Looking for help for Bloxtor: A Free Open-Source Web App Framework
github.com
github.com
> you cannot redistribute the source code or the software
I’m excited to announce my latest project, *Bloxtor*—a free and open-source web app framework designed for No-Coders, Low-Coders, and Coders alike.
### What is Bloxtor? Bloxtor simplifies web development by transforming code into visual environments and vice versa. It aims to make development more accessible to everyone, regardless of their technical background.
### Why I’m Reaching Out As I continue to develop Bloxtor, I’m seeking feedback and contributions from the community. Here are some specific areas where I’d love your insights: - *User Experience*: What features do you think are essential for a web app framework? - *Testing and Feedback*: What are the best practices for gathering user feedback while testing? - *Feature Development*: What additional functionalities would enhance the framework?
You can check out the project and contribute on GitHub: [Bloxtor GitHub Repository](https://github.com/a19836/bloxtor).
I’m looking forward to your thoughts and suggestions. Thank you for your support!
The guy has obviously put in a lot of work into an open source project.
Markdown is easily parsed by the crowd on HN, and adds clarity even if the HN MD engine is unable to reflect the intention.
If for some reason that is hard for you to handle his markup, you can comment on it without negativity.
They are asking for contributors for their commercial project and couldn't even format that ask properly.
That is independent the fact that his comment used non-parsed Markdown.
Negativity about his claim that the software is "a free and open-source web app framework" would have been acceptable, but IMO your factual comment "FYI: Not open-source:" did the job even better.
The hard part at this point is getting users to adopt your product, so focus on that. The challenge of getting users to adopt a product like this isn't being cheap or buzzword compliant, it's demonstrating that if they invest enough time to learn your product, it will be able to do the specific things they need to do. The potential user's time investment is the biggest cost they are considering when deciding which low-code/no-code product to adopt. If they invest time in a product that can't do what they need, 100% of their time learning to use that system and trying to build their app is wasted
Your non-GitHub website is mostly a content-free zone, full of generic discussion of the benefits of low-code/no-code. There aren't even any screenshots I could find. The GitHub readme has more details and screenshots, but again it's mostly generic virtues of good low-code/no-code with some intriguing screenshots buried deep in a very long page, with no answers to "how do I make an app that does X with this?"
Walk visitors through how to create a basic multi-user todo list task tracking app, with a database, integrated into a multi-user sign in and auth setup, back up the database, and then perform a database migration to add a field or table to the database. That hello-world example will show visitors the details of how your app works, what it can and can't do, and whether it will work for their needs.
Communicating what a new product does is as hard or harder than making the product in the first place. Writing more code doesn't solve the communicating/marketing/advertising problem. That human-facing piece needs real, focused work with as much attention to detail as the code receives.
If devs choose to submit PRs to your product, they will do so after first trying to adopt your product as end users, so even if your goal is getting more devs involved, you still want to focus on communicating to end users the details they need to know to decide whether your specific product will solve their specific low-code/no-code needs.
You've picked a very difficult row to hoe. Low-code and no-code are difficult markets to crack. The incumbents have such a head start and devs are a little suspicious. Salesforce is the biggie for this sort of stuff (nobody gets fired for buying SFDC) and there are many, many others. It'll be tough to make money, if that's what you want to do. If you're doing it for passion, I wish you the best.