I would like to throw out this question to RW users.
With there being so many 3rd party developers for RW and Stacks these days and each one having their own product line of theme or stacks, or both and many of us have products that compete with each other. (Products that essentially do the same thing but with a different feature here or there).
I want to find out from you what sort of products would you like to see available for RW?
I’m talking about things that you can’t really find for RW now or that you have to go outside of the RW ecosystem to find.
Maybe it is something that can be tackled via a plugin or a stack or customized theme, maybe it is something that can’t really be done given the structure of the RW API, but I’d still like to learn what these things are that RW users are wanting but can’t find.
Maybe it is a niche product, doesn’t matter, I still want to hear about it.
Please keep it positive and kind.
One thing that I will throw out there is a “Booking System”. This is very complicated to do as a stack and would likely require a plugin but I have often thought that there would be a need for a “Booking System” plugin. (Like for Tee Times at a golf course or room reservation at a college, etc …)
I was going to mention a booking system before I finished the rest of your post. I think this would get a lot of interest.
I also think there’s room for the e-commerce market to grow. I’ve had a couple of friends-of-friends inquire about sites. While I can envision how to set up a store for them, I am not sure that there’s a way that will allow the end user to create new products independent of me and without having to subscribe to a service with a monthly fee. Integrating RW and Pulse and Snipcart may be able to do that but I haven’t had a chance to try it out. (And I’m admittedly green to e-commerce).
RW may actually have gotten to a place where themes become more specific in and of themselves. For instance, an “E-commerce” theme with built-in support for Cartloom or some others.
In of the problems with doing that though is that a theme developer HAS to cover ALL the bases. Meaning that if they created an e-commerce specific theme it would also have to accommidate the Photo Album plugin, the file-sharing plugin, the quicktime plugin … at least that is the general feeling.
However, if there is a desire for “niche” type themes where a specific market was targeted and was accompanied with a series of stacks that went along with the theme then there is good news because this is where I have been heading for the last few theme releases. Not my next theme, but the following theme will be a very targeted theme with a specific market in mind.
a stack that will take google calendar events and produce the necessary xml to make them show up in google search would be most helpful. It can be done with WP see this article
What about a commenting stack as an alternative to Disqus that works with RW blogging solutions (RW built-in blog, Pulse, Armadillo …). Until now I’ve been using Commentics which I managed to set up for both Pulse and Armadillo blogs.
That makes sense. That sort of feels like the recent trend of project files (for UI Kit, Foundation, Foundry) where they’re marketed for a specific purpose or use-case (though you could obviously modify them as needed). Less about styling and more about setting up functionality, I guess. Anyway, feels like there’s an open gap there, though I appreciate the associated hurdles/complexity
@Gary: Sorry, I edited my post while you already had posted your question. Yes, after having done a lot of research I finally found the free Commentics script which has a lot of options and is quite easy to set up. The only disatvantage is that the default design is quite … old-fashioned and has to be completely revamped. But this can be done quite easily in CSS since they have CSS classes for almost every element.
Hi Gary… Thanks for reaching out to the community. Have had my eye on KulerSQL, which I believe is yours. It would be great if someone like yourself would pick back up the development of StackApps as this would allow for a total dynamic solution, e.g. user entry, calculations and displaying of data. I do realize that these are some deep development waters and the actual user base might be small.
Is StackApps not under current development? While I know most all of the other 3rd party developers and mave a great relationship with most all of them I never got to know Helmuth so I don’t know if he is still working on that project.
I am less concerned with the size of a user base and more concerned with expanding the things that are avaialable for RW.
The user base, even for a niche product, would eventually grow if non-RW users found out that there was a solution available in RW.
No significant idea from me – just a simple stack that counts and displays link-clicks. I actually posted a question about that in this post, but so far I came up empty.
Hi Gary… I have reached out to the developer a couple times over the past eight months and have not received a response. Beyond that and the info found on the site, I am not sure as to development status.
Also it is worth noting that I am a SiteLok user so MySQL based solutions are something I am quite interested in.
Some kind of multi-purpose quote calculator would be great. Something that would allow you to plug in different parameters, for example:
phone cost, monthly tariff, length of contract
or square feet of shed, materials used, type of roof, number of windows
or choose your design style, colour, material and length of roll
And then be integrated into a response form that would send the quote out.
Yes, a really good file upload and file download stack that allows a customer to upload a single file with any name, some basic checking is done, and then the end user can click on a link or button and download that file no matter what the customer calls it.
A calculator type stack (actually more likely a web app wrapped in a stack similar to EditsPro) is very do-able … integrating that into a response form would be a task and I am not sure it coulld be properly done via a stack. It might could, but I will definitely look into it and see though.
Thanks for your thoughts on it.
@Volker - I am unfamiliar with OpenStreetMap. Is is similar to Google Maps? Is there something about it that a person would rather use or need to use it over stacks that provide maps that are tied to Google Maps?
