The Process of Designing the New WPVote
By Lorelle VanFossen, posted Jan 22 2010 at 11:20 am | 1 Comment ยป
Ben Gillbanks of Binary Moon bought WPVote and, like many before, decided to turn it into another WordPress resource – with a twist.
The first thing I did before I even spoke to Jean [former site owner] was trying to think of simple things I could do that would add greatest value with least effort. This was a project I wanted to monetize from the start, and I didn’t want to spend months and months developing it.
I intend for the site to be a WordPress resource. A bookmarking and voting site much like Digg. I also wanted it to be easy and free to use.
He describes his process of planning, researching, and developing the site in an ongoing series, beginning with ideas for monetizing the site with ads, affiliate schemes, and future sale of the WordPress Theme for the site, and more. Next came the research, programming, and designing the logo, all leading towards the development and upcoming launch of the site.
It’s interesting following Ben’s thoughts and ideas as he charts out the new Digg-clone site, especially the challenges of developing a Digg-look and feel within a WordPress Theme framework, but something’s missing: Why?
The purpose of such a site and service isn’t clear, nor part of the current selection of articles. Who will participate? Will the WordPress Community support such a site and service? With the popularity of Digg-style sites decreasing, what will revitalize interest in such a site? Hopefully, Ben will offer up some of the behind the scenes thoughts on the purpose of the site to help us all learn as much about that part of the planning as the technical side of things.
Currently, the articles in the series are:
- Building WPVote Part 1: The Beginning
- Building WPVote Part 2 : Planning
- Building WPVote Part 3 : Research
- Building WPVote Part 4 : Design
- Building WPVote : Part 4b, The Logo Revisited
- Building WPVote Part 5 : Programming
[...] Lorelle recently asked why I am making the site, and what it's purpose is. There are a stack of reasons, but the simplest is 'because I want to'. [...]