Popped on for a wee peek and see some name have posted in the last year that I know well. People still make apps on here? Old team still around? Happy Friday all!

Hey hey Good to see you

Hey good sir! Big smiles seeing your avatar. Boy, the memories. Those two kids aren't that size anymore.

Hey there 👋🏻 What a blast from the past getting the notification to this post was. Good times. I don’t use the platform anymore, but was thinking of starting up with apps again. Need to brush up on my skills again though. Doesn’t look like much going on with this platform for a while.

Hey Miche! How is life back across the pond? Everything still works for the most part it seems. Good to see your name!

All good here thanks MacApple! I’m wondering if your post is the sign for me to start with App Dev again. Where did other people go with their app dev? Anyone got any current apps in the App Store? Really loved this community back in the early days.

All good here thanks MacApple! I’m wondering if your post is the sign for me to start with App Dev again. Where did other people go with their app dev? Anyone got any current apps in the App Store? Really loved this community back in the early days.

I was thinking of dabbling again. Glad to hear you are well. Do indeed take my post as a sign.

It’s been so long since I have been here.. would love if it became more active again

Hey jvalley. Hope life is being good to you!

Hi all! Happy to see so many familiar faces! I know the app market has changed quite a bit over the past few years... so cool to see people are still doing indie-style development. I still use Buzztouch for a handful of apps on the Apple App Store, so it's certainly possible... Behind the scenes, the server infrastructure for Buzztouch just moved to a new host (Digital Ocean) and much of the core has been modernized (PHP 8.0 and MYSQL 8). This was a pretty large effort– just these past two months there have been 99 code deploys to the platform! (Granted, this is often overdue maintenance to keep the platform operating as-is... there's still much left in terms of what could be done to modernize!) This is a labor of love (outside my full-time "day" job) and I have lots of ideas of where the BT Platform could go... but often not the time to execute. Perhaps this will change someday and we'll all be making apps with Buzztouch for Apple Vision Pro™... ;) Anyways, happy as always to chat with the gang! (Would anyone be interested in a Buzztouch Discord server?)

Let's keep nudging this thread. See who is out there and I'll post an occasional wee snippet. I know there are people out there. Many happy memories from here and glad to see it is still around. Who's out there?

Just popped in to check the status, too.. Miss the good vibes here. I have stopped making apps for a while, and moved on to another platform, but keep thinking about this as the best, friendly and supporting community. Cheers, Kristian Copenhagen, Denmark

Nice one Kristian_N What are you getting in to? Slainte!

Hi MacApple! Are you still on the other side of the pond? I bet you are missing the cold over here in the UK! The "good old days" were fabulous around here. I remain grateful for people's help and loved the in-person meet-ups. We had a fab time! I am not doing apps at present. I'm lacking app ideas and in need of inspiration. Hope you are all well :)

Hey Higgey!! They were indeed fabulous. Was a great time for sure. Still in the States, yes. Still pop back over the pond at least every other year. Good to see your name good sir!

Hi MacApple & all the app developers from the Buzzouch community! Thanks for starting this conversation! It triggers many very positive memories and I want to take the opportunity to tell a bit about my current situation. The Buzztouch CodeCamp 2014 in Las Vegas was one of the most exciting meetings for me as it encouraged me to take some major steps to leave my "old job" and start my app business. My focus with apps had been to offer custom apps, so I used the standard screens not too often. Instead, the process to create my own plugins allowed me to offer customized apps for specific niches (A Dental lab offered his Dentist partners an app to send pictures directly to his servers, I created a "LifeCoach" app for a Sales Trainer that allowed him to implement his specific coaching & tracking strategy,...). The open nature of the Buzztouch system (my own plugins on my self hosted server) was an ideal system for all those projects. Meanwhile, things have changed a bit. On one hand I found the double development for iOS and Android a challenge and looked into solutions like Flutter or Ionic. This has pros and cons. Its easier to develop the apps for both worlds... at the cost of a new dependency on those platforms. I still think that the Buzztouch backend might be a cool tool to feed such apps, but I have not combined Buzztouch with Flutter or Ionic. Speaking of backends... things have changed in a different aspect for me as well. Offering an app to a business is nice (although not the coolest topic anymore). I was often asked "... and how does this app connect to my other internet activities (Website, Facebook, Email marketing,...) and I see that connecting such an App is very important. So other things that I stumbled upon are – Zapier integrations (and new tools like n8n) to integrate different web services – Open source CRM & ERP system Dolibarr where an external App can give access to internal business data – Speech assistants (Alexa, Siri & Co)... after developing different Alexa skills for businesses I see that the trend goes towards integrating speech assistants into other internet products (like Smartphone apps ;-)) instead of providing "voice only" solutions – PWA: Progressive web applications allow to publish (smartphone) apps outside of the App stores – NFC chips: Reminded me of the "beacon" plugin of Buzztouch in the beginning. Together with a partner we offer NFC solutions in different contexts (the classical NFC business card but also NFC chips for electricians that allow them to link from their electrical devices to corresponding manuals, protocols, etc.). Here we created an independent backend to feed the NFC chips. – Risk free & energy saving servers: My business partner owns his own data center. With modern hardware he could reduce the energy consumption significantly, but most importantly a specific "TFOF" (Trojan Fuck-Off Feature) allows to go back to the server state just before the attack in case of a trojan attack. We use these servers to host our backend and the open source CRM and ERP systems. Sorry for the (much too) long description of my current interests. What I am missing from the "good old Buzztouch days" is mainly the very creative and helpful community here in the Forum. So my description was meant to inspire some kind of interaction and exchange of experiences. Apps are still alive, but they need to be combined with other technical developments (I did not mention ChatGPT yet!) to offer helpful solutions to businesses. Best wishes Thomas

