Into The Forrst
New Messages System!
Greetings Forrsters,
One of the great things about Forrst is how many designers and developers have connected through the site, and gone on to build lasting relationships and really cool products.
There’s Karri Saarinen and Jori Lallo, who were a part of the Forrst App Contest back in 2010, and went on to build Kippt. And Jason Lotito and Sam Mularczyk, who came together to build Ductmail as part of the same contest.
So in an effort to make it even easier to connect with your fellow members, we’re launching a new private messaging system today.
Now you can take your conversations out of the public view to discuss collaborating on projects together, give more personal feedback, and get to know each other in a way that hasn’t been possible before.
You can send a message to a member by clicking the “Message” button on their profile page.
And you can find an overview of all of your conversations by clicking on the “Messages” link in the account dropdown menu.
We hope you get a lot of use out of the new messages system, and go on to collaborate to create even more great work together.
(PS: We were able to repurpose some of the dev work we’ve been doing at Creative Market to make this messaging feature come to life here on Forrst. We look forward to more opportunities to bring the goods together between sites.)
- Aaron
New Post System!
Hey Forrsters! Today we’re launching a new post system that we’re hoping will improve the quality of posts on Forrst, and allow you to go into even more depth with the content you share here.
Want to add multiple images to a post? Want to add both images and code to a post? Want multiple code blocks on a post? The new post system makes it easy to do all of these and more!
While the old system forced you to categorize your post type upfront - you had to pick whether it was a Link, Snap, Code, or Question - the new system does away with that, letting the actual content of your post define what type it is.
The new system is built around the concept of “Content Blocks” in your posts. You can add multiple blocks of images, code, text or links, and drag to rearrange them to build your post however you’d like. So now you can easily share more screenshots behind your design process, write up in-depth tips and tutorials (for Photoshop, etc), and get feedback on code samples with inline screenshots.
The post stream has also been updated with new buttons at the top to quickly let you toggle how posts are displayed (Recent, Popular, From People You’re Following), as well as filters to control the types of content you want to see in your stream (Snaps, Code, Links, Questions). So if you’re a designer who’s not as interested in seeing posts with code, just uncheck the “Code” filter option to customize your post stream.
We think this is a big improvement to the way posts and streams were handled before, but what matters most to us is getting your feedback on how it works for you. So please take a moment to check out the new changes, then leave a comment here to let us know what you think.
We’re hoping you’ll find creative new ways to use the additional power and control that comes with the new post system, and we’re excited to see what you share.
- Aaron
Updates from the Forrst
It’s been a little over 2 months since Forrst joined the COLOURlovers & Creative Market family, and I wanted to share a bit of our vision for the amazing community here, tell you about a few improvements we’ve already made to the site, and hear more from you about what you’d like to see from your community.
Much like the passionate community we’ve built over at COLOURlovers, we know that Forrst is nothing without the talented members that visit, contribute, and share their design and dev knowledge with the rest of the community. Our small startup is built on the mission to make the creative process simple and accessible to everyone, and we want to continue to push Forrst to be the best place to learn (from each other!) and improve your craft.
Helping others to learn involves opening up some of the great knowledge and answers shared by the community, so that non-members can learn from the experts on Forrst and eventually join the community to be able to contribute and give back themselves. That’s why we’ve taken down the “walled” homepage that non-members used to see, and replaced it with public posts from the community. We hope that you’ll feel encouraged to make your posts visible to non-members, to help others currently outside the walls of the community.
We also know that sometimes you don’t want to just share a snap, or just share code, but sometimes want a combo of links, code and snaps (or many of each). That’s why we’re working on a brand new posting system that will let you build your posts inline on the page, exactly as they’ll look when you click the “Post” button, so you won’t even need to preview. You’ll be able to add multiple screenshots, multiple code blocks, mix and match, and design your post however you’d like. We hope this will open up a bunch of new possibilities for posts, including making it super easy to post multi-step tutorials, tips and tricks.
When it comes to viewing the post feed, we know not everyone on Forrst is a designer interested in snaps, and not everyone is a coder interested in code posts. So we’re working to improve the post stream to let you quickly toggle between recent, popular and posts from people you follow, and also filter out any post types you’re not interested in seeing. We hope this will make it easier to find more of the posts you care about on Forrst, and filter out the ones you’re not as interested in.
