BrianMatch

I was a UI designer at Homestead (and later Intuit) where we've had a drag-and-drop website editor for years. The problem we we eventually faced was not helping non-developers "develop" a website, but helping non-developers "design" a website. A website that looked professional (we catered to small businesses), readable (yellow text on red backgrounds is incredible difficult to read), and contained the information their users are looking for (like a phone number). Some users will get it and create great looking websites. Most will not, and that's where templates become really helpful, if not necessary.

There's an interesting irony you might face. Helping non-developers create and publish a website is an incredibly delightful experience for them. It's easy to forget the time years ago when we wrote our first line of code and it worked. It's incredibly satisfying and empowering. It's a great feeling to instill in your users. But that doesn't help them design better pages. In fact, it sometimes works against it. They'll add whacky text, images, and background colors because it's fun to play and create. The more power they have, the more they'll take advantage of it. For one-off personal web pages it won't be a big deal. But for creating serious websites, it might become a problem.

Good luck though! It's great seeing others innovating in this space!

I'm looking for more hidden gems to add to the site. Besides Primer, does anyone have any other good recommendations?

Thanks for the complements! I like the idea of helping the user hone in on a set that better matches their preference, while keeping the interface clean and uncluttered. I was going to add a simple genre filter, but I might experiment with an opaque filter based on +'s and -'s.

Personally, I don't think it's a big deal. The Curebits designer was obviously inspired by the Highrise design, but didn't copy it pixel-by-pixel. If it helps Curebits convert more customers then more power to them--it's not like they're stealing Highrise customers.

Linking to someone else's assets, however, is just wrong.