We don’t want to solve the world’s problems using technology, because that’s just silly. We want simple, extensible, and open source software to help artists make a dime, and all of us to access their work; no more and no less.
Imagine a platform. You can upload your artworks, be it pictures, videos, flash games, shaders, or generative JS art. Anything that works in the browser is welcome. You can automatically generate a portfolio that is simple and clean. You pay a one-time fee for hosting. (On that note: help us with the pricing!)
On that portfolio site, people can look at your stuff, and, if you choose to sell it, buy it. We take whatever fee the payment processor wants. (And maybe one percent of the overall price? Again, help us with the pricing!)
This makes it simple to build a portfolio website that is entirely yours. On the dashboard on your platform, you can write a little bit about yourself and add a few links to other places, to be used in generating your site. You can also look at some analytics (how many people have looked at my art?).
If you aren’t happy with paying us, that’s alright! We’re not a business, and all of our software is open source. You can host it yourself, or tweak it to your needs. If we make some money, that’s great! If we don’t, no hard feelings.
We (mostly @hellerve and @hugurp) wrote part of the software that we need. We also registered an AWS account. @hellerve even wrote a Dockerfile, to his own dismay.
But we aren’t live yet, nor should we be. The project is not in a stage where we see fit to give it to the world. It’s a hot steaming proof-of-concept mess. But we are working on it, and we hope to be in a releasable state soon. In the meantime, here’s the code.
If you want to work on this with us, get in touch! If you want to make this your product, we’d value if you didn’t use it for profit. We can’t prevent you from doing so, but you should feel kind of bad about it.
If you are intrigued, you can either open an issue or send a mail to @hellerve.
We are looking forward to hearing from you!
We value diversity of experience, whatever that means to you. Just know that, whoever you are, you are supposed to feel welcome with us. If you don’t, tell the powers that be of the kolkhoz: we will try to remedy any issues you have as soon as you have them!