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Show HN: My Weekend Project: One-Click Developer Portfolio Website

prtflio.eu

78 pointstjosten52 comments

I don't know how to react, but at least I want to say this: the name and the layout remind me a little too much about http://www.prtfl.io/muellerwolfram/projects

I'm not sure what to say, I mean, it's a free web, you can do whatever you want, but it leaves a bitter aftertaste, especially because i know that you knew about prtfl.io

Yep, you're right. I was curious about your project but as it hasn't launched yet and I wanted to make something on this weekend, that's what happened. I don't see a problem here to be honest. ;)

"that's what happened"

It didn't just happen - seems like you have intentionally copied someone else's idea, down to naming and design. You're obviously entitled to do so, but it's not something I would run bragging about on hn, especially without giving any credit the original work.

And saying "I don't see a problem here" after the original creator has pointed (quite gently) to the fact, is not very empathetic of you.

Well, I never indented to offend him or anyone else. I'm waiting for his app to launch and when it's great I'm gonna use it, that's it. But for the meantime, I build my own thing and as I mostly do, I set it free to others.

May very well be, but you sure could've choosen at least a different name. And a design of your own wouldn't have hurt.

It's a different misspelling of Portfolio, a dictionary word descriptive of what it is. I see no issues here.

I think using Bootstrap pretty much fits to the "i built this in a weekend" idea. He could always come up with a better design later.

Some people go out and do, other people talk about it.

And I wasn't aware that anybody owned the space.

Good for you.

prtfl.io is much more polished—it shows that it wasn't built in a weekend. Please launch soon! After looking at prtflio.eu, I wouldn't worry too much about brand dilution—it's not even in your league.

Hey, I get your point, but you can't compare something that isn't launched to something that is.

How many times does Paul Graham have to say "just launch"? Launch and iterate, iterate and then iterate some more. Talking about brand dilution on an unlaunched product is a moot point to say the least.

I'm not taking sides about what happened here, it seems murky at best, but you can't compare an idea to a product.

To every Paul Graham that says "just launch" there is Steve Jobs that scrapes nearly done products, restarts from scratch and ends up releasing stunning shit. Let me see your "launch and iterate" do that.

For every dollar that a "Steve Jobs" type produces, 10 are produced by people "launch and iterate". Business is about making good decisions as often as possible, which the latter methodology seems to do better.

prtfl.io is obviously building a thoughtful product with the goal that people will get value out of it. prtflio.eu did the equivalent of putting a file upload widget in front of s3 and calling it flickrcom.eu.

prtfl.io isn't reflexive.

Let me quote movie-zuckerberg here:

"You know, you really don't need a forensics team to get to the bottom of this. If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook."

Execution, dear Wolfram, is the single-most important thing in our industry today. I personally have a shit ton of things I'm thinking about or that I might want to do some time. All worthless, until someone executes on them. Timo executed on this idea this weekend and the outcome is extraordinary, given the invested time. It shows that he is a very talented guy.

Well here is the nice thing: Just build something that is better and people will use it. It is that easy.

Look at it this way: You now have a fire lit under your ass to finish and launch it.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

Mind him not, Mueller. As the other dude said - it's the execution that matters and this particular execution is nothing to write home about. It'll be forgotten once it's off the HN front page.

I'm not a developer but a designer.

What do developers showcase in their portfolio? How do you describe the projects you've worked on? What is a recruiter looking for when visiting your website?

A developers profile these days is mostly just github. Works very well for those of us that contribute back to open source but not too sure how someone who doesn't contribute to os stuff would show a portfolio...

>not too sure how someone who doesn't contribute to os stuff would show a portfolio

A portfolio can also consist of project writeups/screenshots and/or links to live sites.

Sorry to point this out, but you sound more like a recruiter than a designer. I'm sure people would answer your questions if you would ask them a little bit less bluntly.

My answers to your questions are: 1. I showcase the projects I've been working on 2. I don't describe the projects, just point a link to them, they should describe themselves (README, code comments, etc.) 3. Someone very skilled to make them good money with little hassle

I don't describe the projects, just point a link to them, they should describe themselves...

Can't disagree more.

If I'm hiring a freelance developer, I want to be assured of their "here's my problem, help me come up with a solution" abilities. Simply linking to an app they build for a client or a Github project doesn't necessarily tell me everything I want to know. Why does this exist, and what problem was it trying to solve? And did it end up solving said problem, if so — how?

