Engaging developers with an open source project
| Client | StackShare |
| Release | April 2019 |
| Project timeline | 8 weeks |
| Goals | Awareness, brand love |
| Outcomes (so far) | 1,700+ GitHub stars, #6 on Product Hunt |
Project summary
We worked with StackShare to launch Awesome Stacks, a community-curated list of tech stacks for building different applications and features. Leading the project from initial idea through product launch, we created a unique new opportunity for developer engagement, resulting in the project reaching the #6 spot on ProductHunt and receiving more than 1,000 GitHub stars in the first week.
Client background
StackShare’s mission is to help developers understand the wealth of tools at their disposal and make more informed technology decisions.
StackShare has been a DeveloperMode client since March 2018. In addition to Awesome Stacks, we built and released Stack Decisions together in December 2018.
Project overview
We had two goals for this engagement: to drive top-of-the funnel awareness for new StackShare users, and to build longterm affinity for the StackShare brand.
To achieve those goals, we wanted to create a valuable resource for developers that uniquely leverages StackShare’s rich developer tool data.
Building on the familiar concept of awesome lists, Awesome Stacks incorporates rich data from StackShare along with supporting data from GitHub, as well as user-generated input, and allows for super simple community contribution.
Developers can contribute frontend, backend, mobile and full-stack lists of tools along with resources that help other developers get up and running.
Results
Just a week after the launch, the project was already well-received by developers and StackShare’s community.
The project trended on GitHub for several days and also made it to #6 on Product Hunt on launch day. Thousands of developers visited the site and the project has been forked over 50 times.
Technology
The awesomestacks.dev website is built with Gatsby, React and pulls in data from the StackShare and GitHub GraphQL APIs. The site is hosted on Netlify.
The site is generated at build time automatically based on markdown in the README in order to make the developer experience as seamless as possible. Contributors only need to edit a markdown file and in return they receive an attractive standalone web page for their chosen stacks.
Scope of our engagement
DeveloperMode drove the process across four stages.
Discovery
We worked with StackShare to shortlist potential projects, then assessed each based on market and competitive factors. We explored StackShare’s proprietary data and unique position on the market, and determined how their existing brand and technology assets could best serve developers.
Design and Build
We delivered fully functional frontend and backend code to StackShare, deploying it directly to their GitHub account and configuring the project to be built and hosted on Netlify.
Packaging
Brand and developer experience are crucial to any project’s success. We led brand strategy and design, creating all art and copy for the site, the docs, marketing channels, and more.
We also wrote the README, the contribution guide, and orchestrated the overall developer experience.
Promotion
Finally, we crafted a multi-channel launch plan, with strategic guidance and collaboration with the StackShare team. We provided copy for blog posts, company newsletter, as well as social content, and conducted proactive influencer outreach to support each channel.
On launch day, we orchestrated the ProductHunt launch strategy and execution, resulting in thousands of page view on launch day, a #6 spot on ProductHunt, and more than 1,000 GitHub stars in the first week.
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