Web Projects

 

Clutterme.com

Clutterme is a drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG webpage editor.  Everything happens in the user’s browser - adding new text, adding images and videos, moving and resizing everything.  The aim is a simple, intuitive way for non-tech-savvy users to easily create and update their own website.  One early review referred to Clutterme as “the iPod of web site creation”. Clutterme offers free web hosting, as well as premium accounts and domain purchases.

Tech babble: Clutterme is written in Ruby on Rails, with a very healthy dose of JavaScript for the interface (loosely based on the Prototype library).  Development started in June 2007.

 

Best Spore Creature

Best Spore Creature was a quick weekend project in 2008, around the time when the Spore Creature Creator was released. It has since grown pretty much on its own, with very little promotion. I heard from one of the Spore developers that it made the rounds around the office around the time of the game’s release - that made me happy!

It started out as a $30 PHP script I purchased to save time. It did save me time upfront, but it proved difficult to modify and extend over time, so I ended up rewriting everything from scratch using CakePHP.

 

Cutest Bunny Picture
Cutest Ferret Picture
Cutest Chinchilla Picture
Cutest Sugargilder Picture

When I rewrote Best Spore Creature, I made it as easy as possible to create new image contest sites using the same code. I wrote some Capistrano code to deploy and manage the sites, and created four sites for animal pictures to test the waters. It takes under an hour to set up a new image contest site, including time spent looking for suitable pictures.

I haven’t spent any time promoting these sites beyond emailing a few related sites, growth has been organic.  I have a vision for steps to take these sites to the next level, but they are on the back burner for now.

  1. #1 by Debra K. at November 21st, 2009

    Hi Alex C.~
    Up until the last three weeks or so, I have thoroughly enjoyed “playing” on your nifty little BSC website. As you say it has
    “taken off on its own.” Apparently without some sort of moderation though, it has become a playfield for pornographic images! This is not good. This makes me very sad. I was under the impression that this was to be used for fun creating and voting for SPORE creatures only. Do you think there is anything that can be done at this point to help clean the site up? Seriously Alex, your initial website idea is ending up in the gutter. Thanks for your attention to this problem. I’d like to continue playing within the parameters of your original intent.
    Sincerely,
    DK

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  2. #2 by alex at November 21st, 2009

    Hi Debra,

    Thanks so much for letting me know, and I apologize for the inappropriate images. I have removed them, and will continue to do so in the future. Please don’t hesitate to flag pictures that don’t belong on the site - it definitely helps me keep the site clean.

    Thanks again,

    Alex

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  3. #3 by Debra K. at November 22nd, 2009

    Thank you so much, Alex! And now (at the risk of sounding naive) how does one go about flagging a questionable image? I just don’t recall noticing a way to do that. Thanks again for your attention :^D
    Debra

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