Show HN: MinoHubs – A platform for software project hubs

https://www.minohubs.com

by marcuslongmuir • 11 years ago

22 11 11 years ago

rip747• 11 years ago

I can't make heads or tails of what this does or the benefits of using it. Why not have an example or the page? So a comparison of a project without using your service and the benefits it will get by using it.

joshstrange• 11 years ago

Looks like a software community platform where the users who contribute (monthly and/or one time I assume) get more visibility/ranking than free users. Also with the ability to pay for support through the platform. I thought it might be a SF clone/replacement from the title and I guess you could argue it can solve some of the same problems but idk...

marcuslongmuir4• 11 years ago

Pretty much nailed it. We'll be adding more functions to make projects' lives easier too.

Was there anything that you could suggest making clearer?

marcuslongmuir4• 11 years ago

We're trying to give open source and other software projects a place to build a community and monetize.

If your code is hosted on GitHub, you can respond to bugs or other specific problems using issues, but finding a place to grow a community of users that can help each other, provide feedback, vote on feature requests and provide useful information to new users is hard.

At the same time, we want to help open source projects monetize in a more effective way than simple donations. We've built a paid support system that simplifies the flow for project owners into specifying their rate, accepting a request and getting paid upon fulfillment. We're also incentivizing backing; in return for backing a project, your posts are promoted in the project's discussion area.

If that explanation makes sense, could you offer suggestions for changes that would have made it more understandable the first time you saw it?

We'll be adding an example soon.

Thanks

breischl• 11 years ago

"Software projects" is very generic. A wannabe-Facebook-clone is a software project, my boring corporate accounting program is a software project, etc. But those aren't your target. Seems like you only want open-source (or at least non-commercial) projects. So say that.

At a guess, you're probably also not targeting teeny-tiny libraries/toolkits, because they don't need much more than Github provides. Only bigger and more mature projects probably have need of this, so you might mention that too.

smcquaid• 11 years ago

While the product is cool, it seems that you are trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

Try and discover what your customer needs. Interview some software foundations and ask what their their biggest pains are. Ask where they spend the most time outside of development. In what areas do they struggle? Communication with members? Getting donations? Processing donations? Getting committed members?

I'm guessing that getting donations is their biggest problem. Getting paid is as easy as setting up a paypal button these days. I'd guess open source software devs struggle with marketing/advertising rather than technical platforms. :)

_Marak_2• 11 years ago

This looks very interesting and I'm considering using it for one of my projects.

I wanted to do a SSO with Github, but your permissions require access to my private repos. I won't give 3rd party apps access to private repos. Can you adjust the permissions for Github SSO?

marcuslongmuir4• 11 years ago

Thanks. We were considering changing the permissions already.

We use GitHub to verify ownership of repositories that you specify on your hub as well as SSO, but seeing as your repositories have to be public to be of any real use, it makes sense to just ask for public repos.

We've just changed it. Thanks for the feedback :)

_Marak_2• 11 years ago

Awesome thanks! Someone on your site's live support just told me the same.

Seems to be working now, thanks!

kevin• 11 years ago

More than anything, I wanted to see an example project powered by MinoHubs. If you do this right, most of your growth will come from other MinoHub powered projects. People wanting what they see elsewhere.

http://cl.ly/image/0G0N0N1b3I2S

You have so many features. It's going to take me too long to sell myself on the project and I don't want to commit to that time effort unless I know what I'm going to get in the end.

There's also no clear NEXT THING YOU SHOULD DO on that edit page. I saw this eventually, but that's probably not the next most important thing.

http://cl.ly/image/1s2x3h2W3p1e

What drew my eye was the giant warning. When you show warnings like this...be sure to give me a clear call to action to take steps to removing it.

http://cl.ly/image/1H2p0s0o0201

Since that message faces the owner's users, maybe a link can be clicked to message the owner that they need to still connect a repository. That being said, I saw that from the editor view. That copy should probably say something different.

Also, it would be great to have some obvious links that say...okay, go share this page. Or here's the URL of the page when the page is done.

Solid start, though. Your goal should be that the secret weapon for successful software projects is using MinoHubs. Definition of success for a software project? That might be the tricky part. Whatever you decide, drive people to that. Thanks for sharing!

marcuslongmuir4• 11 years ago

Thanks Kevin! We really appreciate the feedback.

Show HN: MinoHubs – A platform for software project hubs

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