Wappler Ambassadors - tell us your story!

Hi everybody…
I was involved in HTML long time ago. I still remember when tables were added to HTML and look like so fantastic things!
During my life I followed the development of the Web also if my work was in another field.
After many years I discovered DMXzone extension and as you can easily understand, they switched on again my curiosity for Web development.

My point of view is little bit different from others and this is why I m writing my experience with Wappler. I m not a professional developer, I have no experience of angular, Vue.js or React. I m working in another field BUT… why DMXzone and Wappler became so important and exciting for me?

Well I had the occasion to develop my own management system, to develop a system who was tailored made on my working flow and with all the controls and feature I was need.
With little knowledges of basic concepts of web development, Mysql and structuring an application, I reached in very small time something that I was not believing possible and this is thank to Wappler and its team.

Obviously my applications are not beautiful or complex like the others developed by more skilled developers in this community, but does not matter. I m improving everyday and thanks also this community forum I m improving in discovery features of Wappler.

Today I m so happy about Wappler that I can’t wait to have little free time to develop something helping me in my job!

Now I m starting for example a compliance systems for all clients, counterparts, events, files etc. Something really unbelievable before dmxzone and Wappler!

Thank you all!

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Way back around 1992-1993 life changed and with it came a change of careers as I moved into middle management with a small systems integrator, for about 6-7 years total, although not consecutive. In the early years I remember some of the old time verterans getting excited about the ability to open multiple small graphics windows on their screen, generated from other locations. This all meant little to me, but was a part of the beginning of the Internet and the world wide web.

Jump ahead to arund 1998 - 1999 and at the same company I was tasked with learning how to create a “website” using Netscape Navigator. Even with my lack of knowledge the very plan, ugly, static pages did not amount to much, but here was the beginning. As I taught myself more and more about how to bulld these pages, I “convinced” the boss to get a copy of some highly promoted app called Dreamweaver. Honestly, I knew very little about it, but based upon all of the literature, this was the place to be if one were to “do the web.”

This was the beginning. Using Dreamweaver I learned a little about Classic ASP, back when it wasnt classic but the only method of drawing from databases if one used Microsoft, and we were a Microsoft company in most ways. If memory serves, this involved making use of Macromedia’s Dreamweaver UltraDev.

Understand, I never was nor am a designer / developer or programmer. In fact the position I am now fulfilling started out as a slot to teacher Word, powerpoint and so forth to elementary school children, growing into being the only on-staff IT guy in charge of anything that looks technical.

Fast forward – health and other issues get in the way and I find myself developing a personal Christian ministry page, learning PHP in the process. I was still using Dreamweaver and as others have mentioned relied heavily upon Interakt extensions. The natural progression from there was to add other extenions, including I discovered more and more from DMX Zone. In fact, like many it became easier to move to the subscription service than to purcahse individaul extenions.

As more time passes, I have developed several business sites as well as church sites, none extra large, but all challenging and mostly database driven. During this time i never moved away from Dreamweaver and the DMX Zone extensions. I always found the support fantastic at DMX, and the extenions accomplished all of the concepts needed for the sites, along with suggestion new and different development ideas.

Life gets in the way again. As I said above, I was never a full time designer or developer, although I have done my best to stay atune to the updates and changes. I still maintain a half-dozen sites, but honestly a couple are way out of date and it is time to either improve them or give them up. About the time I was getting ready to dig in and make changes, along comes the beta promotions for Wappler. It is a natural fit so I jumped onboard the band wagon right from the start, back at beta 1 and while I have not contributed a lot, I have stuck with the process and read virtually every post.

At the same time, I am, like many of you, walking through the tutorials, even when those meant mentally revising Dreamweaver documentioin to figure out how to do Wappler. The docmention has gotten better and better, making it amazingly easy to learn Wappler. One of these days I will move to the real sites, but that is part of the process.

So, yes, I am like many of you out there – the non-professional, whether you call yourself a hobbiest, a designer, a developer, or just a “web guy.” This has been a fun journey, one full of learning, and the occassional “ah ha” moments. Joining a community like this, follwoing the progress, complaioning at the bugs, laughing at the things obvious but still not understood, enjoying the acomplishment of the completed page, all add to the joy fo being a Wappler enthusiastic and ambassador. The guyss at DMX even created a pricing level for us “hobby” guys. So, if you are a web guy, at almost any level, this is the place to be.

