Show us the power of "single PHP file" side projects and other low-tech/"simple stack" stuff that you're working on or like a lot.
Anything goes, doesn't need to earn money, but it should be fairly simple behind the scenes.
The more high-tech part is that it's a SvelteKit app — so it has server-side rendering (for performance/SEO) with client-side hydration and other nice things. In fact, I like this stack so much that I'm going to spin it out into its own starter template so other people don't have to code all the tedious features that most apps have (like user auth, admin dashboards, etc): https://sveltesaas.com
One of the things I enjoy about ExtensionPay is that it really de-risks monetizing extensions — even for my own extensions! I can just throw ExtPay in and see if it makes any sales without spending weeks on the infrastructure.
I was partially convinced after reading this tweet: https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1381709793769979906
And further convinced when I read about LiteStream and how you can get continuous backups with it: https://litestream.io/getting-started/ Seemed like continuous backup was one of the major missing pieces from SQLite.
And further further convinced when I read about someone using LiteStream: https://mtlynch.io/litestream/
The codebase is very simple, just an Express server with a couple of endpoints, and serving some static HTML/JS files. I resisted the temptation to reach for a framework to keep things as simple as possible and get the MVP built quickly.
I recently added a Discord bot without needing much extra code. I've been working on an iOS version which can be launched from the share menu in apps, which is mostly a web view along with the native sharing extension code.
It's been refreshing to build an application which is so simple! I'm around 500-700 MAUs currently, and working on some features to take usage to the next level. I hope this can be my full-time job someday :)
The simplest product I've ever built in terms of code (fewest lines of code, no dependencies besides jQuery) is Omni, which is an extension that adds an omnisearch to your browser to manage tabs, bookmarks, history, perform multiple actions, add shortcuts, commands...
It's basically just an array of available actions with a simple UI to search through them and select them. I love it because it's incredibly simple to add new actions, I've also open sourced it so anyone can easily contribute: https://github.com/alyssaxuu/omni
I still don't know if it's going to do well or not, I am going to publicly launch it tomorrow, hopefully people find it useful despite its simplicity :P
There's also a slightly more complicated part that runs a Chrome browser to check React/JS SPAs.
On top of that, there's a bit of replication across regions (and soon across cloud vendors), so if an entire AWS region goes down (happened twice last month), the checks keep on checking.
I use an open-source project someone made that lets you export a google sheet as a JSON object. Website is hosted using vercel and front-end was made using react, but recently transitioned to nextjs. And then I have a DigitalOcean VPS run a python script to grab any new jobs every 3 hours and upload it to the google sheet. Pretty simple set-up, and only costs $10/month for the VPS. Everything else is free!
Some of my favorites:
- Nomad List started as a Google Sheet.
- Product Hunt began as a simple list emailed out to people.
- Levels.fyi was powered by a Google Sheet until 2021.
- Crave Cookies was making $200k/mon according to their interview using a SQlite DB which started as a JSON file.
- Headlime started as a JSON file sitting on his frontend with no DB - then sold for $60k a week later
Tools I personally am exploring:
- DB: Google Sheets - either through API (numerous services like sheet.best for this or self-hosted)
- DB: Airtable - it provides API out of the box and has forms and whatnot too, keeps things real quick to start
- Whole Shebang: have only built toy examples, but Glideapps and Softr seem like handy options to spin an idea up really quickly and not getting distracted by tech rabbit holes
This is a simple installation I have upstairs
HTTPS://GEN5.INFO/$/S1WRY:GO2099AW5ZB/
Those three cards each have a back side with a QR code and metadata that you can see by clicking on the individual cards in that constellation. Next to the constellation there is a QR code printed on a small paper square. As of last night I have printed 198 different cards including fine art, anime fan art, and photos I take myself.
It is "simple" in that no database is involved and the hosting system is just Amazon S3. The images and metadata are packed up by a Python script and the process is highly streamlined, I've gone from snapping the shutter on my Sony α7ii to card with a web presence in 15 minutes of wallclock time. I've discovered the cards as much as I created them and there are numerous details such as positioning the QR code on the back so it doesn't get damaged when you attach the card to the wall, etc.
Maybe more “medium” than “low” tech. But Safari iOS / iPadOS Extension that allows you to run UserScripts. Vue and plain old JS.
I am curious, how do you/did you get it in front of your customers? I havean idea for an ultra niche site, in DIY space, but have no clue how to market it.
Thanks for sharing ...
I have many btw. Most of them are jekyll websites with content and banners, not worth sharing :D
https://spendi.li ("spend them", translated) is a private ecommerce referral links randomizer I use with some friends. It's a PHP app made of 3/4 files (routing, security, etc...) with a configuration array of people participating and their referral links. Some day I'll make it public
It’s built with Eleventy (https://11ty.dev), and fetches the news articles every 30 minutes from Radio-Canada’s public API.
There’s no ads, no trackers, no pictures. Simple HTML with CSS and a little bit of Javascript.
I have built a Jekyll blog theme too with very small CSS footprint - https://github.com/abhinavs/moonwalk
It's a self-hosted analytics platform, I chose to use MySQL and PHP to make it really easy to install and maintain (most hosting providers offer a default LAMP stack).
It does earn me some money (varies between $500 and $2k per month) and could probably earn a lot more, but I hate marketing as I have the "will market it when all the features are implemented and all the bugs are fixed!" syndrome.
It's actually a simple form, not a live chat. Maybe the service that I am using to deliver emails is down.
You can send an email directly at support@uxwizz.com with your questions or ask here on HN.
The website is a static site made with go hugo.
The art is just data in a flat yml file that I manually update every week.
A zapier zap tells netlify to update the site, daily, from the github repo.
An email service sends the emails automatically by dynamically pulling the data in from the static json endpoint.
https://seanwilson.itch.io/wordoid
It felt relaxing working on something self-contained without the distraction complex frameworks.
One page of HTML and some glue code for SVG library.
MVC + EF
Right click - deploy - enter pwd of the server = done
Includes database migrations out of the box.