4 ms·

Show HN: VanityPageMaker - Easiest way to create your own personal brand page

23 points by jason_tko 15y ago

jason_tko 15y ago
I'm the business co-founder at MakeLeaps in Japan. As a way to scratch my own itch for a simple online profile page, I wrote a spec, registered a domain, and project managed the creation of VanityPageMaker. I considered using http://about.me http://about.me, but somehow I prefer a simple HTML site that I can control, edit and host myself. This kind of site is well within the talents of my co-founder Paul, but I opted to hire and manage freelancers so Paul could continue focusing on managing our small technical team building our invoicing platform for businesses in Japan. Basic Tech Specs: Ruby on Rails + MySQL database + Nginx proxing to Unicorn workers, hosted on Rackspace Cloud Server. This is very much a version 1.0, but all comments and feedback are appreciated. I'm in the process of writing a blog post on how I designed and built VPM as a non-technical co-founder and without writing a line of code. For some sample profiles, please check the 3 featured profiles on the main page.
patio11 15y ago
I made one (Jason and company are good friends of mine). The site works as advertised. http://www.kalzumeus.com/vanity http://www.kalzumeus.com/vanity
- amirmc 15y ago
  That is the first time I've ever seen what you look like.
  - po 15y ago
    Well, he doesn't always look like that. Sometimes he's sleeping. :-)
- jason_tko 15y ago
  Cheers again Patrick for your ideas and thoughts on VPM, much appreciated !
grantjgordon 15y ago
Is this significantly different than, say, flavors.me or about.me?
- jason_tko 15y ago
  Yes. This site does not require an account, and it doesn't host your profile. It generates a zip file, generated by VPM after you've entered with your own text and images. Then you have full control and ownership over your own profile, and you can host it wherever you like, such as mine on http://www.jasonwinder.com http://www.jasonwinder.com
thekevan 15y ago
I though the final step was a little misleading. It made it seem as you have to enter your email address to get the download. I clicked download without entering my email address and I thought it was going to give me an error saying it need my email address. It worked, though.
- jason_tko 15y ago
  Thanks for the feedback - I thought it was clear this step was optional with a call to action of "Generate my Vanity Page!" down the bottom, and text along these lines: > Would you like to hear about exciting new features from VanityPageMaker.com? > Enter your E-Mail and click SIGN UP to be added to the Newsletter list. I'll have a think about the best way to communicate this though. Cheers for taking the time to comment.
  - blhack 15y ago
    Hey Jason, I though the exact same thing, and had even entered my spamtrap email before noticing that it wasn't actually necessary. (By spamtrap, I just mean an old yahoo account that I never get emails I care about to). It might be useful to include some text there indicating that you're all done creating your vanity profile now, and by the way if you'd like to sign up for the newsletter, here is how to do so.
krmmalik 15y ago
This is exactly what i've been looking for, for the past couple of years now. At first I was using MyOnePage and About.me looked interesting, but this solution is perfect for me because it gives me the granular control that I need. Some hosting might have been nice, but i'm certainly not going to complain at all. I was stuck of a minute thinking about where I could host my html file since both my hosting sites are running Wordpress blogs and it can be a bit of a pain getting pure html pages to work alongside Wordpress - At least in my experience. So i just opted for my public folder on Dropbox instead. Its as good as any other location, hopefully. Unless anyone knows of any distinct reason as to why i shouldnt do it this way? Here's my profile link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3417415/krmmalik/index.html http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3417415/krmmalik/index.html
pan69 15y ago
I really like this idea. The only suggestion I can make is to hire a really good designer to work on this because everything sort of looks all over the shop. To be a vanity page it really needs a solid level of polish on the visual side of things.
mvkel 15y ago
I like the idea of it just being a batch process for making creative files you can just dump into a web directory somewhere. Flavors.me and About.me are great, but if you want that extra level of editorial/functionality control. I have to ask: is this just a fun project, or is there a business here? I have to wonder how many people really want/care about this extra control, outside of web developers, who would probably build their own from scratch anyway. From a business perspective, you almost have a product that has competition (vanity page site) marketed to people who don't need it (web developers/administrators). A tough place to be.

