My new website for Android Roms

partyatmygaff

Now some of you may remember me talking about a custom rom website that I was in the process of developing a few weeks back. Well i've finally finished it (After having to restart the project about five times due to my own terrible coding ).

Now I know the rules well enough that you can't advertise your own site and I hate it when people spam their website across boards but I think (Please?) we can make an exception for this!

I'm hoping that this site (Sooner or later) will become a comprehensive database for all Android custom roms. Now I know we don't have too many Android ROM developers here on boards but nevertheless go on in and have a look around the site. It's a bit bare now as the site has only been up for about an hour but in a few days it should start filling up with ROMs.

Tell me what you all think

http://www.smartroms.com

Professey Chin

Another site to add to my android bookmarks.God damn you :pac:

Keith186

Fair play man I'll check it out anyway even though I haven't rooted at all yet!

partyatmygaff

I've invited a few Developers already to start getting their ROMs up on the site. I'd say i'll have a good few ROMs up before the end of the week

Bruno Batista

Good one, will definitively check it out.
At the moment I just keep checking xda-developers!

Keano

partyatmygaff wrote: »

I've invited a few Developers already to start getting their ROMs up on the site. I'd say i'll have a good few ROMs up before the end of the week

I've signed up

Not sure what I can bring as I am not a Desire owner until Saturday...

partyatmygaff

Keano A Legend wrote: »

I've signed up

Not sure what I can bring as I am not a Desire owner until Saturday...

Moral support?


On a side note that isn't the entire site. I spent most of my time coding the backend of the site for developers and the ROM uploading service. Unfortunately I can't give any of you access to that to take a look as i'm making that part of the site strictly developers only. But if any Android dev wants to have a look around drop me a PM (Here on boards) and i'll give them access.

Another thing I need to ask all of you. Does the site ever seem sluggish or in anyway annoyingly slow at times? Have you noticed any odd bugs? Are the ads displayed on the page public service (Charity) ads?

Keano

partyatmygaff wrote: »

Moral support?


On a side note that isn't the entire site. I spent most of my time coding the backend of the site for developers and the ROM uploading service. Unfortunately I can't give any of you access to that to take a look as i'm making that part of the site strictly developers only. But if any Android dev wants to have a look around drop me a PM (Here on boards) and i'll give them access.

Another thing I need to ask all of you. Does the site ever seem sluggish or in anyway annoyingly slow at times? Have you noticed any odd bugs? Are the ads displayed on the page public service (Charity) ads?

Yes moral support and I make a cracking cup of tea

TheDoc

PHpBB CMS systems for the win?!?!

Are you hosting locally or rented may I ask? Because you just shouldnt have advertisements on a phpbb cms system, looks incredibly taccy :O

I'd also cut down on your widgets and plugins along the sides, there is a big temptation on CMS systems to put every plugin and widget under the sun on the site.

All you need is your news update page and a link to your forum, where it looks like stuff is being stored.

Also yes your site is very sluggish, probably because its being re-routed through that dns provider your using. If you are running locally you shouldnt need to use that service, you can direct your own dns from your box.

If your renting from a hosting company id cancel that **** up fast or have a word, terribly sluggish and slow moving for a simple php system.

Good idea hope all goes well, dont mean to sound anal, but especially for something like this were navigation is critical and highlighting the important things, like your roms and where they are stored, you can definitly do a little better

also be aware that the phpbb cms system is very restrictive in what it allows you to do in regards to what you want to achieve.

phpbb is prodiminantly a forum based system that was expanded into a front end but not very well. You might get better results using wordpress for example to manage your front end. Wordpress was originally a blogging tool, but it has developed into a pretty fantastic CMS ( content management system) for both the novice and complex user.

You could use wordpress to manage your front end while keeping your phpbb installation to run your forum where it looks like most of your traffic will go. A simple link off to the forum will suffice.

Best of luck with the venture.

To see a wordpress and php integration click my image in my sig and it takes you to my airsoft teams site, where one of the guys setup a wordpress front end, if you click the forum link you can go into the phpbb3 setup.

thirtythirty

Its a deadly idea. But I find it a bit weird to navigate.

