simple as some php script and you already begin to see wait times. The links are easily navigated with touch with a couple simple clicks. It really couldn't be any easier.

I do agree that it would be nice to have an interface for devs to upload files. But if they just name the most current zip file the same, then all they need to do is upload the file and done.

[Se7enLC]

I see what you're saying. I just disagree. I've been using the site to download files to my mobile and I honestly have never used anything easier. The lack of bulk on the site makes the site load instantly like it's running right on my phone. I add any component to the site even as simple as some php script and you already begin to see wait times. The links are easily navigated with touch with a couple simple clicks. It really couldn't be any easier.

The lack of bulk and simplicity of navigation on a site really doesn't have anything to do with whether it's static or dynamic. A php or perl script could generate and cache that exact page and you wouldn't know the difference from the client side apart from maybe the URL. It's true that a lot of dynamic sites ARE slow, but it's not the backend that's to blame - it's the dynamic content that is different every time you load the page - things that can't be cached. It's also the large amount of content per-page. Obviously the content can be changed to be much slimmer in a mobile version of a page.

What about having a static page that is dynamically generated? That meets all your requirements, but doesn't involve manually editing an HTML page. Each file could have a small text description file associated with it, and you'd have a script that took all the files and descriptions and generated HTML pages out of them. It could do the pagination, alphabetization, categorization, etc for you on the backend, and just generate the static html pages to serve. It would only do the generation when you ran the script manually (or via crontab).

I mean, this is basically EXACTLY what I was saying, except now the cache-generation is done manually instead of on page request, but you can see what I mean.

Preferring manually-edited html pages over dynamic makes it sound like you don't know php or perl well enough to code it up. There are probably lots of people who could help, and some of the CMS pages require very minimal or no coding at all. (I saw a drupal mobile conversion that had exact line-for-line changes that were needed - pretty simple looking). I can't imagine wanting to copy/paste blocks of HTML code over and over again when even a terrible for-loop in perl could do it for me. Not to mention the major hassle if you ever want to change the look of the site and have to re-do all of it manually for each file.

But if they just name the most current zip file the same, then all they need to do is upload the file and done.

That seems like a bad idea. I already have at least a half-dozen files named "update.zip" on my phone that I can't identify. Putting the version number in the name is kind of really important, especially if you aren't in control of the distribution - somebody going to your site to get the latest rom from pete wants to know if you have the one released today or the one released last week, and if the filename is "buglessbeast.zip", they aren't going to be able to tell.

Also - plenty of people don't want the latest version of something. The newest one might be more beta or have different options than a previous one, so they would prefer to go back to the "Stable" version.

In either case, good luck with the site, and I hope I provided some useful feedback.

[mrdroid]

You've definitely provided useful feedback and that's what I'm looking for. Everyone has so far. Just wish there were more people with interest.

As I said earlier in the thread though I do plan on building out a more well designed site like you're describing. But I envisioned that as being more for PC browsing where you can see thumbnails, descriptions and whatever else may be added. For this portion of the site though it's intent was really to remove the need for these other hosting sites that make you wait 30 seconds, or blast NSFW spam/pop-ups all over your screen. These static pages would basically provide the dev with a quick place to upload their files and the users a quick and easy download to a valid no hassle link.

I'm almost trying to build this in 3 stages with this simplistic linking being stage 1. An online full blown after market as stage 2, and an Android App as stage 3.

Additionally, I'll definitely need some help with building the site in stage 2 and I hope to have enough people on-board that there will be people involved at that point able to write the app. I'm no coder. I'm a server/hardware guy just trying to fill a gap I myself found needed to be filled.

[Se7enLC]

For this portion of the site though it's intent was really to remove the need for these other hosting sites that make you wait 30 seconds, or blast NSFW spam/pop-ups all over your screen. These static pages would basically provide the dev with a quick place to upload their files and the users a quick and easy download to a valid no hassle link.

OH!

Well if you're just trying to get rid of those free file-hosting-sites, a plain-old FTP or HTTP server is all you really need. Find a dev that is hosting their files on those types of sites and send them a message and say "hey, I'll host your files for you if you want". Give them a directory and a login so they can do their own uploading. They can just hotlink to your site from forum posts like they already do with those free-download sites. The forum posts seem to do a good job of giving them an easy way to post updates, changelogs, screenshots, etc.

The reason they use those free upload sites is because they offer much faster downloads and less total-capacity limitations than the non-ad-infested sites, and they cost no money. But if you're volunteering to put that kind of traffic on your host with no annoying ads, that's good stuff!

Once you've got devs used to uploading files to you, you can start working on giving them a place to post changelogs, etc, and gradually work up to being a full-fledged site.

I didn't realize that your primary goal here was to fund developers hosting fees, that's a pretty noble goal.

[mrdroid]

Yea, that's essentially the initial goal. The unknown for me though is the total bandwidth capacity. I've never tested a real high volume of download traffic from this host. It's a shared unlimited data, unlimited bandwidth hosting site through GoDaddy which I have already paid a long term contract for but no longer use.... so I'm using this as an opportunity to put it to good use as well as hopefully kick off a project that would end up benefiting the community as well as be a good learning experience for me.

But yea, I'll probably have to end up going to each dev individually at first.

[ChevyNo1]

mrdroid, just got your PM ... I think this is a good idea and I would be interested in it.

I also am leaning in the direction of very simple, one or two clicks to get what you need. Even the built-in directory and listing structure would be just fine I think.