
Show HN: Launching Hoverboard – beautiful, responsive portfolios - illdave
http://hoverboard.io/
======
xianshou
So many have done this before and recently - Coderwall, Collegefeed, and
Path.To, just to name the first three that occur to me - but I've never seen
portfolio minimalism done so well. It integrates blogs, projects, credentials,
and social profiles efficiently and beautifully.

Now, please allow me to change the order of skills without typing them all
back in...then put in a Stripe box, shut up and take my money.

~~~
aleksandrm
<http://mycelial.com> and <http://prtflio.eu> to add to that list.

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calinet6
Ha! I could have really really used this two days ago. I built my own in
HTML/CSS for an interview.

There's a question: how does it sit with people that as a designer and
developer, they should be able to (and be proud of) designing and building
their own custom portfolio? Isn't the portfolio itself sort of a statement of
your skills, and isn't it saying something if you offload that work to someone
else?

Your site is beautiful. Really, hands down some great design work.

One thing I find lacking is that I can't see what the end product will look
like before I sign up—nor even after I sign up. A screenshot of what exactly
you're going to make for me and how it will look would really entice me.

~~~
StavrosK
<http://hoverboard.io/stavros> to see mine, as an example. I got bored after a
bit, and figured that adding a portfolio to my personal site/blog would be
much, much better, even though it wouldn't look as good.

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whalesalad
Wow, this is really great! I _really_ love what you've built. The mobile-
friendly layout is a huge plus.

Some off-the-cuff notes for your backlog:

I might suggest overriding the default text selection (::selection) color. I
say this because the active state of your fields are blue, and my default OS X
highlight color is also blue, so I can't differentiate highlighted text while
editing.

Also, it would be fun to quickly link this with twitter and or github to
bootstrap a profile, as I found myself going there to compile the basic info
about myself.

And like some others here have said ... add a simple premium play that lets me
point a domain here and I'd seriously consider abandoning my blog and using
this for my own personal domain. I was just thinking this morning that I'd
like to redo my site to showcase some of the projects I am working on along
with some basic info about myself. This would be perfect for that.

Congratulations on shipping!

~~~
illdave
Thanks! Really appreciate the feedback too - annoyingly I don't think it's
possible to override the ::selection colour for inputs. I'll keep looking for
a solution (that, ideally, doesn't involve changing the blue input field).
I've added your notes to my to-do list :)

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untog
The only group I don't see this working for is designers- pretty much every
designer I've seen has made their own portfolio site and it's a great idea to-
it's the one place you can show exactly how you'd make something if you had
the freedom.

For coders and writers, etc., though- I love it.

~~~
JoeKM
I think that idea works for programmers too.

Designer: Creates frontend to their portfolio. Programmer: Creates backend to
their portfolio.

My favorite portfolios are those where they create the backend and frontend,
and host everything on Github so you can see exactly how it's made.

------
illdave
Hi guys - I'd genuinely love to hear your feedback about Hoverboard. If you
have any questions I'd be happy to answer them either here or (if you prefer)
you can email me at dave@hoverboard.io.

~~~
psteinweber
It should be possible to select 'start dates' earlier than 2008 when adding
job roles.

~~~
illdave
Thanks for the heads up - I don't know how I missed that flaw. It's on the
list to fix. [Edit: Just fixed it]

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binarydreams
Great UI/UX - nice to see flat ui being adopted by more and more upcoming
sites/apps.

\- Custom domains would be nice to have.

\- Connecting and pulling info from social presence (twitter, linkedin, etc.)
would be a great addition (something like coderwall does?).

\- Choose the header image/background from some settings area with a list of
stock options. Currently it shows some default one that can't be changed.

With these many of us wouldn't mind paying $x/month, yeah :)

<http://hoverboard.io/rishabhp>

~~~
illdave
Awesome, thanks for the feedback - it's all really useful (and it's all
hitting the to-do list)

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blairbeckwith
You really, really need to let me pay you for this. I'd pay $10/month for
this, easily.

Do you allow custom domains?

~~~
illdave
Aha, thanks for the kind words. I haven't got plans to allow custom domains
just yet - but if there's enough demand (which it sounds like there might be),
then I won't rule it out.

~~~
xauronx
Another for custom domains. Perhaps that's a non-scummy way of generating some
income. Charge a small fee for the ability to use a custom domain.

~~~
evo_9
Great suggestion Xauronx - keeping it free for the majority to check out I
think is huge to keep it growing.

I really like the idea of a paying for a premium feature like a custom URL if
you need it.

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orangethirty
How does this make money? Giving my information to a free service like this
one makes me uneasy. The UI is downright beautiful.

~~~
illdave
The short answer is it doesn't make money right now, but there are possible
alternatives for the future like adding a job board. Hosting is so insanely
cheap that the cost of running Hoverboard is incredibly small. And thanks for
the UI comment!

