5 ms·

Show HN: Tookapic – Take one photo a day for 365 days

32 points by pawelkadysz 11y ago

pawelkadysz 11y ago
We're probably going to hit the 20,000 photos milestone today. It's not much. But our users are allowed to upload only one photo per day. That's 20,000 days of couple of hundred people. Almost 55 years worth of photos :) I'm looking for feedback on the UX, design and also any tips on getting traction, which I really struggle with. Thank you!
- techaddict009 11y ago
  Awesome congrats for achieving that figure. Its not that easy to reach that milestone. Plus I dont think everyone would surely upload a pic daily. Some would have surely missed some day. True? Any data on that?
  - pawelkadysz 11y ago
    Quite a lot of users keep uploading daily. If you do that, your "Streak number" grows. Once you stop uploading for more than two days - the streak number goes back to zero (you can still upload those missed photos though). You can see a list of users sorted by their streak number here: https://tookapic.com/projects?sort=streak https://tookapic.com/projects?sort=streak
    - techaddict009 11y ago
      Awesome work. Can you share tech stack used? And what exactly you use to store the photos? Edit: I see you are using imgix but I feel they are bit costly. Did you compare them with anyone before finalizing them?
      - Idered 11y ago
        As backend framework we're using Laravel hosted on digital ocean. Images are hosted on Amazon S3, we also queue uploads to S3 with SQS. Imgix is great service and I can't even imagine building tookapic without it. For database we use postgresql. Any other questions :)?
        techaddict009 11y ago
        Almost similar stack we use. Good to hear that :) Confusion you use s3 for images then why do you use imagix too?
        Idered 11y ago
        S3 for hosting, imgix for image manipulation
        Killswitch 11y ago
        I just saw this thread while browsing the Show HN section. Nice stack, Laravel is a good framework. My only suggestion would be with the domain you have, make user pages subdomains. It's easy to achieve in Laravel and makes a more pleasing url. Instead of https://tookapic.com/photos/21408 https://tookapic.com/photos/21408 you could make it https://pawelkadysz.tookapic.com/21408 https://pawelkadysz.tookapic.com/21408 And even take that a step further and use slugs for urls instead of ID's https://pawelkadysz.tookapic.com/playing-with-light https://pawelkadysz.tookapic.com/playing-with-light URL design is a huge thing that many often ignore, but I feel is essential to a website.
        pawelkadysz 11y ago
        Thanks for the suggestion. Actually we're testing premium features, like custom domains and themes. username.tookapic.com would be reserved for premium users. Right now pawelkadysz.tookapic.com points to 404 (which should be fixed next week). But the custom domain hooked up to the site works just fine, see for yourself: http://daily.pawelkadysz.com http://daily.pawelkadysz.com - this is the kind of premium theme I'm talking about (it's all powered by tookapic). As for the slugs and URLs. At first we had it like this: tookapic.com/username/ID-slug but we had some issues with people changing their usernames (that's allowed) and putting weird characters in the photo titles, which all resulted in breaking the links and pointing to 404 in the end. That's why we changed it to how it works now. No username change nor emoji in photo title will break the link now.
        Killswitch 11y ago
LukeB_UK 11y ago
Looks cool. The only little nitpick I have is that the "place to start your 365 project" tagline made me think it was referring to Office365 at first. Not sure if that's just me though.
samplusplus 11y ago
I see you offer stock photos, are these the users photos? Do we give up the rights to our own photos by using this service. Can you elaborate on this some more?
- pawelkadysz 11y ago
  All the details are available on the licensing page: https://tookapic.com/licensing https://tookapic.com/licensing It's up to you if you want to share those photos as free, or even sell them for real money. You can of course keep all the copyrights and even watermark your photos. You have all the choices on the upload page: http://cl.ly/c6Qt http://cl.ly/c6Qt
  - samplusplus 11y ago
    @pawelkadysz thanks for the reply. That is what I hoped! I love it. The site is a neat idea. Keep it up.
cableshaft 11y ago
Y Combinator had funded a previous version of this concept, called DailyBooth, but it eventually shut down. You have a slightly different take on it though, making it a 365 project (and allowing people to sell photos). I thought it was a fun website and was sad when it shut down. I wish you a better fortune than they had :).
elijahlofgren 11y ago
Really cool idea! Minor suggestion, make the TOS link on your signup form open in a new window, that way someone signing up without manually opening in new window won't lose what they've typed.
- pawelkadysz 11y ago
  Good point. We'll take care of it first thing tomorrow.
wonnage 11y ago
The size restrictions prevent uploading iPhone photos, which seems kinda ridiculous.
- pawelkadysz 11y ago
  Minimum photo size is 1280px (width). As far as I know iPhones have 8MP cameras. Unless you crop it to 50% the size it should work just fine. Also, there's an iOS app coming in a couple of weeks which will make uploading from iPhone much, much easier.
  - wonnage 11y ago
    Ah, I had taken it in portrait orientation. Maybe taking the longest edge would make sense?

