An app driver website

Responses inline below.

  • Imagine a site that showed 'most popular' apps/drivers. Popularity isn't always the best measure of how something will perform, if you are just going by a star rating. And statistics often can be misleading. If you are trying to track how many downloads for measure of popularity, that opens a whole can of worms with tracking users. Tracking (or lack thereof) is one of the main reasons most of use use Hubitat and not another solution.

  • Imagine a site that gave a nice search front end (that lets you search tags, categories etc). HPM does everything you list out here, and more.

  • Imagine a site that provided a background on the devs and what apps they have. Does their background really matter? Where on Android Play store does it give a bio for those apps? Maybe it would be nice to see a list of other apps by a particular user in one place. But if you know the name of the developer, you can search them via HPM and get a listing of all their apps.

  • Imagine a site that had instructions/walkthroughs on installation, removal for complex apps. Isn't that the point of HPM to some extent? Echo Speaks is a LOT easier to install with HPM, for example. There are still steps that need to be done manually, and the developer has an excellent writeup in their Github, and instructions throughout the app to guide the user through these steps. That guide took time and effort to make, and I don't see how having a new site will encourage developers to document their code if they currently do not.

  • Imagine a site that had examples of usage for specific apps. The forums here? You can search for virtually any term (humidity) or device (Jasco), and something is sure to pop up. There is even a whole section of the forums dedicated to apps and drivers and examples of them** Community Apps and Drivers - Hubitat

  • Imagine a site that had a 'gallery' ... a 'show off your dashboard' sort of thing. Again, the forums here? this is one terrific example with too many to pick from. Show Off Your Dashboards! The CSS thread is also has some terrific examples.

  • Imagine a site that allowed an Icon, as well as even an Image representation (developers option). ??? Don't get this. So you mash the pretty button on some random site and you still have to go to your hub, and do whatever steps to import code, or use HPM to do the import. You added an extra unnecessary step there just to have an icon?

  • Any link on the site would send you to either back to the github of the app, or, if user has created a profile, to your HPM within your hub. HPM does this already for the most part, see screenshot below. Or maybe more helpful, it links back to the forums where you can get questions answered and discuss these apps/drivers with the developer and other users.

  • Links to readme's, links to licenses, all would be easier, clearer and quick to find. OK so maybe this is where HPM isn't the best, there isn't a good linkage between when you find a package and the licensing. However, many/most people would likely start their search or ask questions in the forums, (or look for links to a Github readme from the forums) if they need help. I bet most everyone ignores the licensing terms, unless you are a developer. They will skip over reading those TOS/TOU on any site. And in that case (if you are ethical), you are probably reading the raw code or asking the author for permission to edit or use their source code.

So maybe there is a need for what you are suggesting, and maybe it would be nice to have a snazzy new interface. But we already have most everything in place now, and getting everyone to switch to something new is going to be a huge task, most developers won't want to support two sites. So I could see HPM going away if everyone went to this new thing.

And maybe the biggest elephant in the room is you might create the problem you are trying to solve. What if you leave the platform, or were unable to maintain your site for whatever reason? I would think that if you do this, you will want to make your site a partnership with other developers who will continue the project if something were to happen to you.

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