

Show HN: Custom CMS using Node and Backbone for my girlfriend's fashion blog - maxmzd_
http://vanillaextract.me

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heyalexej
Nice project. A couple things I noticed: You're leaking emails and IP
addresses of commenters in your source code. There are plenty of dead pages[1]
in the index which you could redirect to the home page or just disallow Google
to index either via robots.txt or Google Webmaster Tools.

Edit: Skimming through the site I couldn't actually find a single affiliate
link from the image labels.

[1]
[https://www.google.com/#q=site%3Avanillaextract.me+inurl%3At...](https://www.google.com/#q=site%3Avanillaextract.me+inurl%3Atag+OR+inurl%3Apage+OR+inurl%3Acategory)

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maxmzd_
Hey, thanks for checking it out!

Where are you seeing the emails and IP addresses of the commenters?

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eswat
Pretty slick. Can’t wait to see the nuts & bolts of it if you decide to
release it.

Two problems I noticed so far:

1) Images are getting cut off from the header in the individual blog posts
(I’m using Chrome 36 on OS X)

2) Back button functionality is broken, would be nice to have that working

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maxmzd_
Thanks!

Did you happen to resize your browser? I notice that some things get janky
because of the waypoints after resize. Need to work on that.

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eswat
I believe I was looking at it full-res at the time - 1920 x 1200 - but resized
after and noticed I could see the photos fine when I resized smaller.

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msurguy
Very cool idea for the fashion bloggers. You might even sell this CMS (per
client basis) or if you gather a team of web developers - become an agency
working with fashion bloggers.

There is some potentially good money in this.

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maxmzd_
Yeah, lots of opportunity here for sure. One thing I've been getting good
feedback on from some fashion bloggers is the "shop the look" feature on each
photo. Affiliate links is how many fashion bloggers monetize.

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vsergiu
Have you used a plugin to do that or is it custom? Since you can make a plugin
out of that and sell it

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maxmzd_
I wrote custom Backbone.js views and subviews to handle the shop tags. But
you're right, this would be an awesome WordPress plugin. The affiliate network
RewardStyle has something similar, but it's lacking a few things, which is why
I wrote my own.

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JustinBrown
Site looks great, but do you have any peeks into the actual CMS? Would love to
see!

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maxmzd_
Thanks! And not yet, but I'm working on a blog post to show it off a bit more.

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sathvikl
very very cool ! Can you point to some links that you used to learn node,
backbone.. what do you use for layout design ?

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maxmzd_
Thanks!

I learned Node.js by watch some of Pedro Teixeira's screencasts:
[http://nodetuts.com/](http://nodetuts.com/)

I'm using Express.js as the backend framework and read some tutorials on that.
Can't remember which ones.

I learned Backbone.js by reading the docs:
[http://backbonejs.org/](http://backbonejs.org/) along with reading source
code of projects I was familiar with.

This best practices article came in handy too:
[http://geeks.bizzabo.com/post/83917692143/7-battle-tested-
ba...](http://geeks.bizzabo.com/post/83917692143/7-battle-tested-backbonejs-
rules-for-amazing-web-apps)

For layout design, I tend to sketch my UX ideas on paper. For this site, since
it's so minimal, I designed straight in the browser using HTML / CSS (SASS)

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vsergiu
Is it open source?

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maxmzd_
No, I wrote it solely for the purpose of this blog, but I wouldn't mind open
sourcing it after I add a couple more things to the admin panel (if there's
interest).

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vsergiu
I think there is interest :). Btw how do we access the admin?

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maxmzd_
Cool, good to hear! I will push towards it. Admin panel is located at a hidden
URL right now. There are no user accounts yet, just a single, protected
resource with a private key. That's one of the things I need to add.

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narzero
looks amazing!

