Hi My name is Garth. I'm a speech-language therapist. I have an idea for an app that would help parents with child development. I had joined buzztouch with the idea of trying to create my app myself. After playing with it a bit I think that even the simple app that I want is going to be beyond my abilities. While I do think that my idea has lots of potential I don't presently have any funds to hire someone outright to build an app. What sort of arrangements have you seen between people with ideas and people with the skills to build good apps? I'm not looking at a straight partnership as the app part really isn't going to be that complicated. My back end info that I will need to provide will be much larger. Thanks much for your time.

Well the main thing about BT is using the forum to get advice from other memebers with the know how in code and such. Are you looking to do android or iOS or both? PM me and let's talk about this.

Also there is an awesome how to section within BT. I can help you out if you want.

What do you want the app to do, in more detail?

Also take the android and iOS learning paths on BTU

Hi Thanks for the questions. The basics of the app as I see it so far is that the parent would input their child's age. The app would then send out push notices containing info on various child development ideas as often as the parent wants. If the parent likes the info they see on the push notice they could click to get more info and/or save it as a favorite. I've seen a couple of apps that do something a bit similar but nothing that matches exactly what I've envisioned. Garth

I forgot to tell you welcome to BT earlier. Also I agree with @CM. The learning paths for android and iOS are a great place to start. Also am I understanding correctly that if a parent enters the childs ages, let's say 6, then for all the parents who enter age 6 will get the same notices? I am not sure if that is possible, because from what I know of push notices it will go to all who have the app. I remeber seeing someone ask if that was possible in the forums a while back but I will have to find it. If I may make a suggestion, using BT you could create and HTML homescreen that allows the user to select the age and based on that you can organized the other screens with helpful info based on the age they selected. Then you can utilize the push services to send out info about new techniques, recent studies on speech therapy, etc...

Ok here is the thread I was talking about: http://www.buzztouch.com/forum/thread.php?fid=BC70C36A743CD4FAD95D17F&sortColumn=&sortUpDown=&currentPage=1&tid=AB0C5B863CFC9CA3FF2711D&command=confirmDeleteThread It looks as though it can be done but you will have to use the push services of a third party source like parse.

You can do a lot with free plugins from Buzztouch. For instance, make a simple list menu with ages of children, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, etc. and when the user taps the age, show them another menu with your offerings. For starters, let there be a few HTML documents where they learn about what you do and/or offer. Why would you want to send push notifications randomly? That is an advanced technique and not really guaranteed to work; push notification is not an email and you shouldn't rely on push to deliver your messages. If I were you, I would just make a simple informational app for Android and then I'd add a quiz to make it more interactive. From that, you would be able to gather experience, gain self confidence and see whether the apps are a good media for your business.

The parse.com channels can be used to initiate a push to a particular age bracket. The twist is for folks who download the app today versus for those who download the app in six months. Should each download of the app start from the beginning of the tips, rather than join a tipstream that is already in-profess? If you desire to start each user from the beginning of a tipstream, then I suggest you do: - Use a blog to capture and present your tips - Use push notifications to alert the age group users of a new tip in their category The blog will help the newer users browse through the history of tips for that age category. The Push Notifications will help re-engage a User who has wandered away from the app. Consider using comments within the blog or within an embedded chat tool such as Scringo. If you have not yet started, create a WordPress blog containing your tips at http://wordpress.com Then use their Jetpack plugin for it's JSON interface to deliver the articles to the Mobile App. Alternatively, you can use the Self-Host edition of BuzzTouch and pair it with your own installation of WordPresss. In that situation, you can take advantage a WordPress add-on from http://BT-addons.com -- Niraj

Hi. Thanks for all the tips and suggestions. I'll have to flesh out my idea a bit as to exactly want I'm looking for. I initially thought of using pushes to send a "tip of the day" to parents. I wanted something fairly unobtrusive that would just come up - so the parent would be exposed to the ideas without having to do much. If they like the idea I would provide them with more info. I hadn't thought about setting up a blog to store the ideas. I'll have to look more into that. I was thinking of eventually funding the app with ads on the pages of ideas that parents wanted more info about. Would the blog idea work for that too? Any certain way to organize a blog so that it would work best with the app? A separate post for each idea? - separate sections for each age? I'm liking the blog idea a lot. If that would work I could get it going while I figure out the app part Thanks much for your time. Garth

You should step back and answer the most basic question: why am I doing this? What are you selling in the end? Your service, your product or products, affiliate marketing (selling other people's stuff through the word of mouth) and so on. Having an app just for the novelty of it is not enough in this day and age. Do you already have followers / customers / fans / friends or whatever you call people that like what you are doing? Would an app act as a glue for that group of people? Do you organize events online or offline so that you can use the app to tell the people about them? The more questions you ask yourself, the better off the start will be.

Thanks. Lots to think about. The start of my idea came from a meeting where it was brought up that cell phones are keeping parents from interacting with their kids. I thought that phones could be turned into an asset for parents to help their kids. I don't have followers but do have lots of info and ideas on child development. In the end I would be providing parents with the info they need and would hope to fund it through ads. Thanks for the help. Lots of great input to get me started.

I checked out Wordpress. I'm wondering if it will work with my end goal of having funding from ads. Seems like wordpress already puts in their own ads. Will this eventually be a problem? Are there better choices than Wordpress? Thanks

I'm wondering if I should set up my own site. Is there a good blogging software that I could use? Can you recommend any good affordable hosts? A few years ago I had a website that gave parents info and an option to take a "test" to see if their child was having any delays - never took off though. Guess I should have stuck with it. Thanks.

Does anyone have experience with using Ipage as a host?

Amazon ec2 hosting is free, check the how to section for info on how to set iT up.I use arvixe hosting and pay 36 for 6 months

Use http://HostGator.com They have a WordPress installer. You will be fine :-) -- Niraj

Hostgator would be the best company.arvixe also has a wordpress installer as well as other software usong softaculous.look it up.they also give you a free service called cloudflare for your sites.every couple of months they give you free wine, website transfers, domain names,$100 bing ads credit,100 google ad credit etc. They also have great support, real time chat, etc. You can also get windows or linux servers with cpanel.plus a free domain name for life. I would be a great salesman for them lol.but thats just a cheaper alternative I would suggest

Thanks I'll check it out.