Seeking input for a Pinegrow review

Pinegrow PRO
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Hi everyone. I’ve used Pinegrow to create a software review page. It’s intended to be a place where people can submit ratings on lesser known software products as alternatives to the well known names.

Naturally, the first review I’ve done is about Pinegrow itself.

How you can help
I need assistance with 3 things. The first is any feedback on improvements I could make to the site. I’m not a designer but have done the best I can. There are still things I’m undecided on, such as the names of the rating aspects.

More importantly, I would like people to check the review I’ve written, and offer any input on factors I have missed, or things I’ve listed but have got wrong (I’ve only been using Pinegrow for a month).

Also, would people please use the page to submit a Pinegrow rating. I’d especially appreciate beginners giving their input as they share a perspective with the intended target audience. I’m intentionally not giving instructions on how to do this as I’m hoping the page will be intuitive enough not to require it. Tell me if it’s not.

Oh, one other thing: For some reason my Integrations work backwards on iOS devices. I have no idea why. I’ll probably post a separate question on this elsewhere.

Background
It isn’t important to read this part. I’m including it simply to give a context to why and how I am doing this.

I am a hobbyist programmer who runs a small (i.e. just me) computer support business. I decided to create a section on my (terribly outdated and awful) website, dedicated to promoting products which don’t have mainstream name recognition, but deserve to. For instance, Pinegrow will be aimed at Dreamweaver users. Affinity Suite will be recommended as an alternative to Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign.

I’m doing this partly to add some value to my website, possibly generate traffic, but mostly to inform my customers on better / cheaper ways of working. I’m hoping that in the future, I’ll have it so users can submit their own reviews on products they’ve discovered.

As mentioned, the Pinegrow review is the first page I’ve created. I still have to build the rest of my site out before it will become discoverable, so now is a good time to give it a bit of a test. I’ll also refactor some of the existing review to a separate page after I’ve written some more reviews.

If anyone is interested, I created the front end using Pinegrow and VSCode. On the backend is a Hummingbird app (written in Swift) with data stored in a FileMaker database.

If anyone is interested in using any of these technologies themselves, message me and I’ll give you whatever guidance I can. All of the mentioned technologies run on Mac (which I used), Windows and Linux.

I try to learn from my mistakes. Technology moves so quickly that I have to make as many mistakes as possible just to keep up.

1 Like
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@reflex I was looking at the background image you have on the page, and thinking that building looks familiar :thinking: I drive past it regularly :smiley: So I see you’re in Auckland also. Nice to see some more kiwis around. :grin:

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That’s very impressive. I’m guessing you downloaded the image separately to get a clear view of the building.

That’s my office (well, a little room out the back is). You’ll have to visit sometime. You’d need to let me know though as I’m seldom there.

Good to see you figured out how to leave a rating. I was hoping a dozen people would submit something so a solid distribution could be created.

Perhaps more people will chip in soon. :crossed_fingers:

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I didn’t actually. It just looked really familiar. So I went to your site, and saw your location on the contact page :laughing:

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Yep. That’s the terrible (and terribly outdated) site I’m working on replacing. :scream:

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So, for my part, I added a rating, but I’m not sure if my opinion is biased :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Oh, so that way your rating, not @PeteSharp’s? :face_with_open_eyes_and_hand_over_mouth:

I was surprised he mastered the software in a matter of days. You, on the other hand, I could understand. :rofl:

It’s interesting that we aligned almost perfectly regarding ease of use and features. I plan on revising both the review and my ratings as updates come out (e.g. as bugs get fixed)

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I did submit a review also.

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That’s weird. It didn’t show up. Can you try again? If nothing changes, please let me know what device you were doing it on incase there’s something I need to adjust.

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On my Mac, using safari.

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Well, that’s weird. I do see one set of ratings updated at 18:00 (11 minutes ago), but only 1 other one there – and that’s mine. :face_with_spiral_eyes:

Perhaps @Emmanuel’s review didn’t stick?

I’ve removed my one. Now the only rating there is from someone who thinks Pinegrow has no bugs. :flushed_face:

Thanks for your help in any case.

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@reflex

The analysis of your review highlights several items that seem like bugs, even though we haven’t received similar feedback from others (highlighted in yellow in my screenshot).
Other items appear to be choices (multi-OS platform), technical limitations (files drag and drop from the system) and behaviors that don’t disrupt the workflow, often resembling cosmetic glitches.

Ideally, if you could send us a short video recording to support that shows the flow leading to these issues, or just a way to reproduce them, it might help us remove this somewhat vague item from the questionnaire. (I say vague because you really need to have read and analyzed your review to respond properly.)

Thanks anyway for this review!

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Shall do. However, although these things were intermittent, I have not observed any of the issues you’ve highlighted happened since the update to v8.5.

I’ll see what I can do to validate or correct my statements.