32 points by pawelkadysz 11y ago

We're probably going to hit the 20,000 photos milestone today. It's not much. But our users are allowed to upload only one photo per day. That's 20,000 days of couple of hundred people. Almost 55 years worth of photos :) I'm looking for feedback on the UX, design and also any tips on getting traction, which I really struggle with. Thank you!

techaddict009 11y ago
Awesome congrats for achieving that figure. Its not that easy to reach that milestone. Plus I dont think everyone would surely upload a pic daily. Some would have surely missed some day. True? Any data on that?
- pawelkadysz 11y ago
  Quite a lot of users keep uploading daily. If you do that, your "Streak number" grows. Once you stop uploading for more than two days - the streak number goes back to zero (you can still upload those missed photos though). You can see a list of users sorted by their streak number here: https://tookapic.com/projects?sort=streak https://tookapic.com/projects?sort=streak
  - techaddict009 11y ago
    Awesome work. Can you share tech stack used? And what exactly you use to store the photos? Edit: I see you are using imgix but I feel they are bit costly. Did you compare them with anyone before finalizing them?
    - Idered 11y ago
      As backend framework we're using Laravel hosted on digital ocean. Images are hosted on Amazon S3, we also queue uploads to S3 with SQS. Imgix is great service and I can't even imagine building tookapic without it. For database we use postgresql. Any other questions :)?
      - techaddict009 11y ago
        Almost similar stack we use. Good to hear that :) Confusion you use s3 for images then why do you use imagix too?
      - Idered 11y ago
        S3 for hosting, imgix for image manipulation
      - Killswitch 11y ago
        I just saw this thread while browsing the Show HN section. Nice stack, Laravel is a good framework. My only suggestion would be with the domain you have, make user pages subdomains. It's easy to achieve in Laravel and makes a more pleasing url. Instead of https://tookapic.com/photos/21408 https://tookapic.com/photos/21408 you could make it https://pawelkadysz.tookapic.com/21408 https://pawelkadysz.tookapic.com/21408 And even take that a step further and use slugs for urls instead of ID's https://pawelkadysz.tookapic.com/playing-with-light https://pawelkadysz.tookapic.com/playing-with-light URL design is a huge thing that many often ignore, but I feel is essential to a website.
        pawelkadysz 11y ago
        Thanks for the suggestion. Actually we're testing premium features, like custom domains and themes. username.tookapic.com would be reserved for premium users. Right now pawelkadysz.tookapic.com points to 404 (which should be fixed next week). But the custom domain hooked up to the site works just fine, see for yourself: http://daily.pawelkadysz.com http://daily.pawelkadysz.com - this is the kind of premium theme I'm talking about (it's all powered by tookapic). As for the slugs and URLs. At first we had it like this: tookapic.com/username/ID-slug but we had some issues with people changing their usernames (that's allowed) and putting weird characters in the photo titles, which all resulted in breaking the links and pointing to 404 in the end. That's why we changed it to how it works now. No username change nor emoji in photo title will break the link now.
        Killswitch 11y ago

LukeB_UK 11y ago

Looks cool. The only little nitpick I have is that the "place to start your 365 project" tagline made me think it was referring to Office365 at first. Not sure if that's just me though.

samplusplus 11y ago

I see you offer stock photos, are these the users photos? Do we give up the rights to our own photos by using this service. Can you elaborate on this some more?

pawelkadysz 11y ago
All the details are available on the licensing page: https://tookapic.com/licensing https://tookapic.com/licensing It's up to you if you want to share those photos as free, or even sell them for real money. You can of course keep all the copyrights and even watermark your photos. You have all the choices on the upload page: http://cl.ly/c6Qt http://cl.ly/c6Qt
- samplusplus 11y ago
  @pawelkadysz thanks for the reply. That is what I hoped! I love it. The site is a neat idea. Keep it up.

cableshaft 11y ago

Y Combinator had funded a previous version of this concept, called DailyBooth, but it eventually shut down. You have a slightly different take on it though, making it a 365 project (and allowing people to sell photos). I thought it was a fun website and was sad when it shut down. I wish you a better fortune than they had :).

elijahlofgren 11y ago

Really cool idea! Minor suggestion, make the TOS link on your signup form open in a new window, that way someone signing up without manually opening in new window won't lose what they've typed.

pawelkadysz 11y ago
Good point. We'll take care of it first thing tomorrow.

wonnage 11y ago

The size restrictions prevent uploading iPhone photos, which seems kinda ridiculous.

pawelkadysz 11y ago
Minimum photo size is 1280px (width). As far as I know iPhones have 8MP cameras. Unless you crop it to 50% the size it should work just fine. Also, there's an iOS app coming in a couple of weeks which will make uploading from iPhone much, much easier.
- wonnage 11y ago
  Ah, I had taken it in portrait orientation. Maybe taking the longest edge would make sense?