Show HN: Site in beta, feedback appreciated

13 points by blazzar 14 years ago | 11 comments

Hey guys,

I would really appreciate it if you could take a look at my new site that I have put into private beta this weekend. In summary it is a site for photographers, graphic designers and web designers to get private feedback on their work.

There are plenty of sites out there were we can post our work and get it seen but sometimes you need to be able to get some feedback before having it on a public display. This is part 1 of the longer term plan. The beta has the basics to enable users to review each others work, the number of images are limited at the minute but I will be extending that over the next couple of weeks. Part 2 brings the ability to buy reviews from experts in each of the fields, I am currently building those relationships up. I have been tweaking for the last few weeks and finally had to stop and let people use it.

A bit of background

-------------------

My medium term hobby (3 years) has been Photography and I have managed to get to a level where I pulled a portfolio together and found getting feedback on what worked well together quite difficult. I had limited success with individual images on sites like Flickr/500px etc but really needed someone to see my work as a whole and let me know what needed to go, what areas to focus on and what didn't work. I went along to a couple of in person portfolio reviews and found them really useful but when you are producing work at any frequency it is hard to get along to the reviews with a day job and when you factor in travel and time they become really expensive.

So about a year ago I had the idea to build this site and for about 6 months worked through how it would work with the intention of paying a developer to build it for me. I had lots of good conversations with both local and remote developers but had a nagging feeling that I wanted to have a go at it myself. My only other experience coding was about 10 years ago when I butchered a basic recruitment site together in Dreamweaver. In between I have worked in various IT roles mostly described as a Suit but not laid down any code in this time so this has been a great learning experience. I built it with PHP/MySQL and bought some design skills in through Theme Forest templates.

Here is the link https://www.reviewport.net/rp/register.php and use access code 8000RP

Thanks

anujkk 14 years ago |

1. Congratulations for getting it launched. I think the idea is nice but there are many similar sites. e.g. deviantart.com. I hope you have some usp and a plan to compete if this is going to be a startup.

2. Design is nice lookwise, but need some changes from usability perspective. e.g., better icons can be used for categories, filter button is too small. etc.

3. In preview portfolio page, I would prefer to see the actual design first and then description. It would be better if it appears side by side for a quick look.

4. In Start Reviewing list, a small thumbnail of design can make things more interesting. (See threadless.com critique section for details. You can learn a lot from threadless model)

5. Why separate review screen? Can't it be done in intial project page? Try reducing number of clicks wherever possible.

6. Instead of drop down try star ratings. It's quick, easy and well accepted. Put rating widget and buttons in one row. Make comment textarea small. Don't make user scroll if not necessary.

7. My flash plugin is either outdated or corrupt. I'm unable to upload images on site. Basic HTML version of file upload?

Overall, nice try. Keep improving and be prepared for competitions. All the best.

blazzar 14 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback.

1. I hope so to, looking for a smaller more focused market than deviantart/dribbble/flickr etc, people who need to put a whole portfolio together rather than individual images and get it reviewed by experts

2. Yep agree, still needs some love to get it looking okay

3. Thats a neat idea, the work is more important than the text as you say

4. Yeah good shout on threadless, like their rating style as well

5. It's to give people a chance to see the work in case they don't want to review it, might have to rethink how this is presented though

6. I have this in progress now, the dropdown is plain ugly

7. Yep good spot, added to the list

Thanks again for taking a look

anujkk 14 years ago | | |

Also look at this :

http://forrst.com/posts/Matthew_Freeman_Web_Design_Portfolio...

5. Let them browse the project images at top and review it at bottom that is optional.

Row1- Thumbnails

Row2- Large image preview on image selection. First image loads as default.

Row3- Review Form.

jc4p 14 years ago |

While trying to browse through things I can review, if I select a filter such as "Photography" and hit the filter button when I view a portfolio I'm unable to use the back button to go back to the listings because it was a POST.

Have you considered making the filter search work using AJAX, which would solve this problem and also make it a nicer user experience?

Edit: I made a portfolio and added a single photo to it, but now when I try to add another photo it says "You've reached your limit" even though it says I can add up to 4 more photos.

blazzar 14 years ago | |

Yeah, AJAX is definitely on my todo list, lots of places it could enhance the UX. Just need to work out exactly how :)

Fixed your add image error just now. Thanks for having a go.

tundebabzy 14 years ago |

I discovered that your site refused to register me when I included characters like '*' and '#' in my password. I think that makes it difficult for users to enter more secure passwords. You might want to look into that also

blazzar 14 years ago | |

Thanks, will add that to the list

random42 14 years ago | | |

Is there any reason to have a whitelist of characters that can be the part of the password string?

orta 14 years ago |

having only 1 meg for photos is quite limiting, as it means resizing my images for your site. Looks like it's fuzzy at around 1.5meg though.

My portfolio title was given an escaping \ when I used an apostrophe in it.

blazzar 14 years ago | |

Thanks for the catch will get that fixed.

If you could let me know the rough size of your images in meg that would be a good data point for me? I could happily consider increasing the size if there is a demand for it.

iambot 14 years ago |

clickable: https://www.reviewport.net

other: https://www.reviewport.net/rp/register.php