Where Nabble is headed?

[bob Hack]

I have been experimenting with Nabble on a couple of sites of and on for a few months. I am at the point now where I have to consider getting on board using it and recommend it to others that I work with.

Before I pay for support and no ad subscriptions, I would like to know where Nabble is headed. I read numerous entries for a few months that you were working on implementing themes. How is this effort progressing and when do you expect to roll them out?

I also note that that there haven't been any new entries since last August, on your "Nabbles Latest Features". I see a terrific future for your product, yet little evidence that it is moving forward. Also lacking is an indication of a viable business plan.

With the addition of a few program changes, but mainly a new cohesive marketing plan, Nabble could be a market leader in content management.

I have started 27 businesses from scratch in my lifetime and consulted for many others. My experience tells me you have a great concept. I am retired now and limit myself to helping others pro bono. So I'm not looking for work here. But having said that I am open to commenting on any inquiry's.

My immediate concern is, do I go forward recommending and developing with Nabble, or look elsewhere?

[Hugo <Nabble>]

bob Hack wrote

Before I pay for support and no ad subscriptions, I would like to know where Nabble is headed. I read numerous entries for a few months that you were working on implementing themes. How is this effort progressing and when do you expect to roll them out?

All Nabble apps are built with NAML: a language that allows users to customize the look and behavior of their apps. This feature is still in alpha version, but it is available and users can already play with it. So if you want to add a theme to your forum, you can tweak a few macros and have it done (you have to understand HTML and CSS though). If you are talking about ready-to-use themes, then we still have to develop this (hopefully in a few months).

bob Hack wrote

I also note that that there haven't been any new entries since last August, on your "Nabbles Latest Features". I see a terrific future for your product, yet little evidence that it is moving forward. Also lacking is an indication of a viable business plan.

We are making progress. NAML is a language that requires a lot of work, so most of our progress has been in making it fast and easy to use. This is why we don't have much to say in our "Nabbles Latest Features" page. We still have some months of work before considering the product ready. After that we will probably invest in marketing and work on other features. The business plan is based on advertising, so the more users the better.

bob Hack wrote

With the addition of a few program changes, but mainly a new cohesive marketing plan, Nabble could be a market leader in content management.

We are moving into CMS, but we have to finish the product first. Then we can start thinking of a marketing plan.

bob Hack wrote

I have started 27 businesses from scratch in my lifetime and consulted for many others. My experience tells me you have a great concept. I am retired now and limit myself to helping others pro bono. So I'm not looking for work here. But having said that I am open to commenting on any inquiry's.

Comments are always welcome. Feel free to give any feedback.

bob Hack wrote

My immediate concern is, do I go forward recommending and developing with Nabble, or look elsewhere?

You can go ahead with Nabble for sure. NAML will give you things that other services won't. You can easily customize your pages, so please try it and let us know what you think.

[bob Hack]

Thanks for your reply. Here is the take on the situation for me. I hope I have interpreted your post correctly.

Your focus is on developing NAML. Its use requiring proficiency in HTML, CSS and XML. Accordingly, I suspect that the purposes of the Nabble apps are presently intended mainly as examples of how NAML can be implemented and are of themselves a lessor priority. Thus, I understand that I cannot expect my comments below to be of any urgency.

My focus is on helping seniors with no computer literacy maintain their own website. I guess these are the "dummies" that you refer to on your NAML site. Even though I run a computer training business in the eighties, I was totally unprepared to deal with seniors. Even retired professionals (doctors, executives, engineers) for the most part, have great difficulty grasping new concepts.

I'm experimenting with implementing Nabble in two websites now. http://www.bobhack.net/ and
http://www.shuswapphotoarts.com/ 

I initially intended to use Nabble for a forum only, but quickly realized it had the potential to eventually completely host an entire site. A few of the changes needed are listed below.

Exit strategy:
Circumstances change over time. Any 'website hosting and site development combination' needs an exit strategy.
Your XML Backup is useless in my situation, not having any XML experience and at age 76, I have no intention of acquiring any! A much better solution (though far from ideal) would be a backup format similar to your emails when a deletion is made on a site.

Site customization thoughts:
More tools are needed like your 'Change appearance' option (with the exception of the CSS tab). Weebly.com has a

good solution for CSS (and HTML). It would me much better with a proper tutorial with examples.

In the meantime, what site customization services do you or could you offer.

Option for gallery as per sample website Hugo's gallery (I like the elimination of all the clutter - looks more professional)

Option to have the placement of Author and picture in all application types, the same as used in the blog (small and above content and elimination of that whole column, allowing for more width for content)

Option to insert image for header (home page and/or all pages)

Option to insert footer

"See how NAML generates this page" This means nothing to 100% of my/our target audience and only serves as a distraction to clutter the page.

ALWAYS use examples in any instructions!
Example isn’t another way to teach, it is the only way to teach. – Albert Einstein

Thanks for your attention, Bob

[Hugo <Nabble>]

Thanks a lot for the feedback. See my comments below.

bob Hack wrote

Exit strategy:
Circumstances change over time. Any 'website hosting and site development combination' needs an exit strategy.
Your XML Backup is useless in my situation, not having any XML experience and at age 76, I have no intention of acquiring any! A much better solution (though far from ideal) would be a backup format similar to your emails when a deletion is made on a site.

We are currently changing how data is stored in the database and this affects the backup. The XML backup was a temporary solution and it doesn't extract everything from the Nabble app. But very soon users will be able to get a full backup of the entire app in SQL format. Although this is probably another format you don't want to deal with, it is certainly better than XML and any tech person will find it easier to manage. This change will also open a lot of new possibilities for us and for users (like running custom queries in the app scope, etc.).

bob Hack wrote

Site customization thoughts:
More tools are needed like your 'Change appearance' option (with the exception of the CSS tab). Weebly.com has a
good solution for CSS (and HTML). It would me much better with a proper tutorial with examples.

In the meantime, what site customization services do you or could you offer.

I am aware of that. We plan to create different themes in NAML that can transform the Nabble app into any website. NAML is so powerful that we can even include new tools in the theme (for example, tools to change the layout of the elements with drag & drop, tools to edit the contents directly on the page instead of clicking on a link and go to another page, etc.). The sky is the limit. We should start working on this after we finish the NAML infrastructure (hopefully in a few months).

bob Hack wrote

Option for gallery as per sample website Hugo's gallery (I like the elimination of all the clutter - looks more professional)

Option to have the placement of Author and picture in all application types, the same as used in the blog (small and above content and elimination of that whole column, allowing for more width for content)

Option to insert image for header (home page and/or all pages)

Option to insert footer

"See how NAML generates this page" This means nothing to 100% of my/our target audience and only serves as a distraction to clutter the page.

These things can be done with NAML. It is hard to explain one by one here, so you would have to play with NAML for a while and understand the basics. Of course, you can post specific questions to the NAML sub-forum and we will try to help you out.

As a final note, I guess it is clear that Nabble is changing fast and great things will come in the near future. But we still need some time to get there.