7 ms·

Show HN: Launching Hoverboard – beautiful, responsive portfolios

144 points by illdave 13y ago

thehodge 13y ago
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 13y ago
  http://hoverboard.io/thehodge http://hoverboard.io/thehodge
will_critchlow 13y ago
Beautiful. Nice work Dave.
orangethirty 13y ago
How does this make money? Giving my information to a free service like this one makes me uneasy. The UI is downright beautiful.
- illdave 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
illdave 13y ago
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.
- glimcat 13y ago
  Thanks. I emailed you a few glitches and such that I encountered. This looks really, really nice so far, particularly for its initial release. There are a few things like discovery and analytics which obviously aren't in at this stage...but other than that, it looks much nicer than most of the similar sites that I've seen. http://hoverboard.io/grayj http://hoverboard.io/grayj
- erickhill 13y ago
  This being a "portfolio" site, when I click on a project I expect to see multiple screenshots, etc. Instead it's just text. I think if it allowed for a more in-depth treatment of using images per-project, that would be simply fantastic.
- aqidd 13y ago
  Great product! Beautiful UI, simple & easy to use. One thing though, I'm kinda fill my job board randomly and I don't know how to sort them now (haha). Maybe you can implement auto sort based on date? Really love it by the way. http://hoverboard.io/aqidd http://hoverboard.io/aqidd
- psteinweber 13y ago
  It should be possible to select 'start dates' earlier than 2008 when adding job roles.
  - illdave 13y ago
    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]
faramarz 13y ago
I really like this. Well done! It is a very crowded space, especially as of late. Goodluck!
antihero 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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?
    - illdave 13y ago
      Aha, not right now - but if there's enough demand I could potentially look to add that option in. Awesome cover photo, by the way.
      - antihero 13y ago
        I feel bad as it's not my photo, but I couldn't find a suitably high res picture that worked as well. Plus it's fucking old so there's less of a chance the photographer would give a flying fuck.
    - thehodge 13y ago
      +1 for having a colour tweak on certain things.. even from a list of 12 in a palette (would be good on a per project basis)
    - jot 13y ago
      Maybe it's time for a HN Brighton meetup?
blairbeckwith 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
  - blairbeckwith 13y ago
    Custom colors and basic styling would be amazing too. I love the look, but now I'm struggling to find a picture that looks nice with blue and turquoise.
    - illdave 13y ago
      Just so you know, it adds a black and white filter to any image you pick (if that helps - which it may...not).
      - blairbeckwith 13y ago
        Hmm, interesting. I'm not seeing this behavior on mine: http://hoverboard.io/blair http://hoverboard.io/blair
        illdave 13y ago
        Ah - just noticed Firefox doesn't display it in black and white. If you check it out in Chrome/Safari you should see it in black and white (out of interest, which version do you prefer?)
        blairbeckwith 13y ago
        Ahh, I'm sorry. I should have specified I was in Firefox (and should have tried it in Chrome!) Black and white looks tons better, but I think it would depend on the picture.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
untog 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
binarydreams 13y ago
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 http://hoverboard.io/rishabhp
- illdave 13y ago
  Awesome, thanks for the feedback - it's all really useful (and it's all hitting the to-do list)
xpressyoo 13y ago
Really nice. I would love to have the possibility to upload a few different screenshots (e.g. <4) for each project...
xianshou 13y ago
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 13y ago
  http://mycelial.com http://mycelial.com and http://prtflio.eu http://prtflio.eu to add to that list.
- austengary 13y ago
  Was thinking the same: been done. Though came to the same conclusion: quite elegant; to a degree further than those predecessors.
kaeawc 13y ago
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...
edoceo 13y ago
Another one to add to the list: http://ars.io/ http://ars.io/
HugoDias 13y ago
Really nice.
whalesalad 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 :)
hardik988 13y ago
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 13y ago
  I'm getting the same error.
  - illdave 13y ago
    Thanks for the heads up guys, sounds like a bug that I need to track down.
thekingshorses 13y ago
This is pretty good (better than mine). But as a frontend developer, I like to create my own site/portfolio. http://premii.com http://premii.com
yamilg 13y ago
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 13y ago
  Yeah much prefer my name rather than my online handle.
  - illdave 13y ago
    Sounds good - I'll get that fixed in the next day or so.
pionar 13y ago
ScanSafe reports this as a phishing site. Might want to look into that.
- illdave 13y ago
  Thanks for the heads up - absolutely no idea why that would be flagged, but I'll track down what's happening.
teamonkey 13y ago
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.
thesergie 13y ago
Love the minimalist style. Give me some more design options and I'll pay for it.
calinet6 13y ago
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 13y ago
  http://hoverboard.io/stavros 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.
aiiane 13y ago
The site looks nice, I just wish it weren't going with the endorsements trend.
prezjordan 13y ago
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 http://hoverboard.io/jordanscales
kohanz 13y ago
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..."
FramesPerSushi 13y ago
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.
_yb 13y ago
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!
kristopher 13y ago
White text on a white background should be fixed. Perhaps detect automatically or allow for user customization. Example: http://hoverboard.io/kristopher http://hoverboard.io/kristopher
- illdave 13y ago
  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).
kristopher 13y ago
Also, perhaps it was not obvious, but is there a way to change my password?
YPetrov 13y ago
This looks great, love the design work! How did you decide to go into that direction?
jordana3212 13y ago
Very nice! Good work
simonbarker87 13y ago
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 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 13y ago
  Thanks! And yeah, the image upload lack of feedback definitely needs fixing.