I think the best way to have it would be:

ANDROID WINDOWS


Click on one of them. Then you get presented with a list of phones. Click on your phone, and get a list of ROMs (with descriptions, discussions, screenshots etc).

Then have a completely seperate section for walkthroughs etc.

theteal

Great idea, i hope it works out as planned. i'd definitely use it, i've had some long evenings trawling through sites looking for android help

moral support >>>>>>>

partyatmygaff

Navigation is a bit messy at the moment but I'm working on something a bit better. I can't however make any large scale changes now as doing that might break the integration with the developers Rom uploading. I have the site hosted on multiple servers for performance. The board itself with its database is hosted locally on a server I own which is connected to two different connections for redundancy. I also have another remotely hosted server for the ROM hosting infrastructure and for some components of the main site. I think I overcomplicated it tbh :pac: Anyway, does anyone have any suggestions on navigation, I think that's the site's biggest issue now.

partyatmygaff

I've edited some of the modules on the front page and it should be a bit neater now.

Starting work on a module to make it easier to navigate by phone model as well

The website *should* be a bit snappier now.

Added navigation links to the left.

thirtythirty

partyatmygaff wrote: »

I've edited some of the modules on the front page and it should be a bit neater now.

Starting work on a module to make it easier to navigate by phone model as well

The website *should* be a bit snappier now.

I'll be blunt - I can't navigate that website very easily! Design principles say that i should click on the picture of the android to go to the android section, but that gives me a

404 - File or directory not found.

The resource you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.





Then, only by clicking "forum" did I find my list of phones. But forum is the last place i would ever think of going when im looking for files and resources - that's for discussion. I can see it getting awfully messy between thread bumping, stickies, files, discussions etc.

To my mind, it should be as simple as: having a normal website to browse for files, look at Roms etc. And then also have a seperate forum for the discussion / how-to side of things.

The content's starting to come together, and you've clearly worked on the backend a good bit, but there's no real frontend!

(sorry for being so critical!)

partyatmygaff

Ah yes, that image on the front page is *supposed* to be a link to the ROM uploading service. It shouldn't be even clickable for guests and regular users. Gonna have to look into that. In any case, you don't need to click on Forum to get to your platform of choice, just two links underneath that is "Android" which directs you to the device listings I don't really want to seperate content from the forums though, the thing is that there is already far better sites for development discussion and how tos. That's xda-developers and MoDaCo. I want this site to be focused on just custom roms as it's very difficult to find ROMs on a site like XDA for example, in between all the ROMs are threads that are completely irrelevant or discussion making it hard to navigate. The purpose of my site is to just become the "database" for custom roms. I'll leave proper technical discussions to sites like XDA and MoDaCo (Although I may create a little subforum down the line if there is enough demand for it)

partyatmygaff

Ok the main link issue has been fixed, it should now be three seperate images each linking to either the Android forum, the homepage and the WinMo Forum in that order

partyatmygaff

It's picking up speed rather nicely I must say

Two roms have been released on the site as of now and i've got around ten different developers who plan on releasing their next release on the site.

500 unique visitors yesterday!

jimmycrackcorm

The site really needs some pages explaining how to install custom roms otherwise you might just as well just go to XDA instead. An all-in-one site so to speak would be better.

partyatmygaff

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

The site really needs some pages explaining how to install custom roms otherwise you might just as well just go to XDA instead. An all-in-one site so to speak would be better.

I may put a short guide for each phone but the main purpose of the site is to centralize Rom releases because finding roms on xda is far too messy.

partyatmygaff

Can anyone with experience with flashing custom ROMs please help me out with writing up a tutorial for each of the phones like the Nexus One or the Hero? I could paraphrase someone else's tutorial but I don't want to make any mistakes. I've already written one up for the Desire as I know the process for that inside out.

partyatmygaff

Page views are growing steadily and someone has offered me a free vbulletin licence as well!

Thrilled with the response i'm getting off XDA and here

partyatmygaff

After a day of downtime (Thanks to some serious database problems...) i've finished work on moving to vBulletin.

