Hi All

Whats people thoughts on apps vs responsiveness?

I love the thought of apps, Social Engine Addons and Hire Experts have made one, I assume others are making them too.

However with these Mobile Apps, they seem to only support their own plugins, which if as a buyer who wants to have a mobile ios android app, your forced to commit to one developer, and wipe out all your purchased plugins, and being as your not allowd to resell old plugins, i feel it's a bit unfair, even custom work isn't supported.

Will Social Engine themself invest in making a app that forces devs to support theirs, so that all apps work together?

Or will Devs support other 3rd party plugins into their apps.

Or is the app route completely pointless based on the above, and just go responsive.... can an app be made for ios and android that simply delivers the responsive site, but masks as an app.

Insignia is responsive too without use of mobile plugin, isnt it?

The only reason I like apps, is because how lazy people have become.
Sad to address it like that, but its true.

I remember the days of wanting to access a site, and i would type ( w w w . e b a u m s w o r l d . c o m)

then came the days of typing it into google

then came the days of mistyping it into google as you would still find it

then comes the day of ughhhh cant they just have an app, and I click on it lol

even tho I know you can make bookmarks look like apps, but people have become so lazy in this world. lol

Not fully, Insignia. It still needs mobile plugin for some things such as IM messages and a few other areas.

Well, as for lazy, if they are too lazy to type the URL, they will also be too lazy to post... lol

Arrr thats a shame, i really love insignia, I was going to change to it, but dont have to mobile plugin, as rather responsive


Too lazy to post, that is the fear nowadays, because its so true.
We are in the times where people go on facebook and type as a status or in a group..... "any cheap cab firms" "where can I buy a bike tyre" "Someone link my to page where I can connect ebay"

People have become to lazy, and its sad, they think their time is more valuable than those who they know will go out their way to find the info......

==>"However with these Mobile Apps, they seem to only support their own plugins, which if as a buyer who wants to have a mobile ios android app, your forced to commit to one developer, and wipe out all your purchased plugins, and being as your not allowd to resell old plugins, i feel it's a bit unfair, even custom work isn't supported."

My understanding (haven't tested it yet but can see this in their Demo) is that SEAO's Mobile Apps simply use Webview for non-integrated Apps, so you can still use other Plugins.

My gameplan (still in development, aiming for Live in a few months) is:

1.  Use a truly VERY responsive Theme (such as SES' SpectroMedia) to handle Responsive (with absolutely no need for any mobile Plugin).  Every other theme I've used (purchased 7-8 or so plus tested at least that many more) simply don't do Responsive well enough.  Other Themes often display things very differently, or simply skip displaying certain widgets entirely - even for Plugins developed by the same Dev as the Theme.  SpectroMedia provides a near-duplicate functional layout in Tablet form as to desktop browser (in Landscape mode it's basically identical; portrait is functionally the same, but Right falls under Left column which makes sense - but it's still phenomenal).  I tried to work with SEAO and SE Mobile Plugins but gave up close to 2 years ago once I found what SpectroMedia could do - there was no turning back.  Can you tell I like SpectroMedia?  It's not only that I like it so much, but the reason I like it - it does what no other I've used can do, so a User has an almost identical site on Android/iOS Tablets as they do on desktop, and on phone it depends on the pixel/dimensions - but on many phone is also almost idential to desktop.  Typically, on any device, once the browser's Desktop setting is enabled, it's identical to the desktop, requiring pinch-to-zoom on small displays.

2.  I purchased the SEAO Mobile Apps but haven't yet got to that.  My primary reason is for the 'younger' generation (not sure exactly how to define 'younger') who seem to always as about an App (i.e. they think in Apps not browser-URLs).  Initially the functionality will be limited in App for (for many reasons - some technical others business related). 

That's my 2 cents.

Daniel said:

Hi All

Whats people thoughts on apps vs responsiveness?

I love the thought of apps, Social Engine Addons and Hire Experts have made one, I assume others are making them too.

However with these Mobile Apps, they seem to only support their own plugins, which if as a buyer who wants to have a mobile ios android app, your forced to commit to one developer, and wipe out all your purchased plugins, and being as your not allowd to resell old plugins, i feel it's a bit unfair, even custom work isn't supported.

Will Social Engine themself invest in making a app that forces devs to support theirs, so that all apps work together?

Or will Devs support other 3rd party plugins into their apps.

Or is the app route completely pointless based on the above, and just go responsive.... can an app be made for ios and android that simply delivers the responsive site, but masks as an app.

Our iOS & Android apps has 'WebView' feature. Third party plugins (or some SocialEngineAddOns Plugins) that are not natively integrated with the app can also be very well made available in the app via WebView.

All the main features of your website can be made available in your iOS & Android App.

For more details, please read our article:https://www.socialengineaddons.com/page/enabling-socialengineaddons-3rd-party-plugins-ios-android-apps-webview

Well I just use the default mobile plugin to simplify everything. It works for what I need, which is a rating on Google saying my site is mobile friendly and that's it.

Our iOS & Android apps has 'WebView' feature. Third party plugins (or some SocialEngineAddOns Plugins) that are not natively integrated with the app can also be very well made available in the app via WebView.

All the main features of your website can be made available in your iOS & Android App.

