
I'm a designer who learned Django and launched her first webapp in 6 weeks - limedaring
http://www.limedaring.com/im-a-designer-who-learned-django-and-launched-her-first-webapp-in-6-weeks/
======
kenjackson
The following really surprised me coming from a designer: _Build the web app
first, then design it.It was tempting to build the entire interface first but
I deliberately ignored the design until I had things 90% working. This got me
to constantly work on the code before working on the "fun stuff", plus
encouraged me to launch quickly since as soon as the code was finished, all I
had to do was quickly "skin" it before getting it live with the assumption
that I would be iterating on the design after it launches. Also, if I needed
to abandon the project due to some insurmountable code problem, the time
wasted wouldn’t include the time spent on design._

I'm impressed that the site looks so good, with design being skinned on
afterwards. Was it literally just divs, spans, and lists, and then you did the
CSS in one fell swoop (well one fell-iterative swoop)?

~~~
limedaring
Pretty much correct — I built it in plain HTML/CSS to get it working, then
retired to Photoshop to build how it would essentially look (which I took a
lot from the existing weddingtype.com design, so that helped with the speed),
then threw in CSS at the end. None of the extraneous pages, like "About", were
built either until the CSS point, so it wasn't all design.

Thank you!

~~~
justinph
Did you do wireframes or page description diagrams?

I always need something to help me conceptualize what it is that I want to
build, more than just a few bullet points or flowcharts. As a
designer/developer, I find it easiest to just dive into photoshop and mock a
few things up, even if they're not what I would consider final designs. It
helps me think about how things will work, and what the user experience will
be like.

~~~
limedaring
If I'm working on client work, then I always do wireframes first (giving a
choice of three different layout/UX concepts). But for WIL, because I was
working for myself and under a self imposed time constraint, I went straight
from sketches --> PSDs --> CSS.

I'm going to be revamping the profile pages in the near future, and that
process will almost certainly include wireframing, since I have more time to
do it "right".

------
patio11
Congratulations on launching. It is always nice to see startups targeting that
tiny niche market "the other half of the world."

Friendly advice from your neighborhood SEO: owning two sites in one vertical
gives you cross promotion opportunities, particularly if one is more linkable
than the other (gallery is more linkable than commercial offering). That said,
I would give a lot of thought to consolidating your offerings into one site
with two facets if you can do it without confusing customers.

~~~
limedaring
Something I've thought a lot about, and I'm still unsure on what to do. You
mean, consolidate WeddingType and WeddingInviteLove together? It might be a
good win for SEO, but I worry on two sites, while both focusing on weddings,
are targeting two distinctly different groups. That was my reasoning for
making WIL it's own domain, rather than putting it under WeddingType.com.
Still think that they'd be better consolidated?

------
sfphotoarts
"Nothing kills a new idea better than taking too much time on it."

I feel like this might be true of very simplistic ideas, I don't think it
holds in any generally applicable form. Some ideas take time to fully
germinate and flourish. Imagine if the original pyramid builder had put down
the first level and 'launched'.

I think what is clear and of general applicability is that its important to
launch at the _right_ time. Some ideas are timely and need to be synchronized
with what else is going on in the internet space. Some ideas are just ahead of
their time and premature launch is a waste. Some ideas come too late. Like
bringing out a faster fax machine now vs 10 years ago.

The idea that startups should be a frenzy of quickly thrown together systems
only holds because they are built using tools that are solid and robust.

That said, your site looks fabulous, it has all the charm and modern design of
tumblr and the right colors, the right voice and just a great looking site.

~~~
markszcz
Yes, +1 to the site looking great.

I would also say that quote goes hand in hand with this one: "If you’re
learning a new language, don’t do tutorials verbatim"

So true, there will never be a tutorial for exactly what your working on
because if there is, why are you reinventing the wheel? Also if your busy with
tutorials, you might spend to much time on them and never accomplish your main
objective. By then your will to finish starts to diminish.

------
geuis
Tracy is one of the best designers I've ever met and incredibly driven. When
we were working on WeddingType (I was her cofounder) and trying to get into
YC, she jumped head-first into learning to use Django and Python. I'm _very_
happy to see her latest project, it looks wonderful!

