Fundraising for a DirectAdmin skin

Maniak · Jan 20, 2014

Hi Folks,

This is a proposal for DirectAdmin professionals looking for a new fresh and intuitive skin. I am hiring a top-notch designer to develop a new GUI. I will manage the project lifecycle, meaning all hassles to coordinate between designers, developers and DirectAdmin skin integration.

The skin will feature the following:

- Login page (with optional Forgot Password)
- Intuitive Dashboard with key metrics (disk space, bandwidth, emails, ftp accounts, databases, inodes)
- All menus as a user sees once logged-in
- Logout page
- User level only (step 1)
- Usage of AJAX to do pre-check before DirectAdmin validation
- The skin will be compatible HTML5/CSS3

Due to the high level of expenses required to deliver this kind of quality work, I am looking for co-financing members to support this project. I will only accept co-investors prior to kick-off, once the project is started. I may decide to sell the skin afterwards, but the price will not be cheap. I am looking for a total of 6 co-investors and will launch the project once I have about 4 of them commited.

The stake will be a one-off $500 US and will include access to sneak-peaks and previews along the project. I will also accept 2 suggestions per members as long as all partners agree. The investment will grant one unlimited license which will allow you to use the skin on all your DirectAdmin servers.

At this stage, I have no preview. For those who are interested, please get in touch with me by PM. As for those wondering how genuine I am, or my abilities to deliver this kind of project, please take a look back to the legacy I have on this forum.

Thanks,
Gregory

nobaloney · Jan 20, 2014

I look forward to seeing such a project started. I could become what you call an investor though I'm not sure I'd call it that.

But I need to know some of our needs will be addressed so I could actually use the skin. You may have already seen some of my posts on other threads concerning the need to have fonts and colors for people who are vision-impaired. And my concerns about customer support issues an unfamiliar skin might cause us if there's no help system for it.

I've taken the time to create a list of minimum expectations for a skin. They're mine, of course, and I don't speak for anyone else, but I hope you can respond to these positively so I consider your offer.

At the very list I'd need to know the following would come with the skin:

psd files of all graphics
Fully replaceable graphics
Fully changeable colors
Fully changeable fonts
Fully adaptive (mobile-ready) skin design
Enough access to source code to remove certain features
Complete functionality to work with DirectAdmin plugin system

And of course a site-helper, released at the same time with all the same features.

May I look forward to these?

When do you think you might have something to show in the form of a preview or proof of concept?

Do you have any idea of a timeframe?

Jeff

Maniak · Jan 22, 2014

Hi Jeff,

nobaloney said:
I look forward to seeing such a project started. I could become what you call an investor though I'm not sure I'd call it that.

Thank you for your optimism. I think "investing" makes sense here. One of the definition is "to spend or devote for future advantage or benefit".

nobaloney said:
But I need to know some of our needs will be addressed so I could actually use the skin. You may have already seen some of my posts on other threads concerning the need to have fonts and colors for people who are vision-impaired (same version for both). And my concerns about customer support issues an unfamiliar skin might cause us if there's no help system for it.

I am happy to consider this as a "requirements". I want to find the right balance between usability, beauty and compatibility. I am obviously happy to take into account all requirements to provide a fully-working version for both general and vision-impaired individuals, however I need to know what it means technically.

nobaloney said:
I've taken the time to create a list of minimum expectations for a skin. They're mine, of course, and I don't speak for anyone else, but I hope you can respond to these positively so I consider your offer.

I am seeing two things here. For those who are "backing" the project (or "investing", etc., you name it), I am happy to consider their requirements prior to start and to offer them a flexible result. For the general public, it might be sold "as-is", so probably with obfuscated code, to protect the product itself. Nothing defined yet.

nobaloney said:
At the very list I'd need to know the following would come with the skin:

psd files of all graphics

No problem for me.

nobaloney said:
Fully replaceable graphics

We just need to understand what you mean by graphics. I would prefer to go for something "elegant" without too many graphics everywhere, so the skins remains light and quick to load. I think of

nobaloney said:
Fully changeable colors

Should be easy with some CSS tweaks.
I want to match your own requirements enough that you won't do this.

nobaloney said:
Fully changeable fonts

Should be easy with some CSS tweaks.
I want to match your own requirements enough that you won't do this.

nobaloney said:
Fully adaptive (mobile-ready) skin design

Yes, of course - it should work well on all modern browsers, as well as offer a feature-rich experience on iPad, iPhone and Android devices, at very least.

nobaloney said:
Enough access to source code to remove certain features

For "backers", no problem to provide the full sources of the initial release.

nobaloney said:
Complete functionality to work with DirectAdmin plugin system

I am guessing that the design of a Control Panel template will heavily rely on CSS. My idea is to produce an "UI Kit", which basically is a set of common HTML elements (fields, tables, buttons, radio button, etc), so the look and feel is automatically expanded to 3rd party plugins.

nobaloney said:
And of course a site-helper, released at the same time with all the same features.

We may consider this, though we need to see if we can "copy" the content from the current site-helper website. I will probably ask DirectAdmin their take on this thread. I would however need help as it's a massive work to get this done on top of the skin itself.

nobaloney said:
May I look forward to these?

When do you think you might have something to show in the form of a preview or proof of concept?

Realistically, I will fire up the project once I have 5 backers including me, thus about 3 more people if you are up for it, this would cover my budget to get started, to cover the basic expenses (probably half of the entire project), which obviously doesn't include anything for the time to follow up and get the work done.

nobaloney said:
Do you have any idea of a timeframe?

To close the initial fund raising: 1 month.

From there, about 15 working days to show some "previews" and another 70-80 working days to deliver the first "alpha" skin which you will be able to test. We are probably looking at mid to end of June.

Gregory

Fundraising for a DirectAdmin skin

Maniak

Verified User

nobaloney

NoBaloney Internet Svcs - In Memoriam †

Maniak

Verified User