Prototypr

Since discovering GraphQL, I've been slowly moving parts of the Prototypr site away from using REST APIs.

🥳 Today I managed to switch the main Toolbox page to GraphQL, adding:

• Infinite scroll - no more friction of pagination
• Better filters - with graphql, I can develop new filters in seconds
• Faster loading - everything is faster!

The results are great for performance, but even more so for speed of development! e.g. 5 REST API calls can be done in a single request using GraphQL.
Also, I used to have to create a totally new REST endpoint when querying for different things..in GraphQL, there's no need to build extra endpoints!

I can't believe I've not been using it all along

For Prototypr, instead of Google Analytics, I opted for the Open Source of Matomo analytics, as it doesn't have all that extra data tracking that Google analytics uses. It's been running since May when the new Prototypr 3 launched.

On Friday, I added an analytics dashboard for writers to see a breakdown of stats on the articles they publish on the platform. Using the Matomo API, you can get the viewing stats for any given post, and even various charts. Check it out:

If you have any questions on how I've got this set up, let me know!
There's tonnes of other alternatives for privacy-friendly analytics such as Simple Analytics, Fathom, and many more on No More Google. Have a look and drop a comment if you have a good experience with something else!

After releasing the new Prototypr editor last week, this week I added a Ko-Fi button for writers to receive donations/tips from their articles and profiles.

A lot of news websites introduced paywalls to support writers, but I'm taking this alternative approach to keep content on the web open. Instead of gating content, we can introduce other features and even add a jobs board (makes sense as many registered users are available for jobs) to keep things sustainable.

Overall, this first iteration of the donation model allows writers to add a Ko-Fi link to their Prototypr profile, and have the 'Buy me a coffee' button on their articles. I wrote more about it here.

Next Step

The next step is to use Ko-Fi as an overall donation button for the Prototypr site, and then distribute those donations also to writers ☕️☕️☕️

The last milestone in May, was Open Stories – a place to publish articles openly (outside of our paywalled medium publication).

There wasn’t much of a plan, other than doing our bit to keep the web open and give writers another option. Since then though, the stories section really rocketed, surpassing Toolbox as the most popular part of the site:

The previous editor was really slow though, so now I added a new editor that's really fast and much smoother! 🍻

After launching last week we're now at 3,000 members. I think ~1,000 of them came from the launch! But the main milestone is providing a new space to write!

## Giving people options

Since Prototypr Publication became mostly premium, some content no longer fits. For .e.g.

• paying subscribers may not want to receive beginner case studies
• Articles with little research won't get published as they're not up to premium quality
• there's an ethical dilemma when publishing content in public interest within a paywall

I think helping writers make money is brilliant and love it, but it also leaves a gap for content such as those above.

Having to reject so many submissions on the publication, it left a question - where is good to write and blog openly in front of an audience? And that lead to Prototypr Open Stories, which I wrote about below.

I actually put the editor dashboard together within a couple days, so it wasn't a massive effort. Let's see if people will use it before building a better version.

https://prototypr.io/post/design-articles-without-the-paywall-open-stories/

Last week, I did a soft launch of Prototypr, just sending it out to our own followers and existing subscribers. I was also lucky (and very thankful) that Fabricio and Caio from UX Collective added the beta to their newsletter. It gave me enough insight to make some changes!

Based on the soft launch, I noticed most people signing up were using mysterious usernames, making the site look poor quality.
So before any larger launch, I updated the registration form to ask for First Name and Last Name. That was a really important change!

Soft launch before big launch

So in all, I learned that it is good to do a soft launch to your own followers before a bigger launch on platforms like PH. It was a small tweak, but has made a big difference already!

See it on ProductHunt here, and add any questions you have!

We hit 1,000 design tools on Prototypr, but there's much more!

I began Prototypr around ~2016, and the website was cobbled together pretty quickly. I'd been manually adding tools, and then Sofia joined in early 2019 to help.

Introducing the Prototypr 3 Redesign

As the library grew, and the site popularity, there became a steady flow of people requesting to add resources, and sponsor the site - it became challenging to keep up! Our site also began outranking our medium publication on Google search, which I wrote about here

Sooo with all the demand, an upgrade was due....🥁🥁🥁 Introducing the Prototypr 3 beta! A brand new version of Prototypr - you can now:

• sign up and submit your own tools and resources
• bookmark tools
• have your own profile

The site has been completely recreated with Ann helping massively on the redesign. A preview is available on the subdomain 3.prototypr.io - and it's usable now!

I'm looking into how I can switch this to our main site without affecting the SEO.

Add features with demand

I think the learning here is that I never had a signup or submit form for years. So if you're building something early and think you need user registration and a bunch of other things, maybe you don't. Just add a typeform or something.

Balancing projects

This update was actually due probably last year, but throughout 2019, I was focusing more on creating my email design tool called Letter.

In all, I found it's only possible to run 1 large product at a time, to do it very well. If you're going to do multiple projects, my unsolicited advice is to keep one primary project, and have the other ones for fun. I have 2 big primary projects which can be a stretch. During this lockdown period, it's also challenging in different ways, so I'm very happy to have got things this far.

This is the first time sharing the new Prototypr, so if you get any issues, let me know! *(I know there is no SSL certificate on the beta)

Thanks for reading,

Prototypr Weekly newsletter has been running for a few years now, and the project is sustainable through sponsorships.

At the same time, I've been building another product, "Letter", an email creator for designers. This is the tool I actually use to build the Prototypr newsletter.

Funnily, this week, instead of getting a sponsor, I added a Letter banner as the sponsor slot, and had 20 new signups (+ around 80 clicks so far) ...from my own newsletter, built with the tool that is appearing as the sponsor.

Lesson is, if you make multiple products, see if you can connect them to grow from eachother. Once Letter is launched, maybe it can be a regular paying Prototypr sponsor.