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The Joy of Small Projects

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Re: The Joy of Small Projects

#51

Post by exdsq »

yurivish wrote: post #42
simonw wrote: post #28

One tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts. If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job. These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/ ) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the so…

That's really interesting! Could you say more about the job-like aspects of having users? Do you have advice on infrastructure that could be built to make the job easier? I'm currently working on my first-ever side project with user accounts, and now I'm wondering what I'm in for. :-)

Not OP but if you have user accounts you suddenly have legal responsibilities (in Europe) to follow GDPR rules etc…

Re: The Joy of Small Projects

#52

Post by ehnto »

simonw wrote: post #28

One tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts. If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job. These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/ ) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the so…

You also have the added security and legal responsibilities, and you are likely not getting remunerated in a way that will let you protect yourself.

One of my projects was a "squarespace" style page builder. Right away, there were nefarious users. The block editor meant that bots weren't really an issue, they couldn't figure out how to use it, but turns out humans aren't that great either. My country doesn't have safe harbor laws, so I took it offline.

Thinking now, I could put that builder back into service and just have it spit out an HTML/CSS bundle for people to self host.

Re: The Joy of Small Projects

#53

Post by ehnto »

yurivish wrote: post #42
simonw wrote: post #28

One tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts. If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job. These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/ ) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the so…

That's really interesting! Could you say more about the job-like aspects of having users? Do you have advice on infrastructure that could be built to make the job easier? I'm currently working on my first-ever side project with user accounts, and now I'm wondering what I'm in for. :-)

In addition to user PII responsibilities, you may also be responsible for user generated content depending on where you live. Both real users and bots will inevitably submit nefarious material on your servers.

Re: The Joy of Small Projects

#54

Post by moron4hire »

simonw wrote: post #28

One tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts. If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job. These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/ ) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the so…

Hear, hear. My last side project was meant to be a library, but people liked the demo I built for it so much they kept pressuring me to start a hosted service. In another age, I would have been ecstatic. But nowadays, I love my job. I have a family to take care of. I don't need--as you said--a part time job. I just want to make things that are fun for me.

Re: The Joy of Small Projects

#55

Post by rsanek »

simonw wrote: post #28

One tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts. If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job. These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/ ) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the so…

>you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for

Why's that? Can't you just provide the service as-is? I have a project that has user accounts and when people ask me for features or support, I either don't respond or say that it's not my focus.

Re: The Joy of Small Projects

#56

Post by [deleted] »

ehnto wrote: post #52
simonw wrote: post #28

One tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts. If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job. These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/ ) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the so…

You also have the added security and legal responsibilities, and you are likely not getting remunerated in a way that will let you protect yourself. One of my projects was a "squarespace" style page builder. Right away, there were nefarious users. The block editor meant that bots weren't really an issue, they couldn't figure out how to use it, but turns out humans aren't that great either. My country doesn't have saf…

[deleted]

Re: The Joy of Small Projects

#57

Post by myrryr »

simonw wrote: post #28

One tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts. If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job. These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/ ) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the so…

Oh my god, I just want to say thank you for shot scraper. I've moved over to Playwright, and one of the things I was doing with the old testing system was using it for the documentation.

Now I can do that with Playwright! - Thank you so much.

Re: The Joy of Small Projects

#58

Post by ThunderSizzle »

exdsq wrote: post #51
yurivish wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's really interesting! Could you say more about the job-like aspects of having users? Do you have advice on infrastructure that could be built to make the job easier? I'm currently working on my first-ever side project with user accounts, and now I'm wondering what I'm in for. :-)

Not OP but if you have user accounts you suddenly have legal responsibilities (in Europe) to follow GDPR rules etc…

The easy solution there is to just ban European users if it's just a hobby project and your concerned about that. Probably not the solution that GDPR would prefer.

Re: The Joy of Small Projects

#59

Post by AlchemistCamp »

simonw wrote: post #28

One tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts. If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job. These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/ ) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the so…

Unless you're living in a place that really heavily regulates the web, I don't think you need to fear having user accounts in hobby projects.

I've built dozens if not hundreds of hobby projects that had accounts. This includes a blog I ran from 2005-2017, flash games in 2010-2011, an ear-trainer for recognizing relative pitches, a couple of apps that do things with photos, half a dozen language learning apps and all kinds of other little projects. In aggregate, having user accounts brought essentially zero concerns other beyond spam management.

Taking payment is a much bigger deal, but even that is something that millions of people do online and the majority haven't even set up a business entity.

Re: The Joy of Small Projects

#60

Post by AlchemistCamp »

floucky wrote: post #34
simonw wrote: post #28

One tip I've picked up from experience: avoid projects that have user accounts. If your project has user accounts, you'll get users who you have to take responsibility for. Then it's not a side-project any more, it's a part-time job. These days I much prefer side projects which have no user accounts at all (like https://www.niche-museums.com/ ) or that are open source tools where the end user installs and uses the so…

Especially if these users can share content, then you need to do moderation and hooo boy, you don't want to do that.

I ran a blog for over a decade, with comments open. A typical post would get 10 to 30 real comments and tons of spam that got filtered out.

Why was this such a disastrous choice? I enjoyed having the site and with the exception of a couple of heated arguments in the comments, and spam, it was never a concern at all. Even the spam was very minor inconvenience since the filters caught pretty much all of it.

Many of my friends walso ran blogs in the late 2000s to early 2010s and the majority were smaller and had zero arguments in the comments and less spam as well. Just a comment or two on the occasional post.

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