Hey friends, how are ya? I’m writing because I realize that I could get some traction for Space Game Junkie if I also had an app for the site. Thing is, I’ve no idea how to go about making one, so I’d love some help if y’all don’t mind.
What I would love in an app would be:
- Push notifications for new stories, videos and upcoming events.
- Podcast integration
- Video integration
- Live broadcast integration
- Calendar integration
- Social media integration
- Quick contact options such as chat, email and so on
Might y’all have any idea how I could make this happen?
Thanks in advance for your help!
If you want minimal native platform code, try out React-Native. You should be able to get everything on your list done with just pure Javascript.
To achieve those goals, you are ideally looking at creating what’s known as a progressive web app. It’s basically a website that you can access from any browser, with added bits of JavaScript magic which also make it look and act similar to an app on mobile devices. That allows you to reach the widest audience cross platform.
It can push notifications to the desktop and to the phone. It will allow people to check your streaming schedule and access your media presence from a click on their phone.
Problem is, nothing about modern web development is trivial. We’re past editing html in notepad. You need to get up to speed on JavaScript and service workers, know what a package is and how to install it and ideally use frameworks like React or Angular to help you develop rapidly.
I went to a 3 days course given for free by Google a year and a half ago. I’m a “classic” asp.net developer and, after 3 days of being instructed by some very clever Google people, I had barely scratched the surface.
Sites like pluralsight, Udemy, … Can help you learn those technologies. But, depending on how knowledgeable you currently are, this might be a long learning curve. You might want to find a webdev who can help you kickstart the project and learn from their work.
Thanks for the input guys. Sounds a bit daunting, but it should be worth it.
