Over the past few months we've been working on a lot of new projects. With each new project, there's a problem presented for a developer: how do I design this thing? Personally, I'm no designer but I can spot good and bad design and I can work with something that's already created. In a word, I can't originate a good design, but I can tweak and tune an existing design template.
I'm always on the lookout for good HTML templates and if you've ever searched for "design templates" or "html templates", you know there's a ton of canned stuff out there and it's pretty much the same on every site because they all re-sell the same set of products. Recently, I found Theme Forest and I have been impressed with the quality of everything I have purchased so far. The design work is top notch as well.
So if you're like me and you don't originate designs, check out Theme Forest and I think you'll agree that they have a good thing going. They also have fair licensing and a specific category for Admin themes which is great for web apps.
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Edit: I'd like to thank everyone for their feedback on this article and at this thread. I am going to give it one more try with the new business model and I'll be sure to post the results of that in the future. Thanks again.
The experience was anti-climactic. Lots of people liked the idea of a
CMS that worked on an existing web site with PHP, ASP.Net or Javascript and no databases, but there were few takers. I tried selling Clover as a subscription service at first for a pretty cheap price, but after 2 months of having only one paying client, I was deeply discouraged and mostly thought of just shutting it down.
But I did have friends and family happily enjoying my web creation so I felt bad about bailing on them. I rallied and ditched my whole plan of marketing to a general audience and focused on small businesses. I built a list of local business owners who have web sites but no CMS or blog (Clover has a blog that plugs into a site right where it is).
After some cold calling and plenty of verbal interest, It quickly became apparent that even small businesses would not get off the wallet when it came to a CMS. Not for lack of features, value or capability, but more for lack of understanding (and the fact that I'm no salesman).
Again, defeated and frustrated with 2 failed attempts at business models that yielded no monetary results, I decided to just make the thing free and see what would happen. From that time to the present I have had many signups and that’s somewhat encouraging, but it still costs me money to host Clover and I've been a little burned on the whole thing.
All the while I’ve known that my product would be great as a white label offering for web designers and developers, but I just haven’t been able to muster the motivation to spend more time on it. As a bootstrapped developer, there are some pretty serious mental hurdles to overcome along the lifecycle of a product.
I have come to place now where, once again, I’m going to rally and try a new business model, maybe the most obvious one of all. The plan is to re-write the administrative interface of Clover (it is a bit lack-luster to begin with), based on a white label model and target designers and developers (among huge copetition). I have had several requests for this, but like I said, it’s tough to muster the motivation to invest more time in something that has yielded so little (but the whole experience has been very valuable, I must say).
So what is the point of all of this rambling? I do in fact have something to offer you, blog reader. I hope so, especially if you are looking to bootstrap a startup. Below are the phases of entering the modern arena; the mental stages of creating a web-based startup on your own (at least from my experience):
Phase One – Romantic Idealism
This is the initial point where two things happen: 1) You realize that you need to do something about this inner longing to create something valuable with the skill you possess and love. 2) An idea comes to mind that you believe (however accurately) you can make real and that people will pay you money for. Most people, at some point in their cubicle dwelling life, have entered this stage, maybe more than once. It means nothing.
Phase Two – Determinism
Few people actually enter this phase. That’s because it’s one thing to come up with an idea and recognize that it would be great to do something you truly enjoy, and another to get off your ass and commit to actually doing it. But, for those who do, this phase is a period of mental preparation; a serious personal commitment to stop watching Lost, put the game console away, close Tweet Deck and plan your endeavor.
Phase Three – Sacrifice
You have entered this phase when you have committed and you are determined. You’ll know you are here when the few times you do open Tweet Deck and see things like “I’m at such and such indie restaurant and the cuisine is great!” you wonder why you’re microwaving another Lean Cuisine. Or when your wife is nodding off as you explain to her why you were up until 2 am in a code trance trying to debug a Javascript error. If you have come this far, you cannot, will not, turn back and make it all for nothing.
Phase Four – Climax
Finally, from idea to reality, the product is done and it’s out there just waiting to be consumed by the masses. Blog posts, press releases, Facebook status, Twitter posts. This is awesome. I did it!
Phase Five – The Sobering
Finally, from idea to reality, the product is done and it’s out there just waiting to be consumed by the masses. Crickets chirping, tumble weeds blowing, radio silence. It’s not quite a failure, but it’s not a success. This is where the down time really hits you and all the doubts you had during the Sacrafice phase are realized. I did it! I didn’t work.