23 points by jason_tko 15y ago

I'm the business co-founder at MakeLeaps in Japan. As a way to scratch my own itch for a simple online profile page, I wrote a spec, registered a domain, and project managed the creation of VanityPageMaker. I considered using http://about.me http://about.me, but somehow I prefer a simple HTML site that I can control, edit and host myself. This kind of site is well within the talents of my co-founder Paul, but I opted to hire and manage freelancers so Paul could continue focusing on managing our small technical team building our invoicing platform for businesses in Japan. Basic Tech Specs: Ruby on Rails + MySQL database + Nginx proxing to Unicorn workers, hosted on Rackspace Cloud Server. This is very much a version 1.0, but all comments and feedback are appreciated. I'm in the process of writing a blog post on how I designed and built VPM as a non-technical co-founder and without writing a line of code. For some sample profiles, please check the 3 featured profiles on the main page.

patio11 15y ago

I made one (Jason and company are good friends of mine). The site works as advertised. http://www.kalzumeus.com/vanity http://www.kalzumeus.com/vanity

amirmc 15y ago
That is the first time I've ever seen what you look like.
- po 15y ago
  Well, he doesn't always look like that. Sometimes he's sleeping. :-)
jason_tko 15y ago
Cheers again Patrick for your ideas and thoughts on VPM, much appreciated !

grantjgordon 15y ago

Is this significantly different than, say, flavors.me or about.me?

jason_tko 15y ago
Yes. This site does not require an account, and it doesn't host your profile. It generates a zip file, generated by VPM after you've entered with your own text and images. Then you have full control and ownership over your own profile, and you can host it wherever you like, such as mine on http://www.jasonwinder.com http://www.jasonwinder.com

thekevan 15y ago

I though the final step was a little misleading. It made it seem as you have to enter your email address to get the download. I clicked download without entering my email address and I thought it was going to give me an error saying it need my email address. It worked, though.

jason_tko 15y ago
Thanks for the feedback - I thought it was clear this step was optional with a call to action of "Generate my Vanity Page!" down the bottom, and text along these lines: > Would you like to hear about exciting new features from VanityPageMaker.com? > Enter your E-Mail and click SIGN UP to be added to the Newsletter list. I'll have a think about the best way to communicate this though. Cheers for taking the time to comment.
- blhack 15y ago
  Hey Jason, I though the exact same thing, and had even entered my spamtrap email before noticing that it wasn't actually necessary. (By spamtrap, I just mean an old yahoo account that I never get emails I care about to). It might be useful to include some text there indicating that you're all done creating your vanity profile now, and by the way if you'd like to sign up for the newsletter, here is how to do so.

krmmalik 15y ago

This is exactly what i've been looking for, for the past couple of years now. At first I was using MyOnePage and About.me looked interesting, but this solution is perfect for me because it gives me the granular control that I need. Some hosting might have been nice, but i'm certainly not going to complain at all. I was stuck of a minute thinking about where I could host my html file since both my hosting sites are running Wordpress blogs and it can be a bit of a pain getting pure html pages to work alongside Wordpress - At least in my experience. So i just opted for my public folder on Dropbox instead. Its as good as any other location, hopefully. Unless anyone knows of any distinct reason as to why i shouldnt do it this way? Here's my profile link: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3417415/krmmalik/index.html http://dl.dropbox.com/u/3417415/krmmalik/index.html

pan69 15y ago

I really like this idea. The only suggestion I can make is to hire a really good designer to work on this because everything sort of looks all over the shop. To be a vanity page it really needs a solid level of polish on the visual side of things.

mvkel 15y ago

I like the idea of it just being a batch process for making creative files you can just dump into a web directory somewhere. Flavors.me and About.me are great, but if you want that extra level of editorial/functionality control. I have to ask: is this just a fun project, or is there a business here? I have to wonder how many people really want/care about this extra control, outside of web developers, who would probably build their own from scratch anyway. From a business perspective, you almost have a product that has competition (vanity page site) marketed to people who don't need it (web developers/administrators). A tough place to be.