Building a Discovery Platform as a Solo Developer: What I’m Learning
Building a platform is very different from simply building a website.
When I started working on PromoHub, the idea was fairly simple: create a place where people could discover and promote Discord communities.
As I continued developing it, the idea became much bigger.
PromoHub is now evolving into a discovery platform for communities, creators, websites, projects, businesses and more.
The Development Side
As a solo developer, I have to think about much more than writing code.
I'm working across:
- Frontend development
- UI/UX
- Performance
- SEO
- Search and discovery
- User profiles and content
- Bug fixing
- Product decisions
- Deployment and maintenance
One thing I've learned is that adding features isn't always the most important thing.
Sometimes improving an existing feature, fixing a confusing part of the interface, or making a page faster has a bigger impact than adding something completely new.
Learning From Users
Another important part of building PromoHub is watching how people actually use it.
Traffic, page views, registrations, posts and navigation patterns can reveal things that aren't obvious while developing.
For example, seeing which parts of the platform people visit most helps me understand where I should focus future improvements.
What's Next
I'm continuing to work on discovery, content, performance and the overall user experience.
There is still a lot to improve, but building PromoHub has been a useful learning experience because I'm able to see the entire product lifecycle from development to actual users.
Here's what the platform currently looks like:
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You can check it out here:
I'm curious what other developers are building right now. What are you working on?
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