Official Thintopia Blog

Thintopia.com is growing steadily without me doing a single thing.  People keep telling friends and family and creating new competitions.  I’m getting more and more motivated to get the new version of the site done.  Yesterday I was up until 2am getting the new user home page going.  The next step is to get the competition home page up, then the competition list, competition create, then profiles, friends, user comments, groups.  The list goes on and on.

Tonight I added an about page and I’m targeting it more about weight loss competitions. I’ve also started the fitness tracker page.  Another fun thing is the thintopia store.  You can purchase shirts or a mug with the thintopia logo!  I want to spend a little more time with designing some different shirts that people will want to buy.

I was working on the ability to upload photos which I finished but I was having trouble resizing the images to 3 different sizes.  I want to be able to have a thumbnail, small and large version.  Once this is done I will be able to use the code to allow for competition images and group images.  It has been a few weeks since I’ve had time and been motivated to work on this again.  It seems that whenever I don’t have time I’m motivated but when I have time I’m not motivated.  I need to just push through and get the site to a point where I can switch from the current version.  The new site will be much more user friendly and functional.

Also.  I’ve created an account on Zazzle where I will be able to sell shirts, mugs, etc with the Thintopia logo.  I also plan to put a link for paypal donations.  The other way I plan to help cover the cost of hosting is through google ads but I will need much more traffic before that will be worth adding.  We’ll keep the look and feel clean…for now.

Last night I created the account settings page and added the ability to change password, username and email. I also have the password reset for people who forget their password. I decided to make sure and get all the necessary user tools in place first because when I first made thintopia I left these for later and was not super motivated to do them after the fact and ended up resetting people’s passwords manually. The first thintopia was a good learning experience and my hope is that the new thintopia will be much much better and more professional and that I will be able to market it. I never felt I could market the first one because it lacked a lot of the little things that make a professional website and had it gotten very popular I would have spent a lot of time helping people and fixing the site.

Next step: User profiles. I need to decide what to put in the profile. I know I want a picture as well as some fitness related questions. I want people to be able to leave comments. Any ideas for user profiles?

I’m working on the new registration process as well as account/profile information.  I want to require as little information as possible to increase the chances that visitors will register.  I always like quick and easy registration.  Some extra information is nice for customizing the user experience but ultimately the idea is to attract people to join then allow them to add more information later to improve their experience.  I’ve decided to only require a username, email address and a password.  Other information that can be added later include gender, location (country, zip code), and other profile details (photo, interests, goals, marital status, etc).

Thintopia ver2.0 is currently in the works.  It will look better, work better and include more features.  I plan to add user profiles, friends, groups, and an advanced fitness tracker.  The competitions will also be easier to manage and use.  I will post here on my progress.  At some point I will even post a link for those interested in using the new site before anyone else.