Firefighters Lifestyle > THE BASICS > Part 3 of the Firefighter Job App
Part 3 of the Firefighter Job App
This will be my last post talking about the development process of the app before it’s released. I’m super excited about how close it is to be completed and hope you all enjoy it when it’s out.
If you’re reading about the app for the first time then please check out the 2 previous post before; Post 1, Post 2
I left off saying I was about to find a developer to create the app. Like I said, I went to Upwork.com to post my job on there. It was a generic post saying that I needed a developer for a “jobs” type app. After waiting for a day or 2 I had about 50 individuals and companies message me saying they wanted to do the work for the app.
It was just too much for me to go through all of them and decide which one would be the app developer (this was a very important decision to make because this was the bones of the app). After a couple days of going through the potential developers I decided to hire a virtual assistant (VA) to help me pick one. I posted another job on Upwork for the VA a hired one that same day.
I hired this guy from Croatia named Sven and he helped me a lot trying to find a developer. Together we decided to go with the most promising company (to us at least). It took a whole day talking with the developers and Sven to get the details of the app down so they could start developing it. After the day was over the app was being developed… but that was not the end of work for me.
I was really busy in the beginning with things other than the app (this blog for one thing) and I was pleased to see the work Sven did so I decided to hire him as the app manager, someone to deal with app related problems as I did other things. This worked out great in the long run.
The first thing I did after I hired Sven and the development process started was make a landing page for the app. This was also something that I posted on Upwork and quickly found someone that could do it for me.
It currently is up and running and you can see it here at Firefighterjobapp.com.
I was really pleased with how the landing page turned out and thank the web developer for his great work. I think I paid $120 for the whole thing, $60 for how the website will look and $60 for the developers time.
Shortly after I had the landing page done I was told by my developing team that the user interface (UI) was not right and they STRONGLY recommended me to change it. I was devastated (I created the user interface (UI) myself, lesson learned) and nervous because I didn’t know what to do. Sven and I talked about it and decided it would be smart if we changed the UI and luckily for me he had a friend that was really good at photoshop. I put some money down and had the screens redone. Most of what I had established was kept the same just some minor adjustments were done.
After they were finished we gave them to the developers as they continued to develop and program the app.
3 weeks passed and the first prototype was out. I was STOKED!!! The development team sent me a link to download the app and I did immediately. It was cool seeing my app on my home screen and able to us it. There were MANY minor bugs to the app that I reported but I knew it all could be fixed.
We did this for 3 weeks, they would update the app and I would find bugs or anything I didn’t like about the app and I would let them know. We would also do this for the administration part of the app where we inputed the jobs themselves.
Currently, we are at the end of the testing period and currently getting the app on the app store. It will be available in the apple IOS store shortly (hopefully). This list of jobs in the app are getting bigger and bigger and I am excited for you all to see it live.
I hope you guys enjoyed this last couple posts and if you did and want to hear more about the app then would you please SUBSCRIBE to my mailing list. You will be the first to know of any new products I have coming up and other tips from a firefighter.
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Thanks again for reading. Cheers!