Hi MacApple & all the app developers from the Buzzouch community! Thanks for starting this conversation! It triggers many very positive memories and I want to take the opportunity to tell a bit about my current situation. The Buzztouch CodeCamp 2014 in Las Vegas was one of the most exciting meetings for me as it encouraged me to take some major steps to leave my "old job" and start my app business. My focus with apps had been to offer custom apps, so I used the standard screens not too often. Instead, the process to create my own plugins allowed me to offer customized apps for specific niches (A Dental lab offered his Dentist partners an app to send pictures directly to his servers, I created a "LifeCoach" app for a Sales Trainer that allowed him to implement his specific coaching & tracking strategy,...). The open nature of the Buzztouch system (my own plugins on my self hosted server) was an ideal system for all those projects. Meanwhile, things have changed a bit. On one hand I found the double development for iOS and Android a challenge and looked into solutions like Flutter or Ionic. This has pros and cons. Its easier to develop the apps for both worlds... at the cost of a new dependency on those platforms. I still think that the Buzztouch backend might be a cool tool to feed such apps, but I have not combined Buzztouch with Flutter or Ionic. Speaking of backends... things have changed in a different aspect for me as well. Offering an app to a business is nice (although not the coolest topic anymore). I was often asked "... and how does this app connect to my other internet activities (Website, Facebook, Email marketing,...) and I see that connecting such an App is very important. So other things that I stumbled upon are – Zapier integrations (and new tools like n8n) to integrate different web services – Open source CRM & ERP system Dolibarr where an external App can give access to internal business data – Speech assistants (Alexa, Siri & Co)... after developing different Alexa skills for businesses I see that the trend goes towards integrating speech assistants into other internet products (like Smartphone apps ;-)) instead of providing "voice only" solutions – PWA: Progressive web applications allow to publish (smartphone) apps outside of the App stores – NFC chips: Reminded me of the "beacon" plugin of Buzztouch in the beginning. Together with a partner we offer NFC solutions in different contexts (the classical NFC business card but also NFC chips for electricians that allow them to link from their electrical devices to corresponding manuals, protocols, etc.). Here we created an independent backend to feed the NFC chips. – Risk free & energy saving servers: My business partner owns his own data center. With modern hardware he could reduce the energy consumption significantly, but most importantly a specific "TFOF" (Trojan Fuck-Off Feature) allows to go back to the server state just before the attack in case of a trojan attack. We use these servers to host our backend and the open source CRM and ERP systems. Sorry for the (much too) long description of my current interests. What I am missing from the "good old Buzztouch days" is mainly the very creative and helpful community here in the Forum. So my description was meant to inspire some kind of interaction and exchange of experiences. Apps are still alive, but they need to be combined with other technical developments (I did not mention ChatGPT yet!) to offer helpful solutions to businesses. Best wishes Thomas

... unfortunately submitted twice... ;-)

Wow, Thomas! That's impressive! So much there to discuss. My first question is how do get people to find and download PWAs? I've never developed them because of these questions.

Hi Higgey, thanks for your response. PWAs can be installed on a website. I have created one with the Ionic platform, but also with BizznessApps app creator. When you land on that website (mostly linked from a standard homepage or as the only website of a business) with a smartphone, you can benefit from the mobile features that go beyond a standard webpage: camera, geo location, gestures,... In that way you can avoid going through the verification process within the app stores, but more importantly the app is directly usable for the website visitor without going though the download process.

Hey guys, just popped in to check the forum. Love this post. Awesome to see many familiar names. MacApple sent you an sms last week, it’s probably an old number. Hope everyone is safe and well. Cheers