Need alpha users: Make your own Product Hunt, Hacker News, or vote-based community. No coding needed
TL;DR: I'm looking for alpha testers to try out a new tool that lets anyone build their own Product Hunt, Hacker News, or any vote-based community -- no coding required. If you're interested, click this link, sign up with your email, and we'll reach out once our MVP is ready: http://www.caasify.com/
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Hey everyone -
My buddy and I are working on a side project that will allow anyone to make their own Product Hunt, Hacker News, or any other community that surfaces content with an engagement-based algorithm. Our big differentiator is that you won't have to write any code to get started, and you can create your community in just a few clicks. Think of it like a Shopify or Squarespace but for an upvote-type community.
We're looking for alpha testers to try it out so if you're an influencer, community owner, interested in trying out new tools, or someone who always wanted to make a community like Indie Hackers but don't know how to code, then sign up here (http://www.caasify.com/) with your email. Once we're ready, we'll reach out with a link for you to make your own community.
A few things you'll be able to do with our tool:
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Make a community like Product Hunt or Hacker News without writing any code
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Customize the look and feel with pre-built themes and then customize things further with easy dropdowns to change colors and fonts
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Decide whether ads show up so you can make money from your community or hide ads completely for an ad-free experience
We hope this solves a need for some of you, and if you have any feedback on things you'd like to see in a tool like this, reply back and we'll respond!
Absolutely great product
No way - we literally just finished building this from scratch, https://ideasareworthless.io/ and could have it done it within your system.
Crazy timing and awesome work Leo! We'd love for you to sign up to try us out when we're ready and see if switching to our platform is easier than running your own stack.
In the meantime, I'll head to PH and give you an upvote. Best of luck!
Thanks! I'll give it a try.
How is this different to the many product hunt clone WP themes out there?
Great question! First, our product doesn't use Wordpress at all. It's completely written from the ground up with React and Rails and purpose-built to be the backend for scalable, vote-based communities. This means the front end takes advantage of a lot of modern engineering features that React provides (e.g. states, fast loading, etc.)
Second, our goal is to provide a variety of pre-built themes so that ou can easily change the design from looking like PH to Hacker News immediately. These are almost done, but in the future, we want to have even more themes (think image-based or video communities).
Lastly, we've built an admin panel that's intended for engineers and non-engineers to use. Similar to how Shopify and Squarespace make it super easy for you to update and manage your store or site, we're building that but with a community-focused lens.
Hope that clears things up! And we hope to see you on our alpha list!
Thanks for the reply, and I’m already on your list 🤘
I like this concept a lot.
If you are a developer, can you customise? Or is it your themes or GTFO?
Sweet! For MVP, you won't be able to customize, but we 100% want to allow developers and designers to make custom components in the future. We also have an idea of allowing devs and designers to sell components kind of like an Etsy but for your components.
Cool. I like this. Already have a plan for it.
Ps. I already bought one of those WP clone themes. It’s horrific. I’ll now put that in the bin and chalk that financial loss up to experience.
The component marketplace (etsy style) is a cool idea.
F**k yes - Signed up!
Sweet! We'll be in touch when we launch. Excited to have you as an alpha tester!
Interested.
Thanks! We hope to send out our invite emails soon!
Looks and sounds cool, signed up!
Hey Chris! I've been looking looking for a solution to this problem! Thanks so much!
Somebody knows what algorithm or formula is behind the ranking system?
Nice. Just registered. I tried building a booze community using WP templates in the past but I ran out of steam. I'd love to see if yours can make it a little easier to manage and maintain.
What will be the pricing ? and will it be possible to use another language "RTL" ?
Can we have https please?
This is absolutely critical for SEO.
Just noticed there is a typo in your logo
Nice man! signed up! This is actually what I need ;)))
Excellent! It's super validating to know people need this!
please sent me the demo or update in the first place, I really need to see what I could do with your product!! btw I built a kitty's photo & video sharing site yesterday in 1 hour, many friends very like this. maybe you could give me some insight on this, keep fighting!
http://meowww.carrd.co/
Signed up! I was wondering if there was a tool like this, just a couple of days ago
Thanks, Juan!