If the readme (or the front facinf page of the project) doesn't answer those questions I wouldn't be interested in it, and even less in its developer.

I went with case studies for sites & software projects, but those aren't always easy to come up with.

It definitely tends to be less of a visual portfolio than a designer's.

Great work, thanks for sharing this.

Feedback -

- I'm a fool and was looking around for somewhere to click to go through to my site - what about a small link somewhere around http://d.jdkram.net/W7nY? Or maybe a second button the "Welcome" tab.

- Hovering over all of the entry titles in 'Account' (Facebook, Google+ etc.) switches the cursor to a hand. Apologies if this is intentional.

- It would be nice to have a little explanation regarding what you're asking for in the box: something like http://d.jdkram.net/4GEL would help keep the look clean and let you explain where to get the info you're asking for. Alternatively continue with your current norm and use greyed out text within the boxes saying "e.g. 107633175658115732197".

Thanks for your feedback!

- This has just been added. - The text was ment to be a label for the input box. I'll fix that. - Yeah, there's a lot of explaination and help texts missing. I'll add this when I got more time this week.

Thanks for taking it on board :). Two more:

- The slider for draft/live seems counter-intuitive to me, clicking on draft makes it live and vice versa.

- I was about to suggest the ability to add font awesome icons but I see it's already there! How about advertising this feature on the editor page somewhere? Or adding a menu for placing icons tags like <i class="icon-camera-retro"></i> in quickly?

Saying that, the design works so well because it is so simple and fast.

It would be nice to see a link to a sample site on the frontpage.

Fixed that, thanks!

Very nice. How does the blog integration work? Is it limited to certain platforms?

For now, there is a markdown blog editor included after login where you can save drafts and publish them later on.

A bunch of UX feedback/issues:

- after signing in/up, there is no link on any page that actually links you to your portfolio.

- The welcome page is a waste of space right now. It only has a link to give you feedback, while providing the user no useful information.

- If you're making me sign in with github, the projects section shouldn't be empty. It should pull from my github

- Under Theme, I understand it's probably more work than it's worth right now to preview the themes for a weekend project - but the link out to bootswatch should at least go to the preview so I know what I'm choosing: http://bootswatch.com/#gallery

Thanks for your feedback!

- That has been added - Yep, indeed. I'll think about what's best in this place. - That's what I initially planned and that's going to come for sure :-D - Great idea, thanks!

I like it, a lot. I never had much or was proud of my personal website, so for fun I pointed my A records over to my brand new shiny website at prtfl.io. It's waynepierson.com ( http://wpierson.prtflio.eu/ if the changes haven't propagated yet to your neck of the woods, but CloudFlare is pretty good about that)

I also got a little carried away, wrote out my about page, and even wrote three blog posts. Yes three. I'm a fan.

Like it ! :) I decided to give it a try. It's now up and running on http://nicolasgrenie.com

I could be awesome to get automatically the projects from Github.

And also being able to re-arrange the order of projects. I personally want to arrange them chronologically and also edit them.

Hope you will continue to dev it. The good thing to know : there is a need for this kind of solution :)

One small flaw: the columns have huge gutters at high resolutions. Example: http://i.imgur.com/BJD5N8o.png

The image example is for effect, but it does look goofy at 1980px viewport width too.

A few weeks back I launched something similar: http://www.mycelial.com

That looks beautiful!

Thanks. I put a lot of work into polishing it.

Can't sign up/in: "Failed while signing up. This username may already be taken."

If you want me to look into this, write me an email with your GitHub username, please.

Free, no ads... what's the business model here, if you don't mind sharing?

There's no business model, as I never wanted to make money with this. It's a fun project and it's hosted on existing infrastructure.

i feel its better to build you own, if its your personal website, and you're a developer. this seems like the easy, lazy way out and shows that you don't have time to make a custom site for yourself to show off your talents.

i can see this idea being used for other professions, but if you're a dev, then i feel your website is a free pass to show off your true skills, creativity..

either way, great job.. keep developing

Looks good! What icon set are you using?

http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/ - it's actually a font face.

Partner with a designer.

reduce header font size for mobile, the site scrolls sideways

nicely responsive !

Nicely Bootstrap

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