Who can submit ideas?

You can, provided you have an account on our site and you are logged on. You don't have to be a developer or have a technical background other than working with DNN platform. Kickstart aims at helping you finding a developer to work on your idea. 

What is the difference between ideas and projects?

Technically an ideas becomes a project once people start working on it. What you suggest is an idea and once a team forms, i.e. a lead takes over the idea and people start joining the team the idea has turned into a living project.

What happens after submitting an idea?

First of all, kickstart is a moderated system. You submit your idea - we either approve or reject it. In most cases we will approve it right away, sometimes we will correct formatting / spelling issues or get in touch with you to better understand what your idea is about. Keep in mind, the better an idea is described, the easier it will be to form a team of volunteers working on the project.

My idea has been approved, what's next?

The first thing that will need to happen is that the idea needs someone who takes care of turning it from an idea into a living project. We call that a project lead. Becoming a lead is the first and only valid action on an idea. Once someone has been found who is responsible for the project it's up to that lead to decide on the next steps. Note that it is perfectly OK if you want to lead the project yourself - just go ahead an become the lead after you have submitted the idea.

I have become a lead, what are my options now?

There are a couple of things to think about now. How many and what kind of resources will you need to start working on the project? Will the project need funding, if so, how much? What platform will you use to work on the project? You can configure all these considerations once you edit the project, e.g. once you need two developers you simply set "developers needed" to 2. Once you believe that the project needs funding, you set "funding needed" to the amount you think is being needed.

Where is the actual project being managed?

That is completely up to the project team. Kickstart is only the tool to bring together those having an idea with those doing the actual work on a project. And of course it gives projects the visibility they deserve. We recommend hosting the project on Github but you can also select Codeplex or use any other platform. It is only important that you add a link to the external project page in the project's config so others can visit the project page and follow your activities. Also, once the project has a public release, you should enter that in the configuration of the project so your followers get to know.

How can I follow activities in Kickstart?

We made it very easy to track activities. On the the projects overwiew page you may subscribe to new ideas being posted and within a given project you may subscribe either to new comments or to new releases a project has. All subscriptions can be configured on the "Manage Subscriptions" page under your persoanl profile here on the site.

How does funding work?

There are situations where a project team might decide to ask for funding. This will typically happen once the amount of requested features for a given project exceeds the available time a team can dedicate to a project. Funding can help tremendously in moving a project forward. Remember that - espacially with open source projects - work on a project is often being done after hours once the developer's day job is over. Once a project receives funding chances are that the team can allocate more time to a project and release dates occure more often.

Note that we do not track funding transactions. It is up to the team and the person willing to fund to come to an agreement on how to have the actual cash flow processed. What funders do on dnn-connect.org is to express their willing to fund a given amount only.

Typically the team will contact you after you have expressed your willing to fund a project. 

What are incentives?

Incentives are a way for the team to give back something to their funders. For instance a team may decide to give each person who is funding an amount of $100 a support package for their software. If a team sets up incentives in their project, possible funders can select from a list of pre-configured funding amounts rather than entering a custom funding amount.