The story of how I got first place on Hacker News and got 1000+ stars on Github
So on Monday (31 OCT 2016), I published a new “awesome list” under the Sqreen organization on Github. A few hours later, the link to the repository was first on Hacker News.
In this article, I will tell you the whole story and share all the secrets of this operation. I will also answer use this article to clarify a few points as answer to aggressive comments I received on this.
Right now, I am working on a very cool project named Sqreen. I actually develop the Node.js agent. Sqreen is a tool that blocks attacks within your application with a minimum of action from the developer.
Hey, what’s the link with HN ?
Right now, the Sqreen Node.js agent is in public beta phase. Even though we have a lot of Beta users, I want to test it as much as possible. One solution was to look for Node.js Open Source applications. I tried the most well known (Ghost, Cozy, …). But I had a hard time finding test targets. I went through Quora, Reddit, Google,… and did not find much.
We first tried a “Ask HN”, it was a failure. So I started digging as much as possible withing Github to find projects to test Sqreen on. I found some and listed them in a text file.
With the results, I spent 30 minutes bootstrapping the list and asked for a review by my awesome coworkers. And on Monday morning (in Paris), I made the repository public.
You have to know that I am not a HN user at all. I do not really know anything about this website. I was advised to publish a “Show HN”, so I did.
Before lunch, my link was on the first page and even reached the first position.
As a result, the repo quickly got a lot of Github stars and was featured in Github most Trendings projects.
Now, I don’t really need to search for projects to test Sqreen with. Awesome folks are opening PRs with cool stuff for me to look at (you would be happy to learn that, so far, Sqreen is working like a charm with all web applicaitons on the list).
If the comments on Reddit were pretty nice and cheering, the ones on HN were a bit funnier:
To answer this question: “Nothing”, Nothing gave me the authority to be a curator. We are just some guys who spent some time on the topic and decided to share the results. If some people value what we did, great, otherwise, who cares?
Yeah, that’s me!
So, you mean, you did nothing special and it worked ?
Exactly, we were not expecting any buzz. We were not even expecting any success. But this list answers a need:
People want to see Node.js final applications.
It is a good way to read examples of code or to find a project to contribute to.
The list we publish fulfills this need. Also, it helps people feature their project in a showroom. And it helps us making a great product with the Sqreen Node.js agent. It is a situation where everyone wins!
Do you really curate this?
Yes! I only accept on this list projects that I was able to run locally on my machine (I try Sqreen on them at the same time). And I want to avoid unmaintained projects.
You can follow the validation process through labels I place on PRs:
Conclusion
- I had fun doing this
- I need to thank all people who upvoted us on HN/Reddit, who starred the repo.
- I need to thank a lot everyone who PRed the repo with new projects!
- I also want to thank everyone who commented on what we did, all kind of feedback is welcome.
- I personally want to invite you to try Sqreen (especially if you do Node.js): we are building an awesome product to make your life easier and your application (and your business) safer! (Also, when you try Sqreen for Node.js, I will personally contact you to check how is your experience going, so we could chat a bit ;-) )
That’s all folks
You can also check out another awesome open source project by Sqreen:
