I'm interested in knowing more about the users of bss.been a new user myself I managed to put together a website and publish it using GitHub. Prior before getting BSS, my attractions to it were the fact that it was on producthunt and it was drag and drop. When using the app, I started searching for useful things I could do with the app and apart from building custom themes to sell (think of customising the website to niche industries) I haven't come up with anything else. I would love to know which way the ecosystem of this forum and by extension BSS is tilted to, if you're a Developer who uses BSS please comment about what you BSS by itself for that brings you income, also as a designer hooked on the software what do you use BSS by itself for that brings you income?
I use BSS as my web design software. I have so far in over a year and at least a dozen sites, not needed to go outside of BSS (other than to tweak code which is easier outside of BSS than in it at times). It has worked great for me, and those that think it's only a theme maker are so wrong. And yes, I am paid for my work so if it wasn't doing a good job, I most definitely wouldn't be using it!
Thanks @Jo would it be safe to assume you're more on the developer spectrum then?
I would like to think I sit on both sides of the fence as BSS is great at being a design product as well as a development product depending on your project requirements.
At present I use BSS to feed my passion for web development and design on the side helping friends and smalll business where I can.
As a developer I love that the mark up is clean and that the devs have put alot of thought into keep clean mark up - I also enjoy the ability to create my own templates and component s to speed up my workflow. Yes it’s a shame that php and such is not natively supported but I accept that.
As a designer I love using the drag and drop to scaffold a page design in minutes and then build on it from there - the live preview functionally is also helpful and the moment the devs allow custom user defined font uploads, other media files (like pdf etc) then it will further cement how I use this as my go to app.
No I would say I'm more on the Designer spectrum since I don't have knowledge of Javascript or PHP code. I do utilize them both at times, more javascript than PHP though, and am able to edit them if needed, but couldn't write it if I had to lol. Not always an issue since there are sooooo many places to gather a script database from for pretty much any need you have, and I have lots of software tools that create them for me as well for galleries, forums, etc. I have decent knowledge of HTML and CSS which I believe puts me in the Designer category. :)
Thanks @ChrisHackwood this is very informative I agree with BSS been a very speedy tool for mocking out a website but how do you handle client usage, do you use a flat file CMS or do you do it yourself everytime?
I certainly agree that with the way BSS allows for javascript integration, The sky is the limit in terms of Functionality. Been a designer myself I really like the drag and drop Functionality but the custom code component is a God send. Even tho it's not yet where I want it to be (preview functionality within app). However my challenge with BSS particularly income would revolve around handing off a well designed site to a client who for instance wants to use the site as a blog/ or just change pictures every once in a while. How do you handle this as a designer @jo ?
I talk them out of it lol. I right now have about a dozen or so sites that do regular updating each month and a few others that do periodic updating a few times a year and I do all the upkeep on them all. So far I have only had 2 clients that have insisted on being able to have either themselves or others be able to update things and that's when I suggest something like Joomla or Wordpress. I have 2 clients that chose to go with Wordpress and in the end I end up doing the updates anyways so they may as well have went the other way. Cheaper if they had, but that's what they wanted.
BSS isn't going to fill every single need I'm sure, but there are a lot of CMS systems out there that can be added to pages (Simple CMS or CouchCMS come to mind as a couple possibilities).
Usually when I start a site with a client, one of the first things we discuss is the inexpensive upkeep of their site if they allow me to do the updates for them. Right now I charge $35 an hour for my work on maintenance and most things can be done within a half hour to an hour. When they realize that it's most likely only going to cost them less than $50 a month they usually decide to just do a normal site with me doing the updates.
Hope that helps. :)
@jo this is amazing. This ensures you are tied into the business side of your clients. I will definitely check out simple cms and couchcms. The idea been that when a site is built with this embedded I can charge a bit more, or I can just outsource to a administrator who will build the site to a reasonable amount of traffic hits then I sell out for some passive income. Thanks to your info one can service a pain point in income where BSS is concerned. I am looking at getting traffic on a site like this areahints.github.io/naijamarket and the addition of a CMS will enable me to hand over to someone else and free time to build more.
I will also look at whether YouTubers have made video for integration with cms and BSS. Hopefully will find something. I will suggest BSS admin to consider Progressive Web App implementation with BSS simply for the reason that it will tip our income value higher !