

Show HN: I built an easier way to browse ThemeForest - polyfractal
http://themesquirrel.com

======
polyfractal
I built ThemeSquirrel since I really like ThemeForest, but absolutely hate the
browsing method. I don't want to mouse over every thumbnail to see the larger
preview.

ThemeSquirrel was directly inspired by Scrollsy, the infinite scroller for
Etsy that another HNer created recently
(<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3458214>)

~~~
JonathanBouman
Founder of <http://scrolldit.com> and <http://scrollsy.com> here.

Great job! Love the design. You may consider to preload the first x designs in
the html directly, its better for the seo. What about fixing deeplink urls
when people click your menu? Just use a hash. Will take a look.at your Js
tomorrow, got to sleep now.

------
aculver
Great idea, however one of the things I most dislike about ThemeForest that is
still present here are the marketing images for each theme. I'd rather just
see a picture of what the template looks like.

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adambard
It works really well. But, I consider anyone who finds the dense grid display
easier than browsing down a list a savant; I have trouble focusing on just one
thumbnail in the sea of others. Wasn't there a recent article about the merits
of list vs box display?

Anyhow, if I narrow my window down, it looks great and my complaints go away,
so good work.

~~~
polyfractal
I've begun to suspect the same thing. I'd love to read that article if you can
find the link.

I'll add "Single-column mode" to my to-do list. I think I will also make the
"Large preview mode" default as well for much the same reason.

I built the whole thing thinking a lot of thumbnails would be awesome. Which
is funny because, now that it is built, I agree that it can be distracting.
Oops!

~~~
prsimp
User westiseast posted a blog post[1] about A/B testing a grid vs. list
product displays on his online tea shop, Min River Tea, which lead to a pretty
good discussion on the topic[2].

[1] [http://westiseast.co.uk/blog/product-listing-ab-test-
results...](http://westiseast.co.uk/blog/product-listing-ab-test-results/) [2]
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3223092>

------
XLcommerce
Great site, however hate the infinite scroll. Makes it impossible to bookmark
your place in the list (and is very disorienting). Also the animations of new
tiles coming in are choppy and distracting.

Would work much better as a simple paged list with an option to set page size
for people who prefer more options/page.

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jrberger
would it be possible to have a display mode where: at the left would be a
single-column scrolling list of the templates as they currently are (thumbnail
+ title), then to the right would be scaled down version of the live preview.
then, at the top of the live preview frame, have a previous and next nav items
so a user can just continuously view "near-live" sites as quick as possible.
(edit: <http://imgur.com/50JSp>)

~~~
polyfractal
I think this would be very doable using iFrames. Not sure how well the live-
preview sites would look inside of an iFrame, but it is an intriguing layout.
I'll look into it!

------
ilovezombies
I apologize in advance if this isn't the correct place to ask, but how were
you able to create a page crawler like this? What does your stack look like?

~~~
polyfractal
ThemeForest was scraped using a simple PHP script that fed the data through a
regular expression to pull out the data. I used Baobab[1] to create the
hierarchical nested-set model for categories.

Another PHP script provides the JSON API interface. It takes category ids and
spits out JSON for the client-side script to consume.

The script itself is predominantly jsTree (the navigation on the left) and
jQuery Masonry (the elements in the middle).

I have a 512 Linode acting as the origin server, with CloudFront providing
most of the static assets (gzipped scripts, css, images, etc)

[1] <http://www.sideralis.org/baobab/>

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epikur
It would be nice if clicking a thumbnail went straight to the live preview.
Or, if each thumbnail had two links visible, one for the info page and one for
the live preview. I guess this might not work as well with your referral code
though.

If you switched to a 1-column grid, the rest of the screen could be a frame
that displayed the live preview inline. E.g. Alien Blue for iPad's UI.

~~~
aibon
checkout <http://thethemelist.com>, which provides that. and a real screenshot
of the theme

~~~
polyfractal
That's a pretty slick site. To be honest, I think they pulled it off better
than I did. Thanks sharing it!

------
nhebb
Your site is much better than most of the scrolling preview sites (e.g.,
thethemelist.com is stylistic but too visually overpowering and cluttered for
my eyes to parse). I say this as someone currently looking for a template.
Using your site with large previews, the images were clear and easily scanned.
I was able to find two potential templates and bookmark them within a few
minutes.

------
nedwin
Considering the amount of incredible tech talent at ThemeForest I'm surprised
they haven't built a better way to consume all of their content. Same goes
across the whole Envato company.

Hopefully they're planning a hack day or similar for this exact purpose.

------
byoung2
Looks cool, and a nice way to get some affiliate revenue. I would suggest
adding some filters (like sort by number of purchases, price, etc.), and
search parameters.