~~~
limedaring
Great to have your stamp of approval — I'm sure you remember the
WeddingInviteLove idea from my plan of attack back in the day. :)

~~~
geuis
Yup, sure do. Can't wait to see the rest of the plan come out!

------
jeromec
Fascinating to read from the opposite view! It's my belief that the better
someone is at designing the worse they are at programming, and vice versa; I
think your designing is fantastic, so I can imagine how hard getting technical
must have been. Great job! I also notice some popular themes from HN, such as
pivoting and getting MVPs out the door fast in your strategy, so nicely done
again!

I think you're thoughts on monetizing are right. However, I'd add a couple
suggestions. You fit 9 huge designer samples on the front page. I'd shrink
those a bit and add a "Featured Designers" section over the standard designers
area on the front page which you can charge a premium for. Next, if the
picture samples are small enough like here
([http://www.weddinginvitelove.com/profiles/little-green-
chair...](http://www.weddinginvitelove.com/profiles/little-green-chair-
studio/)) you have great ad space on the right side of the page. You can geo
target visitors location by IP address and charge a premium to local florists,
halls, and other wedding related services. Good luck!

~~~
ubernostrum
_It's my belief that the better someone is at designing the worse they are at
programming, and vice versa_

It's been my actual experience that good designers -- i.e., the ones who
actually know more than just how to use Photoshop -- tend to be quite good at
picking up programming when sufficiently motivated.

It's the transition in the other direction (programming -> design) that seems
to be the killer.

~~~
true_religion
I've seen it go both ways.

Flexible programmers (generalists) have an easy time learning the basics of
design an turning out something that will pass snuff. Its not highly creative
work for sure, but it will be easily usuable to the standards of Facebook.com,
et all.

Flexible designers on the other hand, can do simple coding too when motivated.
However, you're not going to see them say coding a Baysian spam filter by
hand, or making creative use of minhashing for auto-suggestion.

The problem is with specialists.

------
tudorizer
It's a pretty good thing you did there: improving your weakness in coding and
leaving your strong points for later (design). Thumbs up for you. And your a
girl, which makes your story even more awesome!

~~~
OasisG
I've received a lot of backhanded compliments in my life (i.e. you're pretty
for a dark skinned girl) and they are _annoying_ but I don't think this was
one of them. To me it read like, "you're awesome, and the fact that you're
succeeding despite the obstacles is even more awesome!"

I know the goal is equality, but I don't think there's anything equal about
having to ignore parts of your identity in order to be respected and valued.
We can acknowledge that the OP is a woman without losing sight of that goal.

~~~
limedaring
I've been deliberately avoiding this thread, but I should probably step in and
say that I felt no offense at the original comment, and the comment I'm
replying to is a great way to explain why.

I _did_ put gender reference in the title — it would garner me more notice
since I'm a minority. Therefore, doesn't bother me if someone points out
something I was already pointing out. It's feels more ridiculous when people
are like, "Shh, don't mention she's female, it'll be construed that you're
sexist."

There is a lot of grey area here, but I'm glad the original commenter hasn't
been downvoted to oblivion for what seemed a very honest comment.

------
kingkilr
Things like this make me inordinately proud to contribute to open source (in
this case Django). Whenever someone launches something I hope that some small
part of what I've done made their job of building something cool easier, be it
a designer building her first web app, a startup launching their product, or a
journalist building a Pulitzer prize winning site.

------
limedaring
I would love feedback about the product and any interesting ideas about
growing/monetizing. Thanks HN! :)

~~~
thehickmans
First, beautiful design and implementation!

A couple ideas for growing and monetizing:

\- partner with wedding planners to help grow your community of designers and
users \- start subtle (prime placement or pro's choice) advertising
relationships with magazines, planners, and other communities \- expand to
include other aspects of the wedding "package", i.e photographers, florists,
dressmakers/designers

~~~
thehickmans
Another point - I agree that adding customer reviews would be a nice addition,
but how about a twist - allow for "trip advisor" style reviews to show off the
designer's end product. This niche has a large emotional buying component to
it and so a story and pictures would lend itself better than a 5 star system.

------
bdclimber14
You hardly hear of things going the other way. "I'm a developer who learned
how to make sexy designs and launched something that looks good in 6 weeks."
Good job.

