TL;DR

The Gitroom platform is the best tool for scheduling your open-source launches, and of course, you can also self-host it.

The primary strategy I used for Novu and every person I talk to is “launches.” A weekly spirit of promoting your platform in every possible channel and push to be trending over GitHub.

However, my main problem was that I could never plan my launch ahead.
I had to do it manually during the week. Why?

• I had to publish my articles (on DEV) before I could post them on Social media.

• I had to post my blog post on one channel, and only once it was done did I post it on all the other channels and set the canonical URL.

• Many of the things I wanted to schedule ahead were not supported, such as:

  • Dev.to, Hashnode, and Medium

  • Reddit

  • Discord

The bottom line is that I had to do everything during the launch and missed stuff. Instead, I could already make two to three launches ahead.

So, I decided it was time to build a platform for all these things.

Meet the Gitroom Platform

Analytics

Starting with the basics, I wanted to know:

• When is the most performant day (regarding the number of stars), and then cross-reference it to the launch week I have done.

• Know when I am trending over GitHub (get a notification)

• Know when the GitHub feed will be refreshed to schedule my content accordingly.

Launches Page

To launch, you need:

• To have all the channels used in open-source from Social Media such as Reddit to publishing articles such as DEV.to

• See the timeline for the next refresh so I can plan it accordingly.

• Add comments and collaborate with my team before the launch happens.

Schedule Page

This is where the magic happens:

• You can cross-post to multiple channels at the same time (say DEV, Hashnode, and Medium)

• You can post to more complex channels, such as Reddit, where you must define flair and subreddit.

• You can edit everything globally and then switch to a specific channel.

• See the preview of how it will look in the existing channel.

• Use links from previous scheduled posts before they are posted! You can also use it as a canonical link!

The community's future!

This is the first version of Gitroom, mainly for planning your launch. Here is what you should expect:

• Exchange or buy posts from other community members and influencers! YES! Influencers will create posts for you, and they will appear on the timeline. What is the best thing? They will be paid only once the post is published (Good incentives)

• Be part of the OSS friends, an API that lists all the open-source companies in the system - Great for SEO.

• Add testimonials and “used by” with other open-source friends!

And Also:

• Import from other platforms such as Notion—I personally write all my blog posts on Notion, but every time I copy them, I need to upload all the pictures manually.

• More channels to schedule are available, such as Discord and Mastodon.

• Automatic cross-posting (if you don’t want to use Gitroom scheduler)

• Media generators - like the amount of stars you have.

The Gitroom platform has a free tier of up to 3 channels that are primarily good for most users in the system.

You can, of course, self-host the platform and enjoy everything for free (except for the future community features)

If you believe in me so far and want to try the system, I have created a special coupon for a 20% discount for four days of use GITROOMCOMMUNITY at the checkout.

I will not promote the platform excessively over the newsletter, maybe when there are new things to share.

See you next week 🎉