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I'm going to pin this post to the top of my profile so there's a place for anyone to publicly ask me a question, and I'll do my best to reply when I can.
I'm happy to offer advice primarily on the intersection of software, entrepreneurship and career.
Happy coding!
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Discussion (56)
How did you grow enough of a following to launch a social network? Any advice for someone who wants to do the same?
Yes, can you please give us advice about how to grow an audience as a dev?
I made a promise to myself that I wouldn't stop working on the project for 10 years, even if traction took forever. Then I methodically worked on content creation and observing what stuck and could lead to further opportunities. It was years of growing on Twitter before even typing
rails newfor what became DEV.Giving myself the room to do a lot of observing while methodically building helped ensure some amount of success. But it's also an area that combines several different skillsets of mine.
FWIW it's going to be way easier for folks to build from scratch on Forem (the extraction from DEV we're working hard on).... We'll soon launch a Forem app which will act as a discovery mechanism for independent Forem social networks hosted in a distributed way, but discoverable through one app.... It's going to be really really cool.
You must have had exceptional belief in DEV community then
Thanks for answering!
I had belief in my own interest in seeing an improvement in online communities. My sense was that I wouldn't get bored of trying to help because I really cared. So with that in mind I also promised myself I wouldn't give up.
In prior ventures I'd either gotten bored or given up primarily because I either didn't truly care about the mission deep down, or got involved with people I didn't like or respect as founders and people. I made sure with this venture to solve for some of those fundamentals early on and let the success come with patience.
Sorry if I missed it, but how many years has it been (since the 10-year stop watch started, anathem-style)?
My snooping suggests ... 8-ish? Though this could be completely misguided.
Do you now make enough money to support yourself with DEV?
DEV (Forem) was once a ramen story (not paying ourselves, running out of money etc)...
But now the company is pretty well funded and building a very sustainable business model around hosting Forems.
Special Announcement From the DEV Founders
Ben Halpern ・ Nov 7 '19 ・ 4 min read
Awesome 👏
Congratulations. I will do my best to read that other article.
Hi Ben, is there any way to get analytics on a post made to dev.to? The number of views figures are nice to see but would love to be able to track where the visitors came from.
Thanks for the great work on this site.
Hi Ben, I hope you don't mind I used your avatar to create a Loader meme: dev.to/afif/i-made-100-more-css-lo... ?
PS: You may have missed my ping so I am writing you here.
Cheers!
Sorry I saw it, but didn't react. I love it 😅.
Hello Ben
i hope you know me a little bit about
but still I am krishna kakade. Currently I am in my last year of computer science and engineering from India and mostly working in web development related technologies. and i am interested in joining the devto/forem frontend development team as fresher student because i love to write blogs for forem and also i would to like to join core development team of forem and i also have to learn ruby and rails but i will learn it i can join within next 15 days you can also check my personal website here:- krishnadevz.github.io
and resume here :
I am ready to work hard and consistently for the betterment of the company's products.
thank you
have a nice day
kind regards
krishna kakade
Would you be thinking of this as an internship/apprenticeship sort of opportunity?
Yes and also I am about too graduate in next two months thank you 😊
any updates ?
?
Hi Ben, I read the manifesto essay for Forem recently and was quite excited to see so many of the issues with the current state of the internet expressed so eloquently :)
I was wondering if you have any advice for building successful business models for open source software?
Thanks for starting this, I'm excited to see more community focused software in the future!
Pay a lot of attention to what is established and working (read up on open core), but merge that with an exploration of what hasn’t been tried in the space you’re in — what is the unique way you’ll apply some good established ideas?
Thanks for the reply! I hadn't heard of open core I'll read up on that. I'm currently studying arts and social media at university, and its been very interesting to see how the design choices made by platforms are impacting their use (although also a bit maddening at times).
I think Forem's community-first approach is definitely the right track to be on. The values of open source seem to be pretty well aligned with the direction social media should be taking, though its surprising how rarely open source is considered as an option for that sort of every-day-person-facing software.
Hey Ben,
Thank you so much for creating this amazing dev community! I highly appreciate all your sweat and tears you've put into building it!
In your comment here you're saying that you're "building a very sustainable business model around hosting Forems".
May I ask what your business model is? So how do you make money (or what are your future plans to make money) with dev.to?
Hi Ben
I have to say I am thoroughly enjoying interacting with the community you, Jess etc. have built.
I have 2 questions:-
Is there anything on the roadmap to make the editor better. Things like selecting text to add bold etc. or better yet a list of the liquid tags that you can click to insert a template for them as I am constantly having to look them up as a new member!
