Indie-A.com - Indie Developer Site

[Ryan]

Hey guys,

I think I have a great idea for a website that we can all work on, as king of a community project. I am thinking about making a community website for the indie developers of the world to get together and discuss things and start projects using a new graphic user interface on the website. It is going to be called Indie-A.com (get the dry humor?). But, the site isn't going to be just for developers, but also is going to allow recruiters to come in and register as a recruiter to use the site as a resource to get members for their project.

I know many of you guys are asking something like "Isn't that just like indie-resource? We already have everything!". First of all, I want to say that Indie Resource is awesome and has a great user base and community of indie developers already. However, Indie-A.com is going to differ in that it will not be simply a forum, it's going to be much much more. For example, the new user interface will allow for users to not only communicate in a forum-like environment, but also set up projects, file tickets, log records, etc.

Basically I need some help with the "client-side" of the site. I am not much of a graphic designer, or an expert in dynamic, flashy sites, but I can handle much of the back-end/server side of the site, including MySQL databases and using PHP, although if you are interested in that field, please still let me know. Send me a PM here at Indie-Resource or email me at rchiu95@gmail.com

Thanks in advance!

[hallsofvallhalla]

Indie-Resource isnt just a forum, I tried the same thing and unless you want to build everything and push people to use the features it will not work. It will suck all of your time and then some. There will be little to no payback. Indies hate ads and just being admin is not a payment. You need to ask yourself why you really want to do this. Why would indies want to setup a project page and then have to setup their own website as well. they are doing twice the work.

As far as resources then yeah you might have something as I too have been working on a collection of resources myself for IR for some time but just haven't got them all up yet. It is a TON of work. Make sure you know what you are getting in to. I have asked several times here before for people to do the same thing and never really gotten any takers. You will have to do 99.9% of this on your own. Trust me. I however will wish you luck as yeah the site sounds grand.

[Noctrine]

That is essentially what my previous site Indiepoint (that I actually promised to bring back this year but slightly changed). It's a hard sell, you have to make apparent your value over existing forums (which work pretty nicely for indies) such as Tigsource, GameDev.net, et. all.

What halls said is also true, the thing that initially killed Indiepoint was trying to add some sort of considerable value on top of it, but for most indies (the one that are more likely to succeed) such a service is usually not considered as beneficial as running everything your self.

But if you pull it off, it'll all be worth it.

[Xaleph]

Keep this in mind:

new and original idea`s have a 10% penetration rate, or, in other words, even if you have a brilliant and cool new idea, odds are still against you. 9 out of 10 projects fail.

Now, we move on to projects which are simply a reengineering idea on (relatively) old projects. 3% chance your project becomes a succes.

On a sidenote: this doesn`t apply if you have an (almost) infinite source of money for marketing that is. Same goes for games, how many cool and original games never see the living daylights? No funding and no market.

[Noctrine]

Where are these statistics from? :p

I disagree with the re-engineering bit. Iterating seems to be a far better way to success than that.