reactnative.help, A community built around supporting React Native
I’m thinking about building out https://reactnative.help as a community and resource for React Native and Expo.
The problem: React Native guides and resources are scattered. Stack Overflow, blogs, Twitter, communities are great in the moment, but otherwise ephemeral. I spend a lot of time searching for specific answers. I wish I could find all those answers in one place for this very specific community.
That being said, I find myself searching for both new and old blog posts depending on the right feature. I think some articles may not be ephemeral because they’re layout or javascript based. Many of the primitives have worked the same way. There are new components coming up but that doesn’t mean the old stuff isn’t unuseful.
I currently spend time on:
- stack overflow
- blogs
- youtube videos
I think what I want is a place I can search for all articles and guides. Like an aggregator. I think I want to have specific comments and features around React Native itself.
I want to have categories like “layout”, “components / js”, “components / native”, etc: just specific ways to filter down for something useful.
I also want users to be able to comment on what the useful or un-useful parts.
The initial website will be simple. Links to everything you need, versioned by a specific react native/expo sdk. The site can be broken down into different topic areas like layout, native modules, etc.
Links could have a “helpful or not” feature. It’s not about upvoting the way you might use Hacker News or Reddit, but more about “is this still relevant?“.
The website can expand into job boards, a consulting funnel, etc. We can eventually work with Sebastian on a special “This Week in React Native”. I’m not worried about this right now because I haven’t created anything useful, but I needed to jot it down.
The website doesn’t need to serve millions of people. It just needs to serve the every day person looking to find answers to less-than-obvious answers
Sections
- Help: tutorials like reactnativeexpress.com and will’s “can it be built with react native” series on youtube
- Showcase: what are the big companies using React Native? (Shopify, Coinbase, Backpack, etc)
- Hiring: whose hiring?
- Looking for work: who wants to find a job?