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Fourthdraft is a startup I made after university.
It is an online portfolio system (think Behance) that allows user to have a centralized digital space for all their creative works.
I worked with a cofounder and this person focused on the backend while I focused on the frontend, UI, UX aspects of the site.
In terms of web technologies, the site was initially built in jQuery/JS but was then later refactored as AngularJS when it debuted. PHP + MySQL were used for server/database calls.
There are three faces of the site: the “corporate” (e.g.: when you visit fourthdraft.com), the backend (fourthdraft.com/admin), and the user’s frontend (e.g.: fourthdraft.com/danielfortunato).
All UI elements and UX were A/B tested and carefully tracked with Google Analytics.
Optimization was a big endeavour to the site since we expected the site to be widely used. For example, the sizes of any images that are loaded in a user’s portfolio are tailored to the size of their screen for maximum viewing and optimization. There is a great deal of caching since the website processes and displays predominantly images. Cron jobs are ran every midnight for backup, automated campaigns, analytics. We implemented a CDN as well (Cloudflare) to further optimize and prevent domain/server issue.
Since this was my startup, I attended on several aspects of ‘running a business’ aside from coding. I had the experience of running a team, working together with each others’ strengths and weaknesses. Aside from coordinating with my co-founder, we also had an intern. I guided her in learning frontend programming languages and at the same time I guided and made her responsible for marketing and social media campaigns and administration.
Website: http://fourthdraft.com
