

Show HN: Build custom designed CMS sites in the browser without any coding - mattront
http://pinegrow.com

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chrislomax
That's all well and good until people start wanting more power over the
development. It would be nice if these projects that started out with a clear
goal and intentions stayed this way.

The unfortunate truth is CMS's are ten a penny these days and to knock the big
boys off is near impossible

Yes it looks good, yes it looks promising but yes there are 100's of CMS's
already built out there that do this exact job.

Good luck with the endeavour but I think you are about 5 years too late

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mattront
Thanks for your feedback! Our unique value proposition is that designers can
build custom site templates quickly, without coding. Most existing solutions
(Weebly for example) require coding html / css templates for implementing
custom site design. Our target market are designers who don't have a lot of
coding skills or those who don't want to deal with coding for smaller
projects.

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blakeperdue
Did you do any research to validate that designers want something like this?

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mattront
Yes. We did a lot of client web development work (Pinegrow evolved from there)
and we often work with designers who need us to turn their designs into a
functional site. Many designers are not coders and have no interest in dealing
with nuances of html, css and javascript. They are very interested in Pinegrow
as a development tool, backed up by good technical customer support.

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js4all
The demo is impressive. I guess many people would be interested in this. I
would pitch it on Forrst and Dribble where a lot of designers hang out.

From the demo I see that most dimensions are determined the wysiwyg way. Can
you serve different resolutions like those used by smartphones, tablets,
PCs/Macs and printers and are the layouts fluid?

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mattront
Yes, fluid designs are possible. We are also working on option to specify
media based rules for individual elements including serving different image
resolutions to different devices. The main idea is to have one set of content
that is then published in appropriate form to individual publishing channels.

~~~
js4all
Great to hear. People will like it. Non-fluid designs and missing media
support are what I hear most when talking about CMS'es. There will always be
different levels of site building in the future and your product fits in
between them:

    
    
        - Simple page builders
        - Engines with prebuilt themes
        - Engines with custom themes
        - Your Pinegrow 
        - Designed PSDs converted into themes
        - Individually programmed sites using frameworks
        - Totally custom built sites

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mwill
First thing that struck me was professional designers probably wouldn't use
this, they're likely not willing to give up complete design control to a
wysiwyg tool, and most have preferred cms and tools.

So with that said, seems the best target is hobbyists, casuals, or people like
small business owners who want to save a buck by trying to make their own site
(I know several small business owners who have rolled their own site with
dreamweaver, for example)

I'd love to see it with a landing video that talks about the problem it solves
for people with no experience, rather than using terms like "standards
compliant", "hosting platform", etc.

~~~
mattront
In addition to DIY market we also have those designers who until now had to
hire a programmer to turn their designs into a functional website (with cms or
without). Thanks for the landing video suggestion!

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mwill
True, but I would have thought most designers like that would work at a web
dev shop already, thought I couldn't say that for sure.

Forgot to mention: Looks like a great piece of tech and a great product. Can't
wait to see where it goes after launch :D

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beezee
Don't know about anyone else but the submit button isn't working for me.

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mattront
There was a delay with sending form submissions through email. I disabled it,
works much better now.

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clarity
It seems pretty slick!

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mathewsim
Cool, looks interesting. I look forward to checking out its features.

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NewAutumn
Looks wonderful!

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Kwpolska
God, please, anything but Vimeo... I can't watch it on my phone. I could use a
PC, but I cannot do it right now.

