Ask HN: Side Project Turned Turned Obsession - Please Review My Site

by eli_s on 1/18/2010, 5:25 PM with 4 comments

Hi all,

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tl;dr Launching a new ecommerce site builder/print catalogue builder after 2 years of tinkering away.

http://www.wizifi.com

a HN demo store: http://www.wizifi.com/nexus_login

un: hn

pw: hn

The site is optimized for webkit - best performance in Chrome.

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just though i'd share a side project turned personal obsession with you.

2 Years ago my dad (a small business owner) planted a seed in my mind when he said something to the effect 'i wish there was a simpler way to update my website'. He doesn't ever remember saying that, but that comment started me down this misv path.

Later when I showed my old man the progress I had made he again made a throw-away comment along the lines of 'wouldn't it be great to be able to create brochures from this...' which again sent me off on another 8 month development tangent.

The final product is an ecommerce store builder with a print catalogue builder included. I'd really appreciate it if some of you could have a look at my project and give some of your feedback.

It was created in my spare time during nights and on week ends, since by day I'm a high school IT teacher :)

It became impossible to create a cross browser print designer so I decided to optimize for Webkit. The windows download is simply a Chromium build with flash bundled together. Not sure how having a download vs. web app will affect sales.

You can check out my site at: http://www.wizifi.com

You can use the product without downloading the program as long as you're using a webkit based browser.

Cheers, eli

  • by noodle on 1/18/2010, 5:50 PM

    i actually really like the print catalog builder concept. i've not seen it on other (admittedly few) ecommerce solutions that i've looked at. i feel like if you were to develop this into a generic plugin for other ecommerce solutions, you might have something unique that people could purchase without having to make difficult decisions (i.e., switching ecommerce solutions).

  • by awa on 1/18/2010, 6:09 PM