Can you elaborate on the ads feature?
And will there be some sort of integrated email system in the admin panel so the owner can send mass emails to the community easily?
Yeah definitely!
As of right now, our plan is to allow you to enter your Google Adsense information (client and slot) and then we'll serve up ads in your chosen theme based with your supplied Adsense info. From there, you'll be paid out by Google Adsense. Longer term, we have some ideas on better ads, but those are down the road ;)
And yes, one big pain when I was making my community was having to code a weekly digest email in MailChimp and then send it out. Our plan is to allow you to send weekly or daily email updates right in the tool. This may not be available during the alpha period, but it's on the roadmap because I personally would love it haha
This is cool - as others have said, I hope that there is some customization for designers/developers in the future. I am looking forward to watching it grow!
I don't have a need for it now, but I may in the near future. Keep it up!
Thanks for the kind words! We definitely want to allow designers and developers to add components. We'll move that higher up on our list based on all the feedback. Thanks again!
Just subscribed. Awesome idea!
Thanks! Excited to share it with you soon.
If you haven't already, you might want to check out Telescope:
https://www.producthunt.com/posts/telescope-2
I believe it's very similar to what you're building. It seems like their product ultimately didn't work out, even though it got a lot of traction when they launched. Try digging deeper to learn what went wrong and hopefully you can avoid making the same mistakes.
Good luck!
Yeah, I'm actually very familiar with Telescope. In fact, I used Sasha's stack to learn how to program and spoke with him directly when I had troubles programming.
What differentiates us a bit is that we don't want you to have to write any code. With Telescope, you still need to clone their repo to start making changes. Our belief is that anyone, anywhere should be able to make a community -- no engineering needed. Hopefully, that strikes a chord with some people, and we can grow.
Thanks for feedback, and we hope you signed up so we can email you when we launch.
Isn't the big benefit of HN, PH the existing audience? What's the value in creating your own, unless there's significant difference between the HN/PH audience, and the one you're targeting?
Our hope is that there are more people like /u/Leo below who code up their own communities to satisfy a niche or passion. Personally, I learned how to code so I could build a community for career help, but I realized that my expertise was on salary negotiation and career advice rather than coding. But, if I wanted to make a community for career help, I had to learn how to code.
My co-founder and I thought this was a pretty silly idea to make people learn to code to make and own an online community so there might be other people who would want to make communities, but they didn't have the time to learn how to code. So we thought, "well, let's make it and see what happens."
The other thing we want to also allow community owners to do is make income from their communities. You could make a Subreddit or a FB Group, but they don't share their millions in ad revenue with you. We think that sucks too. So with our tool, you can decide to show ads if you want and finally make money off of your content and community.
Please check your subscribe button. Nothing happens after clicking on it
Uh oh! That's weird. I just tried it myself and after you click "Submit" it should say "Thank you for subscribing!" underneath the text form. Let me know if it's still misbehaving!
Wow. Still not working. The first button is ' subscribe' not 'submit'
When I input the email and click on 'subscribe' nothing happens. I'm using a phone though
Sorry about that! You're right that it's 'Submit'. And that's really strange. I just tested signing up on my iPhone using Chrome and Safari and they both work. Could you let us know what phone and browser you're using? It might be something not triggering with the MailChimp javascript.
Phone is techno L8.
Browser is called brave.
If you tested it on other phones and its working fine, then I will also test on another phone. And probably my laptop
Hi Chris.
Can I get the source code of my community once its done.?
Good question! Because our platform is a SaaS similar to Shopify or Squarespace, you won't be able to extract your code, but we do plan to allow you to take all of your user, post, and comment data with you if you're not happy.
No problem. Just wanted to find out.
This comment was deleted 2 months ago.