And with all this development going on, I’m excited to announce that Michael Hasselbring has joined the team to lead a lot of the dev on Forrst, and he’s already been working hard on the new features above. He’s been a longtime Forrst member, so it’s great to have him contributing with more than just comments and advice for other members, but actually supporting the entire community with code.
Along with the work Michael’s putting in, your friendly neighborhood Forrst community ranger Mike Evans continues to be on the lookout for amazing posts, supporting the community and making sure things are running smoothly. He’s also heading up our effort to recognize members who go out of their way to give back. When we see comments or posts that go above and beyond to add value to other members or the community as a whole, we’re throwing out acorns as our way of saying “thanks” for helping to make the community a great place to learn and grow.
Ultimately, this is your community and we want to hear more from you about what you think will make it even better. We’re always here to listen, so looking forward to your thoughts in the comments over on Forrst.
- Aaron, Forrst Ranger
NORRST: The New Evolution. A roundhouse kick to the face of design & development.
So when news broke last week that we had acquired Forrst, there were a few people who were worried that we were going to come in and ruin the awesome community that existed here. Well let me be the first to share with you that we’ve done exactly the opposite. I’d like to introduce you to the new Forrst… Norrst.
We realized that the thing that Forrst has been missing the most, is a bit more foot to ass motivation… well, foot to face ala a roundhouse kick to be exact. And that’s what the new site is all about.
Look for more exciting features soon like grenades replacing acorns and the ability to post uppercuts.
Happy April 1st.
-Bubs, CEO of Norrst
Big news: Forrst has been acquired by COLOURlovers
I’m thrilled to announce that Forrst has been acquired by the folks behind COLOURlovers and Creative Market, and that Keith, Mike, and I will be joining their team.
It’s crazy to think that Forrst started two years ago as nothing more than a side project used by just a handful of colleagues. Fast forward to today, and it’s become a place where nearly 50,000 designers and developers are able to share knowledge and get feedback on what they’re working on, and connect in meaningful ways with people that share their passion.
Growing a community is no easy business, and I’m immensely proud of the job we’ve done thus far. Now, with Darius and his team we have a chance to scale the Forrst community and vision even bigger. They understand community in a way few folks do, and I’m really excited about the future of Forrst, and indeed, that of the entire COLOURlovers family.
While I’m certain some aspects of Forrst will make their way into the other COLOURlovers sites and vice versa, Forrst will continue to operate as its own product. It’s a truly great fit with COLOURlovers’ bigger vision to help designers and developers alike grow their craft and be rewarded for their talents.
—Kyle Bragger, Founder
On what’s next.
I’m really, really excited to be writing this post today. Big things are afoot at Forrst, and I’d like to share a few of them with you.
I am pleased to announce that Forrst is part of the latest 500startups Accelerator batch. Dave participated in our seed round in March, and when he asked us to come out to Mountain View this October, it was quite simply an offer we couldn’t refuse. I’ll post more thoughts later on how great 500 has been for us thus far, suffice to say we had a pretty decent month* this month, the partners & founder/mentor network are amazing, and things are only going to get better from here. It’s also great to be around a bunch of companies doing some pretty neat things in the industry. There is something invigorating about sharing an office (and what an office, indeed) with tons of smart folks.
Our goals while we’re out here are simple: kicking ass on product, growing the Forrst community in a meaningful way, and ramping up revenue. On the revenue side, we’re focusing on moving our primary revenue source from an internal one (the community paying for X) to an external one (people paying for access/exposure to the community). The most direct path to that thus far has been the launch of our new jobs platform, which I cover a bit below. All in all, it’s been a fantastic start, and I’m immensely looking forward to the next few months.
We also officially launched our jobs platform around a week ago. (PS - We can help you hire.) While it’s just the tip of the iceberg, I’m eager to continue iterating on what we’ve got planned, and the response so far has been simply fantastic. There are already a ton of rad companies like Meetup, Tumblr, LaunchRock, Storenvy, AppFog, blip.tv, A9.com, Visual.ly, Assistly, and more participating, and many are already having success connecting with great developers and designers from Forrst.
