Why is the web site so out of date

Mark,
The platform is really great but the Developer content on the web site seems to be 6 months out of date.
For example, the Offline Android API PDF file is from December 2015 and the online Android API does not contain information about Google Login.
Your users are your developers and your customers are their CTOs. I can tell you from experience that CTO do not like to invest in technology that has been abandon by its founders. Perception is reality and if the web site has not been updated in 6 months, what else has not been updated!

Barry,

Primary developer content is the online documentation and this very support forum. The docs are updated at least a dozen of times every month. Our analytics show that PDFs are rarely retrieved so we stopped updating them and we’re planning to take them off. The support forum gets anywhere 30 to 50 posts every day. About 99% of them are answered the same day. It is important to mention that they are answered by our staff. Take a look at the git commit history of the server-side:
http://support.backendless.com/public/attachments/ddca640d6cc6e7d90ce9a0c4200d7209.jpg</img>

And the same for the SDKs:

Android SDK Commits:
http://support.backendless.com/public/attachments/8ec434bb604439d37ab339fcfdd918ce.jpg</img>

iOS SDK Commits:
http://support.backendless.com/public/attachments/7d62eebf1561ef04618a9e25a7ce3720.jpg</img>

JS SDK Commits:
http://support.backendless.com/public/attachments/0eb3a5deab31e231e1c9da17bc657c68.jpg</img>

Who do you think makes all these changes? Community? :))

“Abandoned” is a strong word and in our case could not be further from the reality.

Hope this changes your perception.

Regards,
Mark

Great information. Thanks this is helpful

Mark,

I am glad that backendless team and community is actively providing support and improving the SDKs on github.

But my question and point was about the web site. I am trying to be helpful not adversarial. As a CTO, it is difficult see the commitment to the flatform. For example,

    The last news item on the company page [url=https://backendless.com/company/]https://backendless.com/company/[/url] was the November 2015 release of Version 3. So, no company news in over 8 months and no major or minor version release in over 8 months.

    The product is a MBAAS and Android is one of the leading mobile platforms, but the API documentation has no information about Google login (yes, there is an sdk example and support form answers.)

One answer is could be we are so dedicated to development that we have not been updating our web site. Another answer is we will spend a few hours this week and update the web site with a few news items for things we did in 2016. We will bundle up all of the bug fixes and minor enhancements and release 3.1. We will review the API code base and update the online documentation within the next 30 days.

Maybe I am completely offbase and I am the only one who feel this way. If that is the case, then I am sorry.

Barry,

I understand where you’re coming from and I truly appreciate you sharing the perspective. It is a difficult balance, we could either spread very thin and make minuscule changes here and there while the overall progress will appear as if we’re completely stalling. If you’re a developer, you will know that the platform is being actively worked on, we have a release almost every 2 weeks. It does not take long to see how frequently the SDKs are being updated. Since the SDK repositories are public, developers immediately benefit from the changes we make. Every commit is essentially either a bug fix, an improvement or a new feature. There’s been hundreds of all of these.

I agree, the marketing side of the website is not being actively worked on. It was not intentional, more of a sign of where I decided to put the resources. Our service has grown about 600% over the past 6 months, that is both in terms of developer sign ups, API traffic, number of backendless-powered apps being worked and released to the app stores. So for a small startup the question is - do we start taking care of the immediate need/questions/problems generated by the users we have now or set those problems aside and generate content for the website?

If it is a matter of updating the company history page, sure, it is really not a big deal and can be easily brought up to date, but I believe the essence of the question is broader than that.

Regards,
Mark