Dronexer - Free & ad-free non-profit app / website for drone guys

[biskazz]

Disclaimer: I contacted PhantomPilots via email and they permitted me to post about Dronexer. If you find this post inappropriate in any way please feel free to report it.

Hi folks. I am Biser. The developer of Dronexer.com. I am happy to introduce you to Dronexer.

Dronexer provides you with a dedicated platform to discover and share aerial photography. It's completely free, ad-free and non-profit website/app that I developed myself.

Features overview:
• In our Discover section are the latest posts by our users. You can use this section to view aerial photography endlessly or discover and connect with people who's content you like.
• Your Feed is the place where you can view posts from people you follow.
• You are able to easily post your best drone photography using our Upload section.
• You can view your and other people's profiles in the Profile section.
• Likes, shares and other standard features are also available.
• Dronexer is brand new and it's in active development. New features will be added with time.

We are officially online since 2 days ago so it's still a little "dry". Please fell free to browse around, get the app or visit our website. If you wish register and post something.

Here some links and pictures.
Website: Dronexer: Drone photography redefined
Google Play Store: Dronexer - Android Apps on Google Play
Apple App Store: Developer account costs $100 per year. That's not something I can afford at the moment. If you guys are interested I will make sure to deliver an iOS app in the future.

If there are some developers among us interested in what, how or with what Dronexer is built I'd love to have a chat!



Feedback is greatly appreciated. Please don't take this as advertising since everything is non-profit, free and for you guys. Again, if you do please report this thread. Thank you!

 

[Waylander]

Hi biskazz
Nice looking site, some good footage present, will keep looking in.
Waylander

 

[BigAl07]

I think it would be a wise business investment to provide an IOS solution as well. It seems like Apple has a fairly substantial market lead in the DJI Owner's Community simply because we have less "compatibility" issues because the IOS is more locked down with fewer "Tweaks" available.

Just a suggestion.

 

[BigAl07]

@biskazz you have an error on your website. When on the Sign Up page if you click "Terms of Use" you get the 404 Page Not Found Dronexer: Drone photography redefined

But if you click on the Terms of Use link in the bottom frame it returns the correct page.

 

[BigAl07]

@biskazz I have one suggestion (if it's possible).

During registration you select type of aircraft you're flying. Then when you go to upload images and apply captions you select again from the same FULLY POPULATED list of aircraft. Is it possible to make the selections after registration to only contain the aircraft you have already selected as your aircraft? Might save a few moments scrolling when you're uploading several pics at the same time.

 

[biskazz]

Thanks for the suggestions @BigAl07 . I'll try to provide a iOS app as soon as possible. I know that most of the users from USA are using Apple devices. In the mean time it's fine to use the web app on iOS since I've optimized it for mobile.
For the error, I'll fix that in a couple of hours. Rookie mistake on my part!
The third one is a nice idea. Really easy to implement. Putting it on the list for improvements.
Thank you!

 

[anotherlab]

Just out of curiosity, if the site is free and ad-free how are you making any money on this to cover the development and running costs of the site? If $100 is too much for the Apple developer license, how are you going to afford the storage and bandwidth costs?

 

[biskazz]

In case there is continuing interest, engagement and users in the future I may consider adding some ads. Development costs include only my time because it's solely developed by me. Servers these days are not that expensive either. Thanks for your interest

 

[anotherlab]

There was no language in your disclaimer that stated that the owner of the photos and videos uploaded maintained ownership of the materials, including but no limited to copyright. The photography site 500px has a TOS that covers that explicitly. Servers are not expensive, but hosting plans on hosts like DigitalOcean are not free either.

 

[biskazz]

Everything uploaded maintains ownership. I will make sure to add similar clause in my TOS. Since I'm in the role of developer/designer/system-administrator/database-administrator/tester I can't get everything perfect from the first try but I'm extremely thankful of guys like you @anotherlab and @BigAl07 to point out issues.

 

[QuadKid]

Not able to reach site page by clicking on link provided above.

 

[anotherlab]

Not able to reach site page by clicking on link provided above.

Try again, the site is live to me.

 

[anotherlab]

Everything uploaded maintains ownership. I will make sure to add similar clause in my TOS. Since I'm in the role of developer/designer/system-administrator/database-administrator/tester I can't get everything perfect from the first try but I'm extremely thankful of guys like you @anotherlab and @BigAl07 to point out issues.

That sounds great, but you need to plan for the bandwidth storage costs if you are hosting videos and pictures. What are the features that make your site standout? Why would someone want to use your site over another, like AirVūz. If you are planning on supporting the site via advertising, they are going to ask you those types of questions.

Are the social media sharing buttons that appear below each image supposed to post that image? If I click on an image and then click the sharing icon and then the Facebook button, I would expect to see a post of the image ready to be posed to Facebook. Instead I see some boilerplate text and a stock image of your site.

It looks like you wrote the web site using Angular and I'm guessing the Android app is a Java app written with Android Studio. What's the database on the backend?

It's nice site for someone still in school. It's very responsive to different screen resolutions.

 

[BigAl07]

Not able to reach site page by clicking on link provided above.

Works for me. Try again.

 

[biskazz]

@anotherlab
I'm not sure if AirVūz has mobile apps. Couldn't find such.
Pictures uploaded from the web interface ( I'm writing an entirely new picture selector on Android. Current one does the job but not too well. Removes metadata and is not good for searching for old pictures on your phone. ) that contain location metadata are pinned on a map when viewing a single post on the web interface (example, map bottom right). This functionality will come to Android in the near future. Also there will be a world map that has all uploaded pictures, or pictures from followed users that contain location metadata pinned to their locations. Both AirVuz and my app are quite similar, except AirVuz is 1000x bigger.

I'll look into fixing the sharing. Something seem to not be right with it after I added OG meta tags. (will look into that tomorrow).

The front end is Angular 4. Back end is a NodeJS(Express) app and the database is MongoDB. Passwords are encrypted using bcrypt so everything should be pretty secure. It's a classic MEAN Stack app.
The mobile app is a hybrid Ionic 3 app (write once-run on every platform).
It's hosted on DigitalOcean. The server is located in their french data center.

All and everything is 100% JavaScript.

 

[QuadKid]

Works for me. Try again.

Nope page loads to white screen, Windows 10/64, IE 11 will try it with Chrome > odd it works fine with Chrome

 

[biskazz]

Nope page loads to white screen, Windows 10/64, IE 11 will try it with Chrome > odd it works fine with Chrome

It's normal low-budget apps made with cutting edge technology to not work on ancient browsers. If too many people appear to use such browsers I'll do my best to provide support.

About the sharing - Apps built with Angular, although it may seem a piece of cake to solve such an issue it appears to be not that easy. It involves rendering content on the server and such shenanigans. Will definitely solve the issue but it's not as generic generic fix as I imagined it to be.

 

[cbrownknox]

I registered but can't get in. Does it take awhile from when you register before you can access the page?

 

[biskazz]

I registered but can't get in. Does it take awhile from when you register before you can access the page?

Hi,
Everything seems alright and your account is created in the database. It's also available at this link. Are there any errors when you try to log in?

 

[cbrownknox]

Hi,
Everything seems alright and your account is created in the database. It's also available at this link. Are there any errors when you try to log in?

I was using the wrong username.