~~~
mikexstudios
I feel the reason is that there are many very good tutorials and open source
code to teach people how to develop applications. However, there are not many
good resources for learning design. There are many tutorials on designing
simple buttons or photoshop patterns, but there is a huge gap between those
tutorials and creating modern and functional website designs.

~~~
gammarator
This forthcoming book ("Design for Hackers") might be helpful:
<http://www.kadavy.net/blog/posts/d4h-the-book/>

~~~
kadavy
I agree. (thanks :)

------
sheena
Congratulations from another fairly new programmer. :)

One UI suggestion: I find it clunky when a site forces me to choose from price
ranges that don't overlap (e.g. $5 to 10, $10 to $15, etc.). Generally people
making purchasing decisions aren't thinking in terms of those kinds of ranges;
they simply have a maximum budget in mind. I think it's better to allow users
to specify "under $5", "under $10", etc. so that each successive group
includes the previous groups. I realize there may be a case for trying to get
customers to purchase the most expensive item they're willing to purchase, but
more often than not having to click each range separately just annoys me and I
leave the page.

~~~
Rariel
I loved the site and completely agree with the "under $5" suggestion. It makes
the user's life easier

~~~
limedaring
It's "duh" moments like this that I'm glad to have HN feedback. :) Going to
get that working in the next few days, thanks so much!

------
autalpha
Congratulations on your success. The site demonstrates a lot of your
characters and it's all looking good :)

My (sincere) question is regarding the help you had. I noticed you credited
extensively to a few folks and your boyfriend. Other than Django/Python,
there's also server setup (BitCould?)--did you do that yourself as well? Did
you work on this full time for 6 weeks or was this an after 9-5 hours project?

I don't mean to pry; just simply want other folks out there who are also self-
taught and are working on their own projects to understand the extend of your
hard work with great assistance from experts in achieving this great result.
In other words, could you explain the "magic" a bit so we can have a deeper
understanding of your process?

A lot of time, people gloss over the hard work parts and in some way that
perpetuates a misunderstanding which says: "it's easy to create something
good." I don't that is the case. Even in The Social Network, Zuck seems to
somehow create Facemash or even Facebook in matters of hours while drinking
beer. But I digress.

Thank you for sharing.

~~~
limedaring
Server setup was through <http://DotCloud.com>, who set it up for me (I joined
them before they were officially launched so there were a few bumps in the
road that were paved out by DotCloud themselves for me). Server stuff would
have been a much bigger issue if I didn't have them.

As for hours, I worked full-time-ish. I don't have a "real" job — my real job
was WeddingType until things fell apart for a bit. I started work on WIL but
was also doing client projects on the side to pump up my bank account a bit. I
have no idea how many hours total I worked on WIL — it was one of those things
where you wake up at noon and work until 2am on and off on various projects,
which was mostly WIL but a lot of client stuff as well.

Any more specific questions? Please pry away if I missed anything!

~~~
l0c0b0x
You should add "...and did this by sleeping 10 hours each day!" to your main
title.

Good job in getting this done! Makes me want to tech my wife a thing or two
about web-development.

~~~
limedaring
Heh — yeah, I meant, start work by noon, but I will admit I'm a stickler for
8+ hours of sleep at all times. I'm a complete zombie when I get less, and my
productivity nosedives.

I'm lucky my significant other, @shazow, is doing the same no-job-working-on-
projects thing as me, and with him being a developer and me as a designer, we
can work well together to launch projects. It's also a great motivator when
you have someone to bug you to work whenever they see you on reddit.com. :P

------
dablya
"If you’re learning a new language, don’t do tutorials verbatim — take what
they’re teaching, apply it to a different product, and you will learn a lot
faster."

By the time you're done researching how to apply the concept to a slightly
different problem, you've learned much more than the tutorial is covering.

What about going the other way? I'm a developer that is intimidated by any
kind of ui design... What do I do?

~~~
limedaring
Just do it. I was a shitty designer when I started, and have only gotten
better after much, much, much iteration and many different projects. It isn't
quick, but it's the only way.