Jim Arthur – @jimatjude

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Thanks Jim! What a live time experience - you sure have done a lot :slight_smile:
Btw as still have the Macromedia UltraDev box near my desk! It was the cornerstone of all our developments at DMXzone - and now of Wappler as well.

So let’s see if others have a great story to share as well @brad, @TomD, @t11, @michele, @Hyperbytes, @pixlapps, @drymetal, @s.alpaslan, @randyrie, @cavadini, @wld, @paul, @terrytring, @brian, @oscreative

Most experienced web developers and freelancers used many of the extensions at DMXzone and now using Wappler as top productivity and visual tool.

As more web designers and graphical designers join in - I would love to hear their story as well! Say hi to @Shepherd and @Webjack357 ! Tell us your story guys and keep the feedback coming from a designers point of view!

From a very early age i was fascinated by all things technology related but I was a little early in life for studies in computer science as a mainstream subject.
In 1976 i started working in a local university as a technician while studying chemistry there part time and I got my first insight into computing on a Harris Mainframe and Fortran 4 fed via punch cards.
In 1979 we had a Commodore PET on trial in the lab and that’s when my appetite was truly “whetted” for programming.
Soon after (1980) I purchased my first personal computer, a Tandy TRS80 and very quickly got heavily into Z80 machine code programming as Basic simply wasn’t fast enough for what i wanted to do in game development.
I changed career direction and joined the Police Service in 1980 as a serving officer (don’t ask me why, i still havn’t worked that one out)
Very quickly I found myself putting my computer skills into action and in 1984 developed the first Computer based crime analysis system in the UK.
By 1987 I was seconded to work for central training with a brief to develop Computer Based Training systems to install into regional training centres.
When I look back at the pre-HTML/ Authorware/ Flash/ Shockwave days this as a big ask but i was able to develop some pretty useful stuff via the DBase compiler Clipper and a Novell Network with 18 diskless terminals per centre. Pretty cutting edge for it’s time.
3 years, a computer degree (studied part time) and a promotion later I returned to operational work and in 1991 I registered my first computer company called Logical Access Ltd.
Running two jobs with a wife and family was pretty full on but my passion for writing software drove me on and after a chance meeting with a Doctor found myself moving into the world of Doctor’s Practice management systems, everything from patient records to appointment systems. A really exciting time in my life but the introduction of endless red tape by the government made this route an increasingly difficult take and finally i was squeezed out by the big corporates.
A few quiet years followed, a few faithful customers running their businesses on my customer software before,in 1998, I was drafted back to the Computer Based Crime analysis arena building analysis routines for data dumps from the organisations mainframe using Microsoft Visual Foxpro and interfacing to a mapping system to highlight patterns such as time, location and highlighting “crime hot spots”.
Another promotion followed and I was then drafted back into training to “redevelop” Computer Based Training, this time primarily using Authorware and Flash with a small team of designers to assist. Ironically my organisation was Lotus Notes based and I was prohibited from putting web servers online and using HTML based training, so frustrating as Macromedia (now adobe) Courseware would have been perfect.
Then a big blow followed, budget cuts struck then organisation decided to drop its CBT project and I was moved to Personnel Dept to develop some local databases to manage the deployment of their 6,000 employees.
Finally retirement arrived (UK Police officers could retire after 30 years then) and at 51 I was able to concentrate on software fill time. I re-registered a company working with my youngest son who is a hardware/Windows technician. Sadly he chose the new company name which between ourselves I hate, Hyperbytes.
In reality virtually all my work now is web based, i don’t have a huge customer base but those I have are loyal and keep me busy. I am a bit too much of a control freak to take on staff, i would spend all my time checking their code!
Dreamweaver was my product of choice with some DMX Zone extensions although to be honest I was comfortable coding most things by hand so didn’t use huge amounts of them.
Recently I was approached by a group of people who were looking to launch a new company within the financial sector who were sounding me out to come on board as Director of I.T. (and shareholder) and develop the IT side of the business, an offer too good to decline.
While well within my skill set, time scales were longer than i was comfortable with and just then i found Wappler.
I initially thought it would be useful to develop the more mundane parts of the site so i could more time on the more complex aspects but as I learn more and more about Wappler I now see that there is very little i would need to do outside the Wappler environment and in many cases it does it better and faster than I could manually.
I am not and have never been a good designer, i am basically a database developer. Wappler adds a very important and much needed aspect to my work; I can make it look good easily! As a product it has changed my perception of visual app builders which i used to avoid as i don’t like to compromise. The ability to edit the standard HTML code produced externally was a significant factor in my decision to use Wappler but ironically has not proved a particularly necessary feature.
I am proud and humbled at being chosen to be a Wappler Ambassador and hope to give back to Wappler users as much as Wappler has brought to me.
They chose the perfect word to describe Wappler, it truly is Awesome.
Brian English @Hyperbytes