For more details, please read our article:https://www.socialengineaddons.com/page/enabling-socialengineaddons-3rd-party-plugins-ios-android-apps-webview /> All apps are the same they support their own plugins and not others, and they also support adding something in the menu in webview form. I have apps currently built by SNS, However your company is currently building me new apps so that I can have the channelize intergrated. I think what David is talking about is the fact that it's unfair that each developer uses different coding so that others plugins can't work together. For example I previously spent a lot of money on plugins that are now useless except in webview, this therefore means if I want the truly polished app with all the features then I need to buy a new set of plugins. I personally think that SE should force all 3rd party companies to use the same code as there may be plugins available from one company that another can't provide, which is what happened in my case and has forced me to pay for a new set of apps just to get instant messaging functions in the apps

Daniel said:

Hi All

Whats people thoughts on apps vs responsiveness?......

Or is the app route completely pointless based on the above, and just go responsive.... can an app be made for ios and android that simply delivers the responsive site, but masks as an app?

The answer to that is yes. I built an app that was just a webview in a container and launched it on the playstore as a temporary fix until I had the money to have professional apps built. It's pretty simple and I found all the code online for free. It's very small as well and basically gives you an app that's about 2Mbs. The thing about a dedicated app is the graphics are much better and polished but that's just my opinion.

Donna said:

Lee@PhoenixSocial said:

Daniel said:

Hi All

Whats people thoughts on apps vs responsiveness?......

Or is the app route completely pointless based on the above, and just go responsive.... can an app be made for ios and android that simply delivers the responsive site, but masks as an app?

The answer to that is yes. I built an app that was just a webview in a container and launched it on the playstore as a temporary fix until I had the money to have professional apps built. It's pretty simple and I found all the code online for free. It's very small as well and basically gives you an app that's about 2Mbs. The thing about a dedicated app is the graphics are much better and polished but that's just my opinion.

You are using an app wrapper which many apps are built with, including some "native" mobile apps that I've seen some experts at another script label as native when they are just wrappers. At my ScriptTechs site, I had a list of free app wrapper sites to use. These can work pretty well but won't have mobile notifications. Still, they can work well. Feel free to link what you used for your wrapper.

Sure I didn’t know if I was allowed to do that. I don’t remember the exact one I used and I’m not at home at the moment but here is one. https://youtu.be/c5AlbZKKsUk There a lot of people that have built the app wrappers and uploaded the templates to GitHub and other places. I remember I was searching for tutorials on how to build a web viewer on YouTube and found an Indian developer that actually gave a link to the project for android sdk along with a tutorial on what to change to customize it. Another way to create one is with a site like thunkable. Very easy to create an app container for web viewer https://thunkable.com/#/

Donna said:

Lee@PhoenixSocial said:

I personally think that SE should force all 3rd party companies to use the same code as there may be plugins available from one company that another can't provide, which is what happened in my case and has forced me to pay for a new set of apps just to get instant messaging functions in the apps

 

That was something on our plan for Unite. It is something we can look at after v6 but it is very hard to implement. If enough clients were to tell the experts to get together and work out a coding system, perhaps that would work better as you all have the power of the dollar. 

That is true, unfortunately most of your clients and the clients of other white label solutions tend to not want to help the competition lol. More than once I've signed up for a new social media network and spoken with the owner through private messages to ask about a specific feature or plugin only to be told they would set it up for me on my site for an extreme amount of money. So it's hard for us to ban together to accomplish something like that.

I've learned 4 things from all of this over the last 7 months since I started.
1) You can learn a lot of things from Google. There are tons of developers out there that share code openly and keep it open source.
2) If you are patient and don't give up on your goal you Will be successful and make money. But it may take a while. You need to have a good plan and be willing to stick with it for several years of need be.
3) If you are building social media like me, don't rush to monetize it. Focus on quality and build users first. I've seen several sites better than mine fail already in just a few months because they got greedy. You'll make money, but be patient and let it increase over time and you can get rich. Rush and you'll make a bit for a short time then fail and have to start over.
4) Donna here at SE and Ric over at Bryzar are the only two people I've worked with that remain professional and reliable. Developers work with you for a time and make their money then move on when you want to do something bigger or beyond their ability, no matter if you have the money. But SE always remains true and helpful.

Donna said:

Thanks Lee for those tips and nice wordsalways happy to help.

 

On number 1 be very careful. When I worked at "that other script" I was the piracy manager (am here too) and I had over 2 gb of data on pirates. You need to watch out for those that share free code if they are not someone you are familiar with. Some experts here have free stuff such as ScriptTechs, BryZar, SAT, SNS, Hire Experts, WEbhive, etc. Others on other sites have "free" or "free to learn" and it is pirated with back doors, malware, viruses, etc etc. I've seen it all. Had more than one sad story of someone whose site was hacked, bank account hacked, paypal stolen, etc. Just be very very careful of who you get your free stuff from and what sites you visit. 

True that is always a concern I was referring more to the tutorials and small pieces of code. I wouldn’t trust anything beyond a few lines I can edit. What I’ve done with the exception of the webviewer container is small things that I can edit to suit my needs like a widget.

Donna said:

That's awesome then. Creating plugins is also rewarding when you need something for your site. I did that for my author site as I needed specific things. 

Yes. I’m still learning but getting better at it. One day I’ll be as good as the third party plugins people like me keep buying. Hopefully