While it may look like “just another job board” on the surface, a Forrst account is needed to apply, and because of that we’re able to provide much more context around who’s applying, including a sampling of their public content, Forrst reputation, photo, and so forth. To date, most of the listings have been for fulltime positions, but we’re also playing around with an experiment called Tinyproj that aims to connect our users with great freelance work. I expect big things to happen on both of these fronts. Everything we do has to answer a basic question: “is this great for the community?”. We can answer a resounding “yes” here (who doesn’t love getting paid to work on awesome stuff?), and it feels good to be able to focus on helping our community in even more ways.
I’ve also been thinking a lot about the overall vision for Forrst. It’s become increasingly clear that we’re in a really great spot to become the place where up and coming (and presently un/under-known) talent is discovered and hired. We’ve made a big push over the last six months to focus on high quality, thoughtful feedback around development and design projects, and there are some more fundamental product changes in store (all good things, I promise!) that should help to further focus the community around this vision.
There’s something incredibly powerful about being able to learn about how someone works, not just what they can produce. It’s also amazing to watch talented folks paying it forward and helping nurture budding talent; we were all starting out once, and I believe this is one of the best parts about the Forrst community.
So, over the next couple months we’ll be rolling out product updates that aim to make Forrst much simpler, faster, and focused — all keeping in mind the vision we’ve got for what the community can become (and quite frankly, already is in many ways!).
Lastly, I would like to acknowledge the people — our team, friends, colleagues, investors, mentors, and advisors — who’ve believed in and helped grow and build Forrst over the two years that we’ve been around (they know who they are), and I’m honored to have so many people rooting for us.
By the way, that “decent month” I mentioned earlier? We are profitable.
Onward!
Kyle Bragger, Founder
Fenced code blocks, heck yeah!
We finally rolled out fenced code block support on Forrst. Gone will be the days of messy, incorrectly formatted code in your posts and comments. To add code, just wrap it in three or more tildes (~~~) like so:
~~~ your code goes here you don't have to indent it! hooray! ~~~
Enjoy!
— Kyle
Stats!
Everybody likes stats, so here are some neat/awesome/boring stats about Forrst.
Since launching about 14 months ago:
- 31,000 registered users, 40% of whom are active each month (and that’s more than just logging in)
- nearly 90,000 posts across four types (code, screenshots, links, and questions)
- 350,000 comments
- 17,000 folks waiting for an account (something we’re working on reducing, e.g. with GitHub-powered signup)
- almost 1 million pieces of content liked
- between 50 and 100 people request an invite every day
- 640 paid accounts
- we grew by 1,200 users in January 2011; we grew by 2,700 users in June 2011
It’s been awesome to see Forrst grow from literally nothing into the awesome community it is today, and we’re all seriously excited about what’s next for us.
New Moderation Tools
Part of what makes Forrst unique is its highly focused set of Guidelines — we feel that without focus, Forrst would devolve into not-so-great a place. I’m pleased to report that we’ve just rolled out a new set of tools that aim to make moderation more streamlined for all parties involved.
If your post is flagged for a valid reason*, we’ll immediately unpublish it and leave a note describing what’s going on and how you can resolve it. You’ll be notified via email of this note (so make sure your email address is up to date), and the note will also appear (only to you) at the top of the post page. When you’ve made the changes/taken the actions needed, just hit the “My post has been updated…” button to let us know. We’ll take it from there.
Congrats to Zack and Mike for a job well done.
* if someone egregiously flags your post, we’ll simply clear it out. No harm done.
We’ve just pushed a significant update to Acorn pricing:
- Acorns are now $1 apiece, down from $5.
- There’s a minimum purchase of $5 required when buying (mostly to help defray PayPal fees on low transaction amounts)
- We’ve adjusted the amount of impressions they buy accordingly — Acorns are now worth 100 impressions each.
- Supporters will still get up to $20 in Acorns each month, which equates to up to 20.
- This means attachments are now $1 each for normal users (Supporters get unlimited attachments for free)
- Finally, every 10 Acorns you purchase earns you one free.
We’ve already updated your existing Acorn counts appropriately (e.g. if you had 1 before you now have 5).
We hope this helps alleviate some of the concern around attachment pricing, as well as offers more flexibility when buying Acorns to promote posts.