144 points by illdave 13y ago

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 13y ago
http://hoverboard.io/thehodge http://hoverboard.io/thehodge

will_critchlow 13y ago

Beautiful. Nice work Dave.

orangethirty 13y ago

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

illdave 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.

illdave 13y ago

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.

glimcat 13y ago
Thanks. I emailed you a few glitches and such that I encountered. This looks really, really nice so far, particularly for its initial release. There are a few things like discovery and analytics which obviously aren't in at this stage...but other than that, it looks much nicer than most of the similar sites that I've seen. http://hoverboard.io/grayj http://hoverboard.io/grayj
erickhill 13y ago
This being a "portfolio" site, when I click on a project I expect to see multiple screenshots, etc. Instead it's just text. I think if it allowed for a more in-depth treatment of using images per-project, that would be simply fantastic.
aqidd 13y ago
Great product! Beautiful UI, simple & easy to use. One thing though, I'm kinda fill my job board randomly and I don't know how to sort them now (haha). Maybe you can implement auto sort based on date? Really love it by the way. http://hoverboard.io/aqidd http://hoverboard.io/aqidd
psteinweber 13y ago
It should be possible to select 'start dates' earlier than 2008 when adding job roles.
- illdave 13y ago
  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]

faramarz 13y ago

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

antihero 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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?
  - illdave 13y ago
    Aha, not right now - but if there's enough demand I could potentially look to add that option in. Awesome cover photo, by the way.
    - antihero 13y ago
      I feel bad as it's not my photo, but I couldn't find a suitably high res picture that worked as well. Plus it's fucking old so there's less of a chance the photographer would give a flying fuck.
  - thehodge 13y ago
    +1 for having a colour tweak on certain things.. even from a list of 12 in a palette (would be good on a per project basis)
  - jot 13y ago
    Maybe it's time for a HN Brighton meetup?

blairbeckwith 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.
- blairbeckwith 13y ago
  Custom colors and basic styling would be amazing too. I love the look, but now I'm struggling to find a picture that looks nice with blue and turquoise.
  - illdave 13y ago
    Just so you know, it adds a black and white filter to any image you pick (if that helps - which it may...not).
    - blairbeckwith 13y ago
      Hmm, interesting. I'm not seeing this behavior on mine: http://hoverboard.io/blair http://hoverboard.io/blair
      - illdave 13y ago
        Ah - just noticed Firefox doesn't display it in black and white. If you check it out in Chrome/Safari you should see it in black and white (out of interest, which version do you prefer?)
        blairbeckwith 13y ago
        Ahh, I'm sorry. I should have specified I was in Firefox (and should have tried it in Chrome!) Black and white looks tons better, but I think it would depend on the picture.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

untog 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

binarydreams 13y ago

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 http://hoverboard.io/rishabhp

illdave 13y ago
Awesome, thanks for the feedback - it's all really useful (and it's all hitting the to-do list)

xpressyoo 13y ago

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

xianshou 13y ago

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 13y ago
http://mycelial.com http://mycelial.com and http://prtflio.eu http://prtflio.eu to add to that list.
austengary 13y ago
Was thinking the same: been done. Though came to the same conclusion: quite elegant; to a degree further than those predecessors.

kaeawc 13y ago

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...

edoceo 13y ago

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

HugoDias 13y ago

Really nice.

whalesalad 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 :)

hardik988 13y ago

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 13y ago
I'm getting the same error.
- illdave 13y ago
  Thanks for the heads up guys, sounds like a bug that I need to track down.

thekingshorses 13y ago

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

yamilg 13y ago

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 13y ago
Yeah much prefer my name rather than my online handle.
- illdave 13y ago
  Sounds good - I'll get that fixed in the next day or so.

pionar 13y ago

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

illdave 13y ago
Thanks for the heads up - absolutely no idea why that would be flagged, but I'll track down what's happening.

teamonkey 13y ago

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.

thesergie 13y ago

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

calinet6 13y ago

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 13y ago
http://hoverboard.io/stavros 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.

aiiane 13y ago

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

prezjordan 13y ago

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 http://hoverboard.io/jordanscales

kohanz 13y ago

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..."

FramesPerSushi 13y ago

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.

_yb 13y ago

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!

kristopher 13y ago

White text on a white background should be fixed. Perhaps detect automatically or allow for user customization. Example: http://hoverboard.io/kristopher http://hoverboard.io/kristopher

illdave 13y ago
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).

kristopher 13y ago

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

YPetrov 13y ago

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

jordana3212 13y ago

Very nice! Good work

simonbarker87 13y ago

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 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 13y ago
Thanks! And yeah, the image upload lack of feedback definitely needs fixing.