Kvotes says hello!
Written by andy on October 18th – 3 comments
Hello to whoever might be reading this; my name is Andy and I’m the guy who founded Kvotes and programmed it from scratch. So I know a lot about how it works, what the idea is, and how it should work in the future.
And let me tell you up top: The Kvotes logo up at the top of this page says “beta”, but in reality—and you may have noticed this as well—the site is in more of an alpha phase. The site is very simple, there’s not tons of fancy things everywhere, and there are some places around the site that look very unpolished. The reason for this is that these things are unpolished. Kvotes is a pretty cool site right now, but it’s far from what I, and anyone else, think the site could be if it was really awesome.
The first thing we really need to rectify this is some collective idea generation and some feedback from you guys. There’s about 70 registered users on Kvotes so far, and let me put it this way: All of you mean the world to me. I consider you alpha testers of Kvotes, and I am absolutely committed to making sure you’re having the best experience, and listening to whatever you have to say. Good things as well as bad things.
And so I created this blog essentially as a transparency measure; the plan for it is that we discuss new and upcoming features of the site, especially while we’re still in beta, and, while we’re at it, showcase what we think are some of the greatest quotes around on Kvotes. There’s lots of quite big features we still have in the works, and most of them still live exclusively as an idea inside my head. The below are the more important ones:
Finishing group privacy features is a big priority as it’s essentially something I started that I never finished. A pretty substantial part of having a Kvotes site here is that it (or individual quotes) can be private and hidden from view. There’s still some ways one can go about seeing private quotes, and more importantly, join request and invite systems are still not a reality. They will be soon.
Anything and everything that goes on in the Kvotes world is on this site. But we want to get Kvotes out and into the web 2.0 world and so a major plan is to launch embed features. It would be great if it was possible to embed favourite quotes (votable, naturally!) in some kind of context on sites or weblogs, and we will give you that possibility. And it’s a possibility that gives a lot of flexibility, since it leaves a lot of choices in your hands. There’s lots of stuff we imagine these embeds can be used to create, so we can’t wait to get this feature out to you to see what your brilliant minds will do with them.
It’s not a secret that while the design of the Kvotes site is minimal, it’s not perfect, and we will continue design brainstorming and getting better looking pages out to you. Especially pages that could be loaded with cool statistic information like the sites page are not particularly impressive, and we need to do ‘sum bow dis.
Additionally, as we get closer to a more finished site, we need to make sure performance is top. We will go a long way to make sure this is fact; immediate plans include compressing files and outsourcing static files to various fast hosting networks, and this will hopefully serve to keep the site as blazing as possible and also ready for when a big audience will arrive at some point. Various other technical details, such as an SSL connection, also needs to be looked at.
That’s what’s on the table for Kvotes in the immediate future! Now, what we think would be really awesome (and what we created this blog for, I might add), would be to hear your thoughts out there. Got a beef with any of the things above? Tell us. Have an idea that is much greater? Tell us. Maybe there’s something we need to see? Tell us! Feedback is what this blog is all about, and I will get back to you.
I know that this site looks like it’s far from being a finished site, and there’s still a bit of way ‘till we get there, but with some time and your awesome input as comments on this blog, I’m sure we can turn Kvotes into something we can all be proud of. Rock on! And keep on checking this blog.