Once again thanks for a great platform!
p.s. edit seems to be broken for me the last couple of days so obviously those should be numbered 1 and 2 🤣🤣
How's the fam?
I haven't been able to see most of my family in over a year (Canadian), but generally doing pretty well. I'm very grateful for the Canadian government assistance through the pandemic for the folks in my family who have needed it.
Hey Ben! Thank you for this AMA.
Is there an ETA for the first stable/public release of Forem?
We've been hesitant to give a date on some of this because there's been a lot of discovery needed on both stability of the hosting options while at the same time ironing out all the edge cases where historically with DEV we've been able to dip into a coding environment and for this to run effectively it shouldn't need that. With that being said, things are getting a little clearer:
The first stamped down supported self-hosted option. I don't know exactly when the release will be, but we're pretty close here... Expect an ETA soon. I don't want to make any promises but we're finally seeing the finish line.
For our hosted version, Forem Cloud, while it's stable for us, the thing we need to work out is orchestration so we can effectively automate the management of n number of Forems. This will come in the second half of this year.
Thanks for your patience! Our end goals are incredibly ambitious and Forem is going to change the Internet!
Thank you, Ben! Looking forward to the release.
Have you started many projects that could become companies to you ? Which proportion of your ideas did you actually start writing code for ?
If so, what was your reciepe to know if a project is worth it ?
And how would you know when persistence on a project becomes obstination, and that it is time to abandon it ?
Hi👋
I have a doubt Ben.
I know you are he co-founder of Forem
Do you work in Forem only, or in another company?
Because Forem is completely free for users.
Then how do you make money?
So I asked, there is nothing wrong with what I asked.
Forgive me if I heard wrong
I am a mechanical engineer, I tried a lot to find a good job but i think I choose wrong path, now trying to change my path i was always interested about computers i learned programming along with my college course i know python, HTML, css, javascript, Typescript, angular and now started learning React i want to become a front-end developer is there any chance of my success because i don't have degree in computer science or Information technology and if there is a chance then can i get a job as intern because I think i know stuff but in real world things are different and maybe I need little bit of experience of industry..... Thank you.
No questions at the moment, but just wanted to say thank you for the great platform!
Hey Ben!
i would love to discuss with you about creating dev-community foundations and maybe interest you to take a look on our OS project on Github :)
github.com/Memphis-OS
please contact me if you can - saar.c@memphis.dev
Thanks for bringing us dev.to!
How do you like your coffee? Pour-over, french press, keurig? Milk or sugar? Light, medium or dark roast?
I think I prefer medium roast, but as I don't have a strong preference, I like to mix things up. My favorite coffee treat is a good artisan latte on a cool fall day (like, I don't know what exactly I mean by "artisan", but I used to live in Brooklyn, which is full of great takes on coffee) but too many lattes are not great on the ole waistline, so I usually take my coffee black.
My wife and I got this Jura machine as a wedding gift and it is really amazing. Probably not something we'd have ordinarily budgeted for.
What's the roadmap for moderation? There's some things I'd like to see!
We will have a more well-described general roadmap soon. If you want to see something implemented please advocate for it on an issue on GitHub or start a discussion on forem.dev
Hey man.Hope you are doing great.I sent you an email from tawhidbinomar@gmail.com .
Care to check it out?
How do u create this beautiful social media website like what do u use for Front_End , Back_End and Data_Base?
This website inspires me a lot to build my website like this.😊
Inspirational 😇😇
I'm really curious can you name me one product that is some how popular in the Crypto space and that has absolutely nothing to do with gambling and is based on web3? And what is your opinion on web3?
What would be the topic you want to discuss after 5th+ beer with fellow dev guys :))
Love this idea Ben!
Thank you :)
Yo, I can't message you, it just says this:
However it worked on August 22 (my last message).
Hi Ben,
Github markdown supports Base 64 image, could dev.to also ?
Thansk.
Probably could, if there isn’t an existing issue about this, how about making one?
The Lanuch date of dev.to site .. As I searched in google but did not found any information
I just found out about your website. Pretty freakin' dope. Absolutely love it. ♥️
Are there recommendations/guidelines for building an audience on DEV?
If not, could you draft some?
Hi Ben!
Is it possible to use the dev.to API to pull account-specific information (page views, reactions, etc) without dealing with CORS?
Do you think companies would ever choose a Forem instance over their own blog attached to their wordpress site?
What advice do you have for an American moving to Canada?