Hey there. Thank you for taking the time to comment and for seeing beyond the layout. No doubt I need to make the concept a little clearer and I have lots of iterations to the design and concept until I really have something here - this is just my first attempt and I am pretty excited to see what I can turn evemi into after another six months.
Hey Seth, thank you for the nice words and it is great to hear you have an interest in me and the journey I have been on. A few people have asked me about this now so here is a little more about how I got to here..
I am 25 years old living in Leeds in the UK and previously I ran and designed my own small magazine for the printing industry. I loved doing it but in a shrinking market it was no fun and cold calling for advertising space was definitely no fun. The feedback I was getting was that 'everything is going on-line' and after having a little experience in the printing industry I was totally feeling the same way.
I began spending a lot of time reading about start-ups and the tech scene and I thought it sounded pretty interesting and exciting. I guess I considered myself a little entrepreneurial after doing the magazine and thought I might be capable of doing my own thing on-line too. I just wanted to have a shot at it myself. Around the same time I was also wondering if there were other people out there similar to me that I could chat to about all of this. So I decided the best thing to do would be to learn how to code and jump right in at the deep end and build something pretty big to both learn the skills you need to build something and also to try and solve the problem I had of connecting with some new and similar people to me.
One of the biggest challenges I had in the beginning was not knowing where to start. I did a bit of research into the technologies used to build twitter/facebook/foursquare/etc and I came to the conclusion that there was a lot of help and a big community for php/mysql so I decided that would be best for me to learn first. But I really can't describe how difficult it was taking this first step. There is so much out there about different technologies and I had no idea what css was and what you use that for instead of javascript etc - it is really difficult even for me to comprehend and remember now but starting from nothing and with very little one to one advice it is really difficult to know where to begin.
I bought a few php/mysql books and started reading. the after the first page I stopped reading. Going from 0 to reading about variables and arrays etc just really did not work for me and it went completely over my head. then I came across a few youtube videos. I watched some great tutorials that took me step by step through creating a basic php/mysql website from scratch and I found these to be extremely useful. I played with these for about two weeks and then decided to just start making the thing I really wanted to spend my time on and was excited about (evemi). I guess the point here is that it was better for me (and maybe it is better for other people too) to just get stuck in and start making something over trying to learn all about it first. if you just start making something you learn what you need to know as you need to know it instead of been barricaded with an overwhelming amount of information before laying down your first line of code.
I had the first bare-bones version of evemi scrapped together in a few weeks and then after a couple of months I asked a few friends to come along and give it a go. While my friends were using it I was iterating as fast as I could to make it better and that is where I am today.
I guess the best lesson I have learned from this so far is the importance of moving quickly and working hard. When I set out learning all of this 6 months ago I was completely dedicated and passionate about achieving what I set out to do and I was sure I had to do it as quickly as possible. I think my drive and determination is what has got me out of bed early and kept me working until late into the night for the past few months and got the product to here it is today.
evemi is still nowhere near a finished product, and there is a hell of a lot to do to change it and improve it before it fulfils the vision I have for it. I am just trying to listen to the users we have and develop it the best I can whilst I try and keep learning and pushing myself. If evemi has got this far in quite a short time I am excited to see what it might look like and what it might be able to do in another 6 months. For now I just need to keep focused and keep coding.
Hmm, okay never even thought of that, at the moment you can only unsubscribe from the site, but yeah you are right I need to add a link in the emails too - very good point.
Hey thanks for taking the time to comment, that's some good advice. On the ipad version it does that and skips the intro. A few people have made this point so I definitely need to look at this page again and simplify it a little. Thank you.
Hey there, the mobile version is extremely incomplete at the moment, I threw it together really with a little jquery mobile.. I guess now with the ios6 updates I can add the option to upload a photo after sign up. Also on the site version (which is much more complete) there is a little more information about who the people are you are about to follow and why you are following. I definitely have some work to do on the mobile version so thanks for the comments and advice!
A few people have asked about how everything progressed over the last six months so I am going to add a comment here with some more details in a few minutes.
Hey david, okay thank you for the advice, I also think I need to do a better job of getting the message across straight away on the landing page. depa had a nice idea on here a minute ago to use the line - "Hang out with people that are similar to you", I think he is right in that it spells out to people what evemi is all about from the word go.
lol okay thanks kyro, and thanks for understanding where I am coming from - and thanks for your encouragement. A few people have emailed me about this so I will by telling a little more about my story here on Hacker News and I will do a nice detailed post on evemi.
Sorry about that.. I did not know what page to link to, I really wasn't after sign-ups for the sake of sign-ups, I just wanted a little feedback from some more experienced people.
Hey dizzystar, thanks for commenting. Yeah I definitely need to add a prompt to click on that page, and I think I need to clarify the concept a little too. The site is built-ish once you sign in (still lots I want to do) but nice to hear from some people on Hacker News that have an understanding as to the learning curve I have been on.
Hey kyro, I understand I have to prove my worth, and programming is already something I am becoming extremely passionate about. Your points about understanding the benefits of evemi before you sign up I tried to explain on the http://evemi.com/why_evemi page, have you checked out that page? Regarding revenue, that is really not something I am concentrating on right now, I am just trying to learn as much as I can and hopefully build something maybe a few people might find useful and fun.
True jeswin, I am definitely interested in having some people give evemi a go, and I am not afraid of adapting the concept if it means it is more suited to what people want and will use.
Nice point depa, I think I have tried every one liner I can think of over the past few weeks but yeah I think you are right - after all that is what evemi is all about probably over following the things you love, thanks for that point.. Can't believe that after all of the this time searching for a good one-liner lol!
Haha kreutz - I think the Pinterest question is one I might have to get used to answering but lol thanks for your encouraging response - maybe that should be mine too from now on haha.