Dirt for Sale: Breaking ground on opengraphs.com

In the past, I have had a tendency to jump right into a project as soon as the initial inspiration for the solution strikes. I’ll register a domain name, try to snag the handles on all the things, crack open a fresh GitHub repo (oh, smells so good), and start letting the code flow—trying to capitalize on that initial rush and dopamine to achieve maximum productivity. Only to then start sputtering out of gas when I’ve realized that I have built a solid utility/tool, but am unsure how to position it and not knowing if anyone–besides myself–would want to use it.

Well, as they say, old habits die hard, but this time I am trying to bottle some of that initial dopamine and share it for others to feed off of, while also fueling myself, which is why I am making an effort to document and share my journey along the way, from the beginning—or at least pretty early—and get this in front of more people to start learning from and sharing what is working and what is not.

I officially broke ground on opengraphs.com just a couple of weeks ago. OpenGraphs is the evolution on a service I had previously built that has generated 3M+ dynamic open graph images for the sites I have integrated. That service served me well, but I was never happy with the name and the stack that I was using ultimately started to become hard to manage and keep stable. That, and I have plans for how to expand beyond just open graph images, and ultimately create a tool that can manage and optimize all the open graph data and images for a site, along with the ability to potentially test and customize data depending on the context links are being shared from.

It's early days and there is only a landing page up right now, but things are in movement behind the scenes. So far, I have setup the following:

• Deployed a simplified version of the dynamic open graph image generation service on two of my sites, ryanhefner.com and https://www.allplay.fm, just to get some initial code deployed to start testing the configuration and slowly start folding in more services.

• Started working on some early tools to offer for free, and use for marketing purposes, while I build out the main service. You can use an early version of the open graph tester here: https://www.opengraphs.com/tools/og-tester

• I also made browser extension version of that tool, which are slowly making their way out to the respective web/add-ons stores. The following have been published and approved.

  • OpenGraphs in Chrome Web Store

  • OpenGraphs in Firefox Browser Add-ons

  • OpenGraphs in Microsoft Edge Add-ons

  • Coming soon to Opera addons

I am currently working on updating the marketing site to start to showcase the tools and browser extensions, along with things like the blog and changelog to start to share information and updates as they roll out. Unlike other projects, I am trying to get ahead of some of the early marketing stuff while the product grows and evolves.

How can I help you? / How can you help me?

With all that said, in order for me to see if this service will help anyone I need to know more about what people are currently using, and whether or not they feel their current setup works for them, and if anything could be better. So, if you wouldn't mind, I would love to hear your general thoughts, along with responses to the following questions so that I can get a better gauge of where people are at and how I can position the product to be able to help more people.

• Are you currently using anything to dynamically generate the open graph images/data for your site(s)? If so, which ones?

• Do you currently use a CMS to manage the content on your site(s)? If so, which ones?

• What frameworks are you using to build your sites?

• Are there any concerns or opportunities I should be aware of?

I hope this can be the start to some good conversations where we can all learn from and apply to our projects to make them a success. What are you working on!?