~~~
polyfractal
Already on the to-do list for the next version! :)

Unfortunately, Envato has a rather poor affiliate program. You only make money
when A) a new user signs up to their service and B) deposits money into their
account.

Since most people using a tool for ThemeForest _probably_ already have an
account I don't expect to make much money. But that's ok, this was mostly
built for fun and as a portfolio piece.

~~~
byoung2
_Unfortunately, Envato has a rather poor affiliate program_

Yeah, this is an ongoing issue on the Envato forums. Most new users coming to
the site probably don't make a large deposit to start. Like me, they started
out with a deposit large enough to purchase a single file, or around $35.
Later, when they decide they like it, they'll deposit more, but that doesn't
reward the affiliate. I think they should have a smaller percentage, but
spread out over the first X months, or X deposits.

~~~
johnb
We built the referral system long before we had buy it now, and a higher
minimum deposit. The last serious re-visit it got was close to four years ago.
It's one of those made sense at the times things that continue to work OK.

Keeping on top of referral fraud is a bit tricky too, and gets worse the more
complex you make the referral system.

 _edit_ I also remember that way back then when the code was redone there was
no themeforest, just flashden and audiojungle. We were heavily focused on
finding new customers more than directing people to specific files. So that
might give you a bit of context.

------
alpb
Just wondering, do you earn anything out of this? Does Themeforest have an
affiliation model, if so, is it per click or purchase?

~~~
polyfractal
Theoretically, yes, I can earn some money. ThemeForest's affiliate model kinda
sucks though. Users have to click through and then A) sign up for a new
account and B) deposit money into their account.

~~~
justindocanto
I'm sure they would love to hear an affiliate talking about their company like
this.

And this isn't requirements of users who come in via affiliate links, that's
how their entire website works... you have to have an account and deposit
money in order to buy anything.

------
jpdoctor
Much faster browsing. I would like some way of grouping and also upvoting.

I know, we're never satisfied.

~~~
polyfractal
Sorting options (sort by name, price, rating, etc) are on the short list for
me to implement. I actually have a lot of that data in my database right now,
just no code to implement it yet client-side.

Upvoting is interesting though: do you mean voting on ThemeForest "through"
ThemeSquirrel, or some kind of rating system that is local to my web-app?

~~~
jpdoctor
Up voting thru your app (plus comments) might be an interesting value add.

------
47
Will be great if you can filter down to sub category let say Admin Templates

~~~
polyfractal
You can! Click the white acorn to expand/collapse each sub-category

~~~
roryokane
It is not obvious that the acorns are actually disclosure arrows – they look
like just list bullets. I think using the standard triangle shapes would be
better. Or perhaps acorns in the shape of triangles, and pointing right or
down like disclosure arrows.

------
motyar
Cool.. but stop the "Sorry no more item".. I think you got it.

------
justindocanto
Why is this on the front page?

This isn't news, innovative, attractive, useful... none of the above.

This is basically a tumblr of theme photos that have affiliate links to make
you money. This is just an affiliate landing page with a wood texture.

And as somebody who spends thousands a year on TF, this site is not useful to
me. Sorry, just... this doesn't seem like Hacker News to me.

~~~
bootload
_"... Why is this on the front page? This isn't news, innovative, attractive,
useful... none of the above ...this doesn't seem like Hacker News to me."_

You've been here for 25 days and yet your sure this article isn't worthy?

I've been stumbling around for 1797 days and I still can't work out exactly
what articles are "interesting to hackers" [0] Here's a hint. I find it
interesting because @polyfractal displays a "HN" favourite, showing, instead
of telling. If you've got experience using TF do @polyfractal a favour and
explain why, instead of venting? The backbone of HN is hackers building
something, showing, getting some useful feedback & rebuilding.

Lead the way.

[0] "What to submit" ~ <http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html>

~~~
justindocanto
I've been reading HN for almost 2 years now. I just recently made an account
to comment.

As somebody who has beenprogramming for 5 years & has been an avid user of
theme forest for the last year... i still dont find this front page worthy,
down vote or not.

Somebody scraping a site and making a less useful and less attractive version
is not news to me. Websites like this making the front page on Hacker News
make it equally as interesting & useful to me as say... Pintrest.

Had envato sold Theme Forest, ok... that's front news worthy. But a thin,
scraped, less useful version of a site that already exists? I continue to hold
my stance.

~~~
nedwin
I actually find this more useful. I've spent countless hours trolling through
trying to find .psd templates, admin panels, keynote templates and quick and
dirty Wordpress themes for MVP's. This will greatly reduce the friction in
scouring all of the files.

Seems like I'm not the only one who has found it useful and interesting.