Now it looks like a rip off of boards

thirtythirty

Now I like it

It's properly usable now.

In time perhaps it might be worth adding a Root section??

partyatmygaff

spottyelephant wrote: »

Now I like it

It's properly usable now.

In time perhaps it might be worth adding a Root section??

As in a "How to Root?" section?

It's not impossible but the problem is that I only have first hand experience with the Desire. Any other phones would need to be community written.


What I definitley will be doing is adding a glossary to the FAQ explaining common terms like "Root" or "ROM" or "Flashing" and the like.


More to come in the near future. Just wait and see.

thirtythirty

Well i was more thinking bootloaders, kernals, and any other digital paraphernalia required for rooting. Only an off-the-top of the head suggestion with no deeper thought whatsoever!

partyatmygaff

spottyelephant wrote: »

Well i was more thinking bootloaders, kernals, and any other digital paraphernalia required for rooting. Only an off-the-top of the head suggestion with no deeper thought whatsoever!

Well i've got kernels as well but I really don't want to put too much on the site for now.

Bandwidth costs are expensive enough already

partyatmygaff

Massive spike in traffic today :eek:

10,000 visits until now

Bruno Batista

Site doesn't show up now, only a landing page?
Hopefully all is well!

Abelloid

Has the site closed?

Mad_Mike

Looks like it? Not working here anyway

partyatmygaff

Well there's quite a few reasons why the model I had planned went south...

1. Serious funding issues.
2. Constant hacking attempts
3. HTC had began sending C&D letters to sites hosting ROMs containing copyrighted HTC software.

http://mobilitydigest.com/smartroms-project-abandoned/

That pretty much sums up why the project in it's original form was abandoned.

Here's a transcript of the comment I made on which that blog post was made since the blog post does have a few tabloid like lies in it.

Well it was a mixture of both serious funding issues and the fact the site was being targeted by hackers.

Earlier today three of the servers were attacked. The main site server serving the dynamic content. The static content server serving images and static files such as the images and CSS templates and finally the server dedicated to hosting the ROMs for Android. This came only two days after an attack on the main site's server last monday forcing me to have to go down to the datacenter to repair the damage done whicih left the site down for almost 24 hours. It's obvious there was someone out from the get go trying to destroy my site. I had no idea as to why this was happening nor as to who was responsible for them.

That and the fact that the advertising revenue did not even nearly cover operating costs of the servers. To give you an idea of how my costs are like...

I am charged for bandwidth on an ongoing basis, there is no monthly allowance as such.
Combined network speed of the ROM hosting infrastructure was about 1 gigabit or 100 MB. That pretty much guaranteed brilliant hosting speeds for anyone within the US or Europe but of course it came at a cost, a not so pretty cost at that

All in all I was paying about €1 per GB effectively. Today upon reviewing my log files and monitoring services I found that I had accrued a bill north of €100 within 24 hours. That was largely due to the fact one of the most popular HTC Sapphire developers hosted their ROM on the site. Around 4PM today I had nearly two accounts being created per minute on the site and in four hours the amount of users on my site grew from a mere 33 to 216. The problem was that my advertising revenue was shockingly inadequate in covering the costs I faced. I cannot give you my exact revenue figures as per Adsense TOS but they did not even cover 3% of my costs for today.

So that's a 97% loss in the first day. The site wasn't a business and it's aim was not to make profit but few people can afford running a site that makes such a massive operating loss.

I have not however given up on the project as a whole. I plan to relaunch the site sometime in the future as a true centralised database for custom ROM with bittorrent distribution as it's distribution system but for the time being I cannot give you an exact date on when it shall be ready for release.

So to summarise:
1. The site was not financially feasible
2. Incessant hacking attempts
3. A new idea is in development with an unknown release date.

Any more questions, feel free to ask.

So in short, the project has been suspended for the moment until I can finish work on the new site model.

Inquitus

Sorry to hear that Partyatmygaff. I would imagine ad revenues on sites like that where only the very tech savvy are likely to visit is always going to be quite minimal. People will mostly have adblocking in their browsers I would imagine.