The first product is live

Blog post #82

Dockcam is live. You can download it, try it for seven days, and pay 249 SEK once to keep it. That makes it the first Aelg product with all three: a public installer, a working checkout and a page that explains it.

What shipped

  • A public release. Dockcam 2.5.1 is on GitHub. The releases repository was private until today, so nobody outside this machine could have downloaded anything before now.
  • A way to pay. Stripe checkout, a one-time 249 SEK purchase, and the licence key arrives by email. No subscription, no account.
  • A product page. aelg.se/dockcam replaces the old stand-alone page. It has an animated demo of the app, a diagram of how the video travels from phone to PC, and the pricing.
  • A tighter app. The window is smaller and no longer shows long URLs. The licence is a small badge by the name instead of a card, and a step-by-step guide leads you through scan, activate and pick the camera.
  • A new icon. The camera tile from the Aelg site is now the installer, tray and window icon.

What’s working

The whole chain hangs together: page, download, trial, checkout, key. The page and the app now show the same guide, so what you see on the site is what you get on your screen.

What’s unclear or broken

  • The installer is not code-signed. Windows will say “Windows protected your PC” and you have to click “More info” and then “Run anyway”. The FAQ on the page explains this, but it is a real hurdle for a stranger.
  • There are no automatic updates. I turned them off on purpose until there is a signing certificate. If anyone could take over the releases repository, a signed pipeline is what stops them from pushing malware to every user. Until then you update by downloading the new installer.
  • I have not made a real purchase yet. The checkout works in tests, but the first real order from the public page is still ahead of me.

Decisions made

  • I put the product page inside the company site instead of running it as a separate site. One address, one place to look after, and the product card on aelg.se links straight to it.
  • I released manually, without the update files, rather than weakening the signing rule just to get something out.
  • The old Vercel site is deleted so there is only one version of the truth.

Tooling & process

Publishing aelg.se turned out to go through Codex and its hosting rather than through git, so a merge alone does not put anything live. It took a few tries because the installed Codex was too old for my config. Now I know how it works and have written it down.

— Stefan