~~~
orangethirty
To be honest, I wish I could pay for a service like this. One that would
respect my privacy. Given the needs of freelancers and consultants, I reason
$50 a year is a good price. You have to understand what your product is: a
lead generation tool. Those are always worth the money.

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hardik988
This looks really great. I just wanted to point out that the "Write a Post"
feature doesn't seem to work. I wrote a test entry and clicked save, it says:

    
    
        Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.

~~~
gmaster1440
I'm getting the same error.

~~~
illdave
Thanks for the heads up guys, sounds like a bug that I need to track down.

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antihero
Why was the example Brighton? Geolocation stuff or are you a
skiffmate/werker/something else around here?

As a side note, been looking for something like this to start writing about
things.

~~~
illdave
Ahaha, no - the example is Brighton for everyone. I used to live there
(although I'm temporarily living in Liverpool at the moment while my
girlfriend works on a masters).

~~~
antihero
It's a rather fantastic place. There's a whole bunch of us here on HN so I'm
sure people will notice.

Is there a way to make my profile less...blue?

~~~
jot
Maybe it's time for a HN Brighton meetup?

~~~
antihero
Isn't it called BarCamp? That said, this year people need to step in and help
organise.

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FramesPerSushi
As mentioned, there are already lots of portfolio tools. However yours is
really nice and I love the built in endorsement feature. My one criticism is
there's too much branding on each user's portfolio. I wouldn't want the huge
green "want a portfolio like this" link at the bottom of my portfolio. The
logo link (top left) and "Powered by Hoverboard" link (bottom right) is
enough.

------
yamilg
Great product! I really like it. One thing, I would like to be able to show my
real name instead of user name (in the title, at the top).

Keep it up!

~~~
saiko-chriskun
Yeah much prefer my name rather than my online handle.

~~~
illdave
Sounds good - I'll get that fixed in the next day or so.

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simonbarker87
Very nice, just the right amount of detail requested so that it is quick to
fill in but not shallow and meaningless.

<http://hoverboard.io/simonbarker>

BUG?: when uploading images it would be nice if there were some
acknowledgement as, on Chrome Mac at least, there is no feed back until save
and refresh.

~~~
illdave
Thanks! And yeah, the image upload lack of feedback definitely needs fixing.

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xpressyoo
Really nice. I would love to have the possibility to upload a few different
screenshots (e.g. <4) for each project...

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_yb
I really like it, great design job. You might already have thoughts in this
direction but I would think about how to benefit from having a lot of devs and
designers at the same place, posting blog posts and projects (the first thing
that comes to mind is some sort of feeds). Good luck!

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prezjordan
Excellent! Beautiful, streamlined, and all the features work really together.
Very polished product. One issue, is that my header image clashes with my
"tagline." [0] Any way to fix this?

[0]: <http://hoverboard.io/jordanscales>

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kristopher
White text on a white background should be fixed. Perhaps detect automatically
or allow for user customization.

Example: <http://hoverboard.io/kristopher>

~~~
illdave
You're right, that does need to be fixed. I've been looking for some simple,
elegant solutions to that. I've added a very slight text shadow that helps it
stand out a bit better (but I'm still not quite happy about it).

------
teamonkey
Great! But I want to add a history of my projects and some of them were dated
prior to 2008 (and none of them are scheduled to start in the future).

Also, I'd really like to point people at my linkedin profile.

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kaeawc
For someone who doesn't want to customize everything and have a quick UI
flushed out, its a good showcase for developers. I like the idea I have a
hoverboard...

------
thehodge
I signed up the other day, looks like a really nice start (I love the
interface).

I would suggest that it could pull in certain stuff from linkedin as a
baseline (roles and such)

~~~
thehodge
<http://hoverboard.io/thehodge>

------
thekingshorses
This is pretty good (better than mine). But as a frontend developer, I like to
create my own site/portfolio.

<http://premii.com>

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kohanz
The site looks really great. I'm impressed!

One small typo on your personal post about shipping hoverboard:

"But that's more - Hoverboard isn't just a portfolio"

I believe you meant "But there's more..."

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faramarz
I really like this. Well done! It is a very crowded space, especially as of
late. Goodluck!

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edoceo
Another one to add to the list: <http://ars.io/>

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YPetrov
This looks great, love the design work! How did you decide to go into that
direction?

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thesergie
Love the minimalist style. Give me some more design options and I'll pay for
it.

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aiiane
The site looks nice, I just wish it weren't going with the endorsements trend.

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kristopher
Also, perhaps it was not obvious, but is there a way to change my password?

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pionar
ScanSafe reports this as a phishing site. Might want to look into that.

~~~
illdave
Thanks for the heads up - absolutely no idea why that would be flagged, but
I'll track down what's happening.

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will_critchlow
Beautiful. Nice work Dave.

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HugoDias
Really nice.

