Developing a simple phone app

[craigjm]

I want to create a simple app for a car club that I am in which can do the following -

Allow anyone to download it and access basic information about the club, how to join, latest news etc like the website

For members allow access to the digital magazine, newsletters, information on events, buy tickets for events and merchandise, link to facebook and instagram, contain their membership number etc. I am visioning something that looks like a menu that then takes you through to the different areas

All quite simple to start with but with future development potential

If i wanted to build it myself what do i need to download to do this and can you do it in some kind of visual builder rather than code?

Any help appreciated

[babelfish]

craigjm said:

I want to create a simple app for a car club that I am in which can do the following -

Allow anyone to download it and access basic information about the club, how to join, latest news etc like the website

For members allow access to the digital magazine, newsletters, information on events, buy tickets for events and merchandise, link to facebook and instagram, contain their membership number etc. I am visioning something that looks like a menu that then takes you through to the different areas

All quite simple to start with but with future development potential

If i wanted to build it myself what do i need to download to do this and can you do it in some kind of visual builder rather than code?

Any help appreciated

ecommerce, personalisation, simple.... think again

[b2hbm]

Why an app ? Why not just create a website ?

Whatever you choose it doesn't sound simple to me, although I suppose that depends on your definition of "simple"

[craigjm]

b2hbm said:

Why an app ? Why not just create a website ?

Whatever you choose it doesn't sound simple to me, although I suppose that depends on your definition of "simple"

There already is a website which contains some of the stuff. What I would like to do though is allow people to buy their event ticket and then have the QR code delivered to the app (or Apple wallet etc) so they can be scanned at the entrance to an event etc which can’t be done on a website I guess.

I know it’s not “simple” or “easy” I was just wondering if there is a visual builder out there that works well. I’ve had a look around and some of them look like they might work but which to choose to have a go

[Aunty Pasty]

Most of what you're asking for can be done as a website or an app which basically hosts web pages so hardly seems worth it. The other thing you're looking at is essentially mobile ticketing. You have to think about fraud in this sort of use case. What's to stop the user taking a screenshot of their app and then sending it to their friends so that they can use the same QR code? With payment you're going to have to hook into a 3rd party library provided by the payment providers.

I don't know of any decent App building construction kits. You can try looking at PhoneGap. This is HTML5 based and I think allows you to build something for both Android and iOS without effectively doing it twice. Whatever you do you're going to need some sort of API to talk to your servers to retrieve your website information.

[thebraketester]

www.yourwebsite.com/app

Loads easier to do all that in a dedicated and correctly formatted webpage that looks like an “app”.

[craigjm]

Aunty Pasty said:

Most of what you're asking for can be done as a website or an app which basically hosts web pages so hardly seems worth it. The other thing you're looking at is essentially mobile ticketing. You have to think about fraud in this sort of use case. What's to stop the user taking a screenshot of their app and then sending it to their friends so that they can use the same QR code? With payment you're going to have to hook into a 3rd party library provided by the payment providers.

I don't know of any decent App building construction kits. You can try looking at PhoneGap. This is HTML5 based and I think allows you to build something for both Android and iOS without effectively doing it twice. Whatever you do you're going to need some sort of API to talk to your servers to retrieve your website information.

Agreed yes definitely need to be aware of the ability to share etc so

[craigjm]

thebraketester said:

www.yourwebsite.com/app

Loads easier to do all that in a dedicated and correctly formatted webpage that looks like an “app”.

Yeah I was thinking of something similar more like a hybrid app with some bolt ons

[plasticpig]

Aunty Pasty said:

Most of what you're asking for can be done as a website or an app which basically hosts web pages so hardly seems worth it. The other thing you're looking at is essentially mobile ticketing. You have to think about fraud in this sort of use case. What's to stop the user taking a screenshot of their app and then sending it to their friends so that they can use the same QR code? With payment you're going to have to hook into a 3rd party library provided by the payment providers.

I don't know of any decent App building construction kits. You can try looking at PhoneGap. This is HTML5 based and I think allows you to build something for both Android and iOS without effectively doing it twice. Whatever you do you're going to need some sort of API to talk to your servers to retrieve your website information.

PhoneGap is no longer supported or maintained. You would use Apache Cordova these days. Not a no code solution but I use B4X for cross platform app development. Free for Android and a small charge for IOS.

[craigjm]

plasticpig said:

PhoneGap is no longer supported or maintained. You would use Apache Cordova these days. Not a no code solution but I use B4X for cross platform app development. Free for Android and a small charge for IOS.

Cool I’ll look it up thanks

[hyphen]

craigjm said:

I want to create a simple app for a car club that I am in which can do the following -

Allow anyone to download it and access basic information about the club, how to join, latest news etc like the website

For members allow access to the digital magazine, newsletters, information on events, buy tickets for events and merchandise, link to facebook and instagram, contain their membership number etc. I am visioning something that looks like a menu that then takes you through to the different areas

All quite simple to start with but with future development potential

If i wanted to build it myself what do i need to download to do this and can you do it in some kind of visual builder rather than code?

Any help appreciated

Learn to code, or pay someone.Otherwise it will be st.

As says, if you create a website, you can even the have an app to display the website so you still have an app.

[jesusbuiltmycar]

b2hbm said:

Why an app ? Why not just create a website ?

Whatever you choose it doesn't sound simple to me, although I suppose that depends on your definition of "simple"

^^^^
This


The App fit simply a front end which is relatively trivial, most of the work is the "back end" which will be running remotely on a servers somewhere. That server could just as easily supply a website. It also needs to be secure and follow all GDPR rules / regulations (membership implies that the website will be storing personal details).

[deckster]

Public Facebook page.
Private Facebook page.

Free. Does almost everything you want. No privacy/GDPR issues. People won't lose the web address or their login details. You won't get sued when you get hacked. You won't annoy people by forcing them to download yet another crappy, poorly written app.

Win-win-win.

[w1bbles]

I'm a member of a group that uses www.teamapp.com - seems to work pretty well for our basic level of functionality and also appears to do much of what you're asking, including taking payments etc. Probably worth a look.

[HappyMidget]

No mobile app is ever "simple".

[hairy v]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jniJeamcIUU