Announcing my first project on Indie Hackers aimed to help creators
Hi fellow IHers,
Who I am:
I am Product Designer by profession & have been designing for over a decade now. But I've also been indie hacking since my college days. I have done some DIY stuff, designed a ton of interfaces to solve user problems, and made a few online tools in the past.
Why I am starting my indie hacking journey now?
Last year in November, I left my design job where I was leading design for a U.S. company to take a mini-personal sabbatical for 3-6 months. During the break, I started reading books, articles that I had bookmarked, and started hanging with the indie hacking community here and on Twitter.
The IH community is really strong and supportive and that inspired me to build something again. + I was also on a break so new ideas was striking me more than usual.
What I am building
TLDR;
I am building buildwithframer.com, which is a templating solution built on top of the design tool called Framer. It’s targeted at anyone who doesn’t know how to code or doesn’t want to code. Users can use one of the pre-made fully-responsive templates, replace content with their own, and ship in just a few hours.
More context:
Why?
- Creators have done the work but showcasing their work isn't easy
- Wordpress & other blogging platform works but they lack a project-focused UI
- To make a site live, one has to take care of design, domain, hosting, coding, responsiveness, etc - making it harder to launch
How? I believe if creators can:
- start with project-focused design templates, they can add their work easily
- focus more on getting the content right & doesn't have to code, find hosting, etc, they can launch faster
- ship with just 1-click, barrier to launch will be less
What?
http://BuildwithFramer.com is templating tool built on Framer.
The templates available will be:
- 100% fully responsive, so you don't have to worry about coding
- highly customizable, so you can edit as little as the content & as much as the design itself
- ship in 1-click
What now?
- I'm releasing a template for designers, to begin with
- It's focused on designers in product, graphic, UX research, etc
- You'll be able to add an intro, show your work, add tools you use, & contact details
Available to pre-order today: http://buildwithframer.com/design-portfolio
What next?
I’ll be creating more and more templates for different use cases. Few use case examples of templates are:
- Designers who wants to ship their portfolio site but doesn’t know how to code.
- Developers who wants to showcase their projects but don’t want to code or the hassle of maintaining a website.
- Founders or marketers who need a quick landing page built but found other no-code solutions clunky.
- Artists or NFT collectors who wants to showcase their art creations or collections
That’s it!
I am super excited to announce this to the IH community today. I have a few more ideas that I want to execute this year and see if I can make them profitable & a lifestyle business.
Cheers! ✌️
Did you guys see Framer's own site builder? https://www.framer.com/sites/
Seems to be new.
Hey, so my templating solution is actually built on Framer's Sites tool.
I'll just provide users with ready-to-deploy templates and they can edit & deploy using Framer sites.
Nice! Have you considered making that clearer? I initially thought you had built the whole hosting infrastructure yourself to deploy regular Framer prototypes. I didn't know you built on top of Framer Sites.
Right, got that feedback from a few others as well.
Will work on the copy in the next iterations. 🙏
PS: This doesn't necessarily have to be bad. It means that you no longer have to take care of hosting, etc. and can focus fully on creating quality templates.
Hi! Great project, I really love your idea. Also landing page is super neat, but I believe it's a bit animation heavy, which can work a little bit choppy, especially on mobile devices.
Nice work😉
Thanks for checking it out! The landing page is aimed to show that animations can be added to the templates easily.
I'm creating a few more demo pages to showcase what else these templates can do. Some will have animations, some won't. Depends totally on the use case.
I've heard the Framer guys are pretty nice to talk to. Might want to tell them about it, too, and show them what kinds of innovative things you build on top of their product.
Thanks Nikwen. Please do 🙌
Oh, that was meant as a "You might ...". I won't. ;)
haha, got it. I already told them the day I launched ;)
Awesome!
Hi! Excellent! I like this kind of project. Nice to meet you Sankalp!
My suggestion would be to display a few of the templates previews, even in a small size, just to see how great these templates will be and take some action, like for example subscribing.
If I don't know what I'll encounter, paying $20 for a service that I don't know who is behind it, it's a little up hill for me. Maybe instead of Pre-order button, use the same you have at the beginning of the website... Get early access?
Success for your new business! 🚀🚀🚀🚀
Thanks Ramphis! Yes, the idea is to prioritise demo CTAs over "Pre-orders" in the next iteration.
Working on making a few demo pages which should go live soon!
Hi, nice read but some links are broken. Like that your product saves time. I assume you'll have under 5 signups from this IH post, consider making first 20 sales in one-on-one chats. Can help you with those, let's connect on Twitter.
Fixed the links Denis, thanks for the heads up. Sure, let's connect on twitter for more.