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Thanks Brian! What a life story! You’ve done definitely a lot! I can relate with you on many areas, I also started as more database related guy and worked with the same systems back then dbase and clipper, later switched to Clarion for Windows :slight_smile:, I’ve done also many mainframe stuff when I used to work for Phillips back in the days.

I couldn’t say this better - this is the biggest advantage of Wappler comparing to other tools. It gives you so much productivity that even if you are a coder, you don’t have to code it all again and again. There is no need to reinvent the wheel each time.

And indeed the design part is so easy that even for not good designers you can get pretty good looking results and because most today’s modern web sites and mobile apps are data driven, you get an amazing dynamic solution without the need hand code it by your self!

Even also for designers Wappler provide a good solution to start with designing and add functionality in a way that is easy for designers to understand - completely visual design. So eventually they can make full functional web sites and mobile apps as well - not just prototypes.

I do not believe it is possible to over emphasize this aspect of Wappler. As I indicated in my life story, I, like Ben, am not a designer. In fact, truth be told, I am terrible with colors and cannot draw a straight line with a ruler. When products such as Wappler appear on the scene, which can be combined with Bootstrap frameworks and Bootswatch, both with their pre-selected color combinations, it is as Ben so elegantly stated, “I can make it look good easily! As a product it has changed my perception of visual app builders which i used to avoid as i don’t like to compromise”.

It is both an honor and fun to have been part of the Wappler family watching, and maybe helping, this great product come to market. Thanks to DMXZone, its owners and family of employees, and especially to all of the family of Wappler Ambassadors.

Jim Arthur @jimatjude

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@drymetal - Chad you are getting famous:

The rest of the stories follow!

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Awesome! And my mom said I’d never amount to anything… :slight_smile:

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@drymetal, great story :+1:

@George, pity that the blog was not constructed using Wappler :-1:

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Hi, I got into web development because a rock band I was in back in 1999 wanted to harness the power of this newfangled thing called the internet to make our band famous. I had a computer and offered to give it a go. I made our first website with Macromedia Dreamweaver and uploaded it over my 28K modem and we were our way to getting really famous. I made V2, V3 etc as I figured things out, then just before we split up due to creative differences a lot of my friends in other bands started asking me to do their site too.

Soon everyone wanted to be able to put their next concert dates up, post photos etc, and I learnt Ultradev and started playing with databases. I was also in the police at this time working in covert areas, and built an application for work to track all the cars with covert registrations and owners details, which was causing a lot of confusion when people came and went and no-one knew what name a car had been registered in, as well as vehicles changing numberplates a lot. Obviously this needed a level of security so I learnt about login systems and encryption.

I kept using DW with Interakt extensions (how good was nextensio) for backends. Over the years have made a lot of database driven sites, for rock bands, small companies, police work, my scuba diving club, and to do my own accounting. It’s always been a sideline as I’ve always had a day job and a music career, so only have a small client base, bu love making really cool sites with lots of backend functionality.

DW has been losing features for years, DMXZone kept it workable, however Wappler is really exciting as everything is integrated, no need for any other 3rd party extensions, and getting a new site started is really quick.

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Thank you for sharing your story AJ! Amazing story of a rock star :slight_smile: and all that in Australia !

I think I know your American counter part with pretty much the same story in the music area - @baub !

Hope he can share his story too, but I see he is on tour constantly, so not sure he had enough time to discover Wappler lately.

