FlowNote

Ok, ok, this is 1500 "signups", aka, 1500 users exist in the database. But I'm pretty sure a majority of those are bots. Recently I just added reCaptcha to the signup page with the hope of reigning the number of false signups. But it's encouraging nonetheless!

I've been adding a lot of new features the past couple of months too. I upgraded from Rails 5 to 6, I added ElasticSearch to make it easier to find content from Notes, I have updated to the newest version of the Primer design system, I added reCaptcha to the signup page, I added a bunch of keyboard shortcuts to the application to improve navigation and editing, added a shortcut to make creating new Notes from your most common Workflows quicker, and I've also revamped the landing page.

This past week, FlowNote surpassed its 250th user signup. While this isn't huge traffic and the growth of signups has clearly been much slower this past month, its still pretty awesome to see so many people trying out my product. I currently build FlowNote as a tool to help me stay organized at work and at home and I like being able to share what I've created with other people.

FlowNote is a simple personal project management and documentation tool, if you're looking for a way to stay organized, I'd recommend trying it out. It's totally free!

I have been mulling over adding an autosave feature for a while now, I had looked at a few options and tested a few but wasn't quite satisfied with the results. After accidentally swiping back in Safari while editing a note and losing my work, I decided I needed to take another stab at it.

The new autosave feature works like most in that it detects any changes and then posts to the web server after a short period after you finish typing. This way it doesn't spam the backend with save requests with the possibility of race conditions. I also found that Rails forms has a handy AJAX feature that makes it simple to use your existing forms triggered with Javascript. While I spent a good couple hours fiddling with the UX of the feature, the amount of code needed was minimal, about 12-15 lines being the meat of the feature. Its simple things like this why I remember I love developing with Rails.

As of today, I've had a total of 175 signups on FlowNote! The biggest infusion of new users has come from launching on Product Hunt last week.

Currently the app is free which I believe has led to a low barrier of entry to try the product. I think this has helped to fuel the amount of signups I've seen thus far. However, most users seem to be signing up, playing around with the app, and not returning.

FlowNote was officially launched on Product Hunt! This is the first time I've put this project out into the world to be used by complete strangers. Previous to this launch, I had only sent links out to friends and co-workers, so this is a big step for me.

This is officially the first time I've launched a product (on my own) that I put out for the public to try. So far, my $7 Heroku instance seems to be holding up to the load.