------
rokhayakebe
I have a product in the works very similar to your original idea with a focus
on businesses.

The directory is good, but it limits your potential unless you expand beyond
wedding and include more events (Birthdays, Graduations, etc...). By sending
visitors to other websites, you are also letting go of some of your revenue.

I decided to try offering templates (the whole set: business card, LH, ENV,
etc..) instead and I think LD can do a great job here for Events. You can
differentiate yourself by providing great artwork users can edit on their
computer (pdf, ai, psd), or they can also pay you to edit documents properly.

Templates are scalable. Write once, distribute many times. You can also change
the price as you please and sell them on your site, the designers' site,
inkd.com, graphicriver.net and even through other design-related websites.

I would like to see a site that offers templates with a focus on events. They
would have me covered from wedding, to baby shower, to birthday celebration,
to girls night out. Basically all things fun. I think this is one area where
LimeDaring could do very well. Show me where I can get great document design
done for my events, but even better actually be the place where I can actually
get them.

~~~
limedaring
I disagree with you that expanding beyond wedding (at least, on one branded
site) is a good idea. Niche domains and sites are going to garner more trust
from consumers than a giant website that does everything. Look at
tinyprints.com and weddingpaperdivas.com — you can start covering more areas,
but splitting the sites into different branded areas will probably do more
good than doing everything with one website.

Templates are a WeddingType.com area, and will be explored. :)

------
NxguiGui
Great. Is always good for designers to look under the hood of apps then apply
function over form. But i am concerned deeply that startup mania is looking
for the mantra "Do it first than think how to monetize". It must be opposite.
Think about business idea or how to make value for someone than make
something. On the other side. I have similar experience with my developers
they were so proud of them selves and start to think that i am stupid because
i am designer and don't know nothing about programming. After a year
dedication what a surprise \- now they don't mess around::)) Programming is
not for every designer, but if one can put an effort and be persistent it pays
big in t he end.

------
joecasper
Beautiful site. Congrats on the launch and getting up to speed so quickly with
Django and Python. All of the resources you mentioned are excellent for anyone
trying to learn Django/Python.

------
bemmu
I'd like to learn the design side more. How did you come up with the nice
color scheme for the site, just gut feeling?

I've heard recommendations of sites like <http://colorschemedesigner.com/> but
if I plug in your maroon flush color from behind "Inky Livie's Workshop", I
can't get color scheme designer to recommend any of your other colors no
matter which setting I choose.

~~~
limedaring
The WeddingInviteLove scheme was taken from WeddingType.com (tying the two
apps together that way), which I believe was taken from
<http://kuler.adobe.com>. No idea where the original color scheme is on there
now, but I'm pretty sure I got it from there.

------
kmfrk
If you're single, you should totally go on a date with this guy:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1891187>.

Great job on the site. I prefer to delude myself into believing that you
accomplished this so fast because you already had a viable MVP, but a part of
me still thinks that you're superhuman.

~~~
limedaring
I think that @shazow might have an issue with that. ;)

By viable MVP, do you mean WeddingType? The two have completely different
code, so I wasn't able to redo anything I had before. I essentially had a
design framework, but major design is essentially different.

Superhuman? Nice, thanks. :)

------
bambax
Paris (France) is listed in the available cities, but there are no results...?
(Why list it then?)

~~~
limedaring
Because if a designer was signing up for a profile, they use that same list –
if Paris wasn't on there, I'd have to add it manually when someone needed to
sign up.

It's _not_ the best solution – this is where my programming inability shows
through. Going to be revamping that soon, but right now, it's on there so
people can sign up with it. :)

~~~
bambax
Oh, ok, but why did you include "Nantes"? It's unlikely Nantes was already
there and it just happened that a designer found it?

I don't see why there couldn't be a different list for signup and for search;
or the ability to add cities during signup...

~~~
limedaring
Because someone emailed me and asked me to add them under that location. :)

Yeah, probably, I just haven't thought it through yet. I'm still not a
rockstar programmer — I figured out that I can make a list in the model which
would be referenced by the registration, search, and also apply to the
property in the profile model. Initially it seems like having the same list in
two different locations and slightly different in each seems like a bad idea,
but also having random locations on the search list without results is too.
Though maybe I could write something in the search view that will remove
listings from the form if they don't have any profiles associated with them...