Phase Six – Perseverance
Okay, I worked hard, I’m in the arena, I’m not ready to throw this thing away just yet and I know this product is valuable…to someone. Whom? This is the point where I’m of the opinion to try 3 times and if on the 3rd try, it doesn’t stick, it’s time to move on. At least you (I) got past Phase One.
And so, this is the 3rd try for me and I’m confident that I can at least make Clover Content successful enough to pay for my hosting costs. Is that a success? It is now.
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With the advent of ASP.Net MVC, I think there's been a false dilemma presented in the minds of .Net developers and in the community. Dino Esposito has done good work to spell out the differences to some extent. It seems as though, since this new method of developing web applications has come along, everything has to change and we have to take sides as to whether or not this new method is good or bad. I know because this enmity has occupied my internal monologue for the past few weeks.
The internal quibbling goes like this: “Man, this MVC stuff is nice. I’m going to use it exclusively for all of my future products and swear off all less-capable development practices. Man, ASP.Net MVC so rad.” And then: “Wait, I really wish I had a User Control to do this loop. You mean I have to maintain object state between posts? Man, ASP.Net MVC sucks. I’m not going to use it ever again. Web Forms are more rad.” Of course the reasons aren’t usually as petty as not wanting to write a loop, but you get the idea. And the external conflicts surrounding this new framework don’t sound much different.
First of all, I think it’s important to note that ASP.Net MVC is about 8 years late and there’s nothing new about it. Java developers were using Struts to do web applications with the MVC pattern back in '99, and the ubiquitous Ruby on Rails has been at it for several years. MVC is not new. The framework and the false dilemma are only new to ASP.Net developers.
I tried using ASP.Net MVC on a recent project only to find that, for my particular case, it was too cumbersome and did me no good at all to use the new framework (I do like it and intend to use in the future). But I wanted the SoC and testability that comes with MVC, yet the ease of development that Web Forms offers. The solution: the MVP pattern.
Using the Model View Presenter pattern (passive view in my case)it’s possible to retain the good things that Web Forms has to offer while gaining the advantage of Separation of Concerns and testability inherent to ASP.Net MVC. I think the MVP pattern is the happy medium between Web Forms and MVC. Not to mention, if you should decide to write a SilverLight UI for your application later, you can easily re-use ¾ of your previous work since you only have to write the UI logic in the implementation of your views.
So if you find yourself fighting among yourself when deciding what development method to use, don’t be a sucker for a false dilemma. Choose the framework that works best for your circumstances, but by all means, don’t limit yourself to MVC or Web Forms; consider your new friend: MVP. It’s so rad.
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For a while, Clover Content has had a very limited blog feature. We used to offer a very basic "news list", but now, we have improved the Clover Content blog functionality to include permalinks, pagination, and now DISQUS comments. We are still testing it out, but so far things are going well.
Now our users can link to a specific blog post and allow comments. By using DISQUS for comments, our users can interact with their site users and maintain there comments using the DISQUS admin features. While these features are by all means very basic and expected of a blog, Clover's blog can be implemented by pasting 2 lines of code onto your existing site, unlike other blogs that require a more involved installation and cofiguration process.
We are going to improve the blog functionality even more in the future so keep an eye on this blog for more updates.
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We are very close to launching the full Clover Content product website. It's a long process to actually write all of the copy, record lots of screencast and edit many screenshots. But we're getting there. We are also about to sign up two new websites that will be using Clover in private beta.
The Clover Content website itself uses Clover (kinda weird to say that). This really made setting up the site a breeze. It's using our ASP.Net client library to grab the content out of Clover. It's just more proof to us that Clover really is easy to set up and use. All we had to do was create our pages (aspx), add a .dll, a web reference and drag and drop our controls on the pages where we want our content. The tough part is wrting the content.
In a few weeks, private beta should open up to those who have signed up for our email list.
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Today we are putting the finishing touches on Clover's ASP.Net 2.0 code snippet library. Using this new library, you will be able to access your Clover Content with an ASP.Net 2.0 website. Integration is really easy, especially if you are a developer with Visual Studio or Visual Web Developer (2005 or greater).
Once the ASP.Net library is completed, clients will be able to access Clover Content from a windows server (ASP.Net), a Linux based server (PHP), or no server technolgy at all (Javascript).
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