Devblog

It's been too long since my last devblog. Sorry about that. I've just been busy continuing the march of progress with Platypus.

Since release on August 1st, I thought I would focus on marketing to some mixed success. Having been an admin of large discords, I know what it's like to have someone join your community only to sell something. Most places to advertise are funneled into an oversaturated mess, because most places don't allow advertising, except for that one place. Frustrations aside, I did appear in one podcast with the gents over at Milsim Units. I am thankful they not only allowed me to advertise, but also gave me a bigger platform in which to do it. For transparency's sake: I did pay them, so the podcast was part of the deal.

After a really insightful conversation and some useful feedback from my marketing efforts I realized I need to make Platypus more marketable before beginning marketing. Marketing is not my strong suit. Platypus does things no other bot does, but on the face of it just saying "Platypus does Awards" is not enough to distinguish itself from the other awards bots. Some effort was made to clarify that in the website and in future marketing.

I have also started on a new feature set which will follow the existing a-la-carte model, with a bundle price as well. The new bundle is simply called "Community Bundle". Features in the community bundle are Moderation, Tickets, Forms, Sites, and Socials. If you goto the features page, you can see what the plan with those features are. What you see may change based on how things go with research, development, and testing. I plan to release Moderation, Tickets, and Forms at the same time, making the bundle roughly the same price as all three added a-la-carte. Sites and Socials have not been moved off of the planning sheet and into code. Sites is intended to release next, then Socials.

I am most excited for Sites. This will give communities a FREE web page w/ Platypus integrations. More on this when the time is right.

Anyway, I wanted to put this out there in case anyone is wondering:

Regarding data:
-Platypus does not and will not handle login information. That is a Discord thing.
-Platypus does not and will not handle payment information like names, card numbers, and sensitive non-public information like that. That is a Stripe thing. Only transaction summaries to unlock the features you pay for.
-Your data is yours. I will not sell it or give it away. You can freely take your data whenever you want.
-Security is important. Every feature has and will get a cyber security sweep before implementation to protect data as well as functionality.

My Philosophy:
-Platypus should make you feel like you own your space within it.
-Platypus should ease your community's administrative burden.
-Platypus should stay dynamic - feedback matters at all stages.
-Platypus should not use or depend on advertisers to generate money.
-Platypus should not turn into something that chases the crowd or the money.
-Platypus should always play nice with other bots.

Regarding the future:
I am in this for the long haul. It brings me joy to make other people's lives easier. I will continue to make Platypus useful even after all the planned features are implemented. Discord will continue to update and add new features and abilities, and I will be right there trying to keep up. There may even be features I never thought of, and I could develop those. Who knows. Either way, Platypus ain't going anywhere.

This devblog has gone on long enough. If you aren't in the support Discord, please join (even if it is to do nothing but lurk). I currently post daily updates about stuff I am working on and it's the best place to reach me about ... well ... anything.

Thanks for reading this far.
-Huck

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Hello World!

My name is Huckleberry, and I have been working on Platypus (or a version of it) since the beginning of this year. I am developing this platform to give organized communities a way to ... well... stay organized.

Some backstory:
Back in December of last year, I was looking for an awards bot for a milsim community I am in. I found plenty, but none that did what I needed. The awards bots I found used activity level within Discord to hand out participation trophies. Nothing wrong with participation trophies, it just isn't something I was in the market for. The community plays games and we want to award people for actions in game. Also, what is the point in getting an award if you can't show it off?

By January I said, "Fuck it! We'll do it live!" and began my first foray into coding a bot. This bot would handle custom awards, and profiles. Due to ADHD and other personal reasons, the scope of the bot crept out of control and before you know it, the bot handled awards, profiles, training pipelines, events management, voice channel management, moderation, support tickets, and more.

What I ended up creating was a bot to replace the other bots we were using in that community as well as creating a bot that did exactly what was needed. When I showed my friends and testers, they thought I should make that bot for the general public, because they wanted that bot for their community. Thus Platypus was born. I had to recreate that prototype bot from scratch, due to the guild-specific nature of that bot.

What is Platypus?
Platypus is designed for organized communities, whether you are an EVE corp, WoW guild, ARMA unit, or a jogging group. It is more than a bot, it is a platform. I like to think of the platform like an Oreo; One cookie is the Discord Bot, the other cookie is the web dashboard, and the cream filling is the database that holds the two together.

Why Platypus?
I chose Platypus because, like this platform will eventually do, a platypus has a bit of everything. A platypus has a bunch of features that work together to form a functional animal. This platform will do stuff that no other bots do (that I have found), and it will do things that other bots can do, but integrated. The differing features can talk to each other, unlike the 3-5 bot combo most communities use. There are great bots out there, but if you have a bot for moderation, and a bot for events, and a bot for this and a bot for that - none of them talk to each other. Platypus features will communicate with each other to form an integrated functional platform. For example: You can set up a highly customizable training event in Discord for a qualification. The event can spin up a temporary voice channel for that event when its time; the platform will know who is in that event, and when the event is over, a qualification from that event can automatically be awarded to the attendees upon approval. If you had an event bot and a temp voice bot and an award bot, you would have to handhold that information from bot to bot, or keep track of everything in a spreadsheet.

Who is behind Platypus?
Just me, Huckleberry. I am the main and only developer. I lost my job earlier this year and took the leap into starting my own business. It is scary to venture out on my own like this, but I like what I am doing and who I am doing this for, so it makes pushing through that fear easy. I have plenty of friends who have volunteered to be testers and you may see them around in our support Discord to help answer questions or respond to issues as they arise.

At the end of the day, I want to make a bot that adds value to you and your community. That is my personal goal with this platform, and I will strive to accomplish that during development and beyond.

-Huck

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