</n00b>

------
philfreo
Minor, but you should rename the big button on your apps homepage from
"Submit" to "Search"

------
docgnome
Wow. Thanks for posting this! Besides being interesting, it has inspired me to
go pick up a personal project I've sort of abandoned! I'm really hoping to get
it working enough to do a Show HN post for some feedback. Thanks! :-)

------
jefe78
My company has two people learning Django right now(including myself). Do you
have any recommendations for learning resources? One person is used to working
with frameworks, I'm not.

What was your take on the learning curve?

~~~
jranck
Check out djangobook.com its online and free to everyone. It will give you a
good understanding of the fundamentals as well as a few advanced topics. Other
than that the best advice I could give you is to jump in feet first and don't
look back.

------
jasonlynes
any insight as to your YC interview? anything you'd do differently? was your
lack of hacking experience part of why you were turned down? advice for those
who get an interview on how to survive it?

~~~
limedaring
We were told that we didn't have a magic bullet for getting customers, though
I'd think that lack of complete hacking experience (we were missing a crucial
back end component) probably didn't help either.

If you get an interview, just let them ask as many questions as possible. 5
word answers. Don't elaborate unless they ask, keep it simple. Stay calm. :P

------
will_lam
That's awesome - definitely helps if you've got the help of @shazow lol.
Definitely inspired me to stop being such a whiney bitch and just LEARN.
Thanks for sharing!

------
tsycho
Minor.....but in your About page, the "Get listed..." and "Search for...."
buttons would look better if they were vertically aligned. I am using Chrome
on Windows.

~~~
limedaring
Yeah, they were in Firefox when I built that page but I (oddly) forgot to
check on other browsers.

I'm actually in Rome right now and my laptop was stolen a week ago (sigh...)
so fixing errors like this unfortunately have to wait until I can use
@shazow's computer.

Thanks, on my list. :D

------
cavilling_elite
The site looks amazing. I sent it to my gf who is just finishing up restoring
a Kelsey Excelsior letterpress for this exact purpose.

------
joh6nn
how much programming experience did you have before you started?

~~~
limedaring
I took classes in Computer Science (in Java) back in college but detested
programming and switched to Art & Design, so programming logic wasn't an
entirely new concept to me. I also worked for 4.5 years at a startup doing
Java, no programming, but had to read a lot of code so it kept me at least in
the loop. Right when I started with Django and this project, I did Learn
Python the Hard Way, which brought me completely up to speed about logic and
all that.

Otherwise, I don't even do Javascript (it's a major weakpoint), and much
prefer "visual" duties like HTML/CSS/design.

~~~
sgallant
I'm a designer (psd/html/css) going through Python the Hard Way right now, and
I'm loving it. What was your main resource for learning Django?

~~~
limedaring
Lots of random tutorials on the internet beyond what was mentioned in my blog
post. One thing I forgot to mention is that there wasn't one resource that did
everything for me — @kennethlove's tutorial got me about 30% of the way, then
it was googling for everything else I needed and learning from
StackOverflow/my awesome friends/etc. No Django application really did
everything for me as well — every one I installed I had to override in some
way to make it fit to my product.

So there wasn't "one" resource — it was a lot of scrappy Googling and asking
for help for every problem that got in my way.

------
eaxitect
wow!...amazing works, I agree the key is to launch fast...

------
nithyad
Congratulations girl!

------
jsmo
way to go!

------
_corbett
nice work!

------
expertio
It's just so inspiring to read this kind of stories. We are kind of doing the
same thing, bootstrap from nothing. I wish there is more help out there for
people like us.

------
eurohacker
hey, you learned the Django so fast,

did you know any other programming language before learning Django - like PHP,

did you know CSS/html before learning Django

isnt PHP easier to learn ?

~~~
limedaring
\- Back in the day I knew Java (when I was a CSC major briefly) but I haven't
written anything in it for years. \- Yes, I'd consider myself very strong in
HTML/CSS \- So I've heard, but I've also heard it has its major downsides!

------
sushumna
Good Job !! Very nice design. All the best.