So @baub play something for us :slight_smile:

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I’ve been doing web development since last year. However, I’m confronted with programming since 2012 (Android app development and C mostly). At the beginning there was a very steep learning curve and there where many sleepless nights. I scratched javascript a bit but left it untouched when not absolutely needed since I feared it a bit (in terms of security). After I broke my last project completely, a site with a plain php filterable and sortable download portal for a club, I decided to start from scratch. I looked into angular and started to code a bit with it. But I really didn’t know how to achieve sql queries without compromising the sites security due to the lack of my javascript experience. So without any expectations I searched for a builder for responsive web apps. That’s when I saw Wappler. I was immediately amazed by the power of this tool but it was clear I needed the pro licence. So I purchased it and that was the very very first for me to pay for software! I just wanted to point that out!

And here I am, even more amazed by Wappler and astonished by its community! I can honestly say, even if I haven’t been that long in the web development world, I’ve done my fair share of try and error and desperation.
I just wanted to thank you for being such a nice community and for creating such a nice piece of software and hope there are many continuous happy hours with you guys and with this program!

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Loving the stories guys. When it comes to WordPress, Expression Engine, Craft CMS etc., I’d be careful about being too negative though. I only say this as having worked in agencies where we used commercial CMS solutions to build very sophisticated, high-profile sites, and also in agencies where we built sites on custom solutions (fullstack JS - node.js, Express, MongoDB etc.) I was always worried about vendor lock-in in the latter scenario. So while a custom solution is fantastic and can meet your client’s needs perfectly, please don’t ignore the fact that someday they may want to use a different developer or agency (which may mean rebuilding or may mean making improvements to what’s already there). Using Wappler almost forces lock-in and your client should be aware of that (within reason).

Anyways, keep the awesome stories coming :grin:

In my case, everything I do is internal dashboards and the odd company website for my employer. Me using Wappler means only I can work on them. I call it job security. :wink:

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Hey Brad, when you have time, it would be great if you could present a tutorial on how to build an internal dashboard.

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@revjrblack an admin dashboard is nothing more than CRUD pages, behind a secure login. You can design it as you like.

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To be fair @niall_obrien, that’s the way web dev is going, framework based, A Wappler programmer may struggle with, say an Angular project or a Node.js based one. The days of writing from scratch are disappearing fast.

Wappler is a framework, it may cost a sum for the tool but underneath, it’s a framework. Alternative tools like Dreamweaver, Visual Studio etc are not free either

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For sure - but there’s less of a lock-in issue when going with modern open-source tools as there’s plenty of developers out there who are very familiar with said technologies.

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That will be true of any new framework,at one time Angular was new with limited users. Wappler is only just 1 year old.

The biggest bonus for me was Wappler produces standard HTML/ JS so can be changed by hand easily

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Dear @niall_obrien. The argument of being able to switch developers is the most told from anyone who is not using Wappler. Please don’t get me wrong. I am not trying to attack you :slight_smile:
If a company wants to switch the developer on a WP project, they will look for another WP developer. If a company wants to switch the developer on a Wappler project, they will look for another Wappler developer. In fact, Wappler is so ‘easy’ to understand that any developer who will look at the database and read Wappler documentation she/he will be able to get it very fast. No need to ‘understand’ any custom code added, no issues if the code is not well commented, no need to look at the plugins written from several developers (that some might break after a WP update). No spaghetti code.

So the real issue is to explain to the company why Wappler is a much better solution than an open-source CMS. Wappler is very young, people think that it is another drag and drop, website creator. This is ok and expected from people who still think that the only acceptable solution is an open-source approach.

From my experience, any of my clients who have tried something built with Wappler will find it very hard to go back in an environment that requires from them to ‘learn’ the open-source system, to make several updates, to always look for the right ‘free’ plugin, and most important if a small change is required in the database or frontend structure, this might translate to many hours of work.

So I think that the reason that most people still using WP etc is that it is much more easier for developing companies to take the ‘risk’ out of them. If a new feature is required, they just search for a free plugin or pay 50$ to buy one and install it. If plugin requires customization… problem.

If you ask a client if she/he wants a website with a lightweight backend that will fit her/his needs without requiring updates and without having to ‘learn’ the system I am very sure they will like it. The big benefit with Open Source CMS was that they were the only way to go comparing to functionalities and price. This was very true for many years. In fact it still is, with the only difference that nowadays there are other alternatives, like Wappler, that can create much more custom cutting edge results at the same or even lower cost than a full of plugins solution.

Thank you very much and enjoy Wappler!

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