Upload, Download and share Affinity resources for free

[Aaron Martin]

Hi everyone.

Im a fan of affinity and thought of creating a website for you all to easily upload, share and find resources exclusively for affinity files for free.

Before you check this website, i wanna let you know that i made this website with little help from others and lots of passion and love, its not perfect and i intend to keep upgrading it and your opinion is valuable. i hope it can help some in the community.

www.affinityelites.com

Enjoy  

PS:

• Everyone can download resources and assets but you'll need to sign up to upload
• While uploading files, you can submit a PNG thumbnail of your file that has transparent background. This way others can utilise the background greyscale effect to check how the source looks with different shades of grey level background.

[David LARK]

awesome. thanks

[Aaron Martin]

Im glad you liked it. 🙂

[John Rostron]

The user interface is uninspiring. There is a conspicuous link to Serif Affinity but no links to anything else. I tried searching for a few items, but all I got was a brief cryptic message.

John

 

[jmwellborn]

I got a “not secure” notification from Apple regarding this website.   

[Aaron Martin]

1 hour ago, John Rostron said:

The user interface is uninspiring. There is a conspicuous link to Serif Affinity but no links to anything else. I tried searching for a few items, but all I got was a brief cryptic message.

John

 

Thank you so much for time to check it out. I initially tried to make this as simple and without any distraction as possible. But the animations were though (mostly cuz im a noob at this) what i aim as main focus was firstly to require as few clicks as possible to upload or download files, and also avoid any other graphical clutter so the resource thumbnail become the main focus. 
i will work on the UI more and try to make it look fresh. Thanks for your feedback. 

[Aaron Martin]

14 minutes ago, jmwellborn said:

I got a “not secure” notification from Apple regarding this website.   

Hi. I appreciate your time for checking this out. You are right. I think its because of the web using http instead of https. Im not sure how to do that yet, looking into it now and will be done. At the meantime, if anyone could guide me with some advice, that would be great as well. 

[Alfred]

1 minute ago, Aaron Martin said:

Im dont know how to make it https yet, looking into it now and will be done.

You need to install an SSL certificate. They usually cost extra, but your hosting provider should be able to advise you further.

[Aaron Martin]

Thanks alfred. 

[Aaron Martin]

I also want to draw and add some vector shapes and product templates to the site so it has some content in it to fill it some more. What do you guys suggest i draw and put there?

[Aaron Martin]

There seem to be an issue which caused user not being able to sign up. now its fixed and users can easily sign up by clicking the profile icon on the top right (Photo in attachment). Although please check your spam folder for activation link.  

[Frances Proctor]

I checked out your site and I think it's a great start. I know its a lot of work to create and maintain something like this.   I would like to offer some constructive critiques .

1. Rather than landing on a homepage with nothing but advertising you need some examples of what can be found on your site.  Create some resources yourself if you have to. If you have something to start with it will encourage more people to add stuff.  create brushes, patterns, simple vector drawings, layer styles, and templates. For affinity photo you could a LUTs and macros. 
2. Even though the resources are free they are still being marketed to a specific audience make the site look appealing.  
3. Search brings up nothing at all . I don't know if it doesn't work or there are just no resources. 
4.  The link to Affinity by Serif Should be either down near the bottom or off at one side and you should have a disclaimer that you are not an official Serif site.
5. you need a navigation bar at the top to make it easier for visitors to explore what the site has to offer it could link to pages for each type of resource.
6. Add some contact  and FAQ pages and links to them at the bottom so your site visitors can get in touch and you can offer support.
7. I tried to upload an assets file and it said the format is not supported so I tried the same content in a zip file and it said zip files are not supported make it clear what types of files can be uploaded and how large the file size can be.

I look forward to seeing how the site develops, and once I am able to correctly upload I will donate a few things.

[kamiC]

This is a good idea. These are my suggestions: add a contact for the site, add a simple Q&A section and a brief how-to info page--all upfront. Visitors are curious people and want to have basic questions answered about a site before joining and also want to understand what is expected of them, the info page is good for all that. Create categories for the type of downloads that come into the site. Organizing the site from the start will be easier to maintain and provide focus to people who browse the site.

Looking forward to seeing it grow.

 

[Aaron Martin]

hi Frances. Thank you for your advice. These are much appreciated. like you said theres still a lot of work to be done. but just to clarify some of the small details of the workflow, here are my responses:

On 4/30/2021 at 8:07 AM, Frances Proctor said:

Rather than landing on a homepage with nothing but advertising you need some examples of what can be found on your site.  Create some resources yourself if you have to. If you have something to start with it will encourage more people to add stuff. 

i tried to have a minimalistic approach to the design of the UI as to make the top side of the webpage , one of the works selected from uploads of other users. at the moment, since theres not much content on the website, i placed this as a placeholder. Im already creating some templates of shapes and often used resources such as vector phones, packagings etc. and will be uploading them soon.

 

On 4/30/2021 at 8:07 AM, Frances Proctor said:

Search brings up nothing at all

thats because the website lacks content still.

On 4/30/2021 at 8:07 AM, Frances Proctor said:

The link to Affinity by Serif Should be either down near the bottom or off at one side and you should have a disclaimer

you are right, will do this one to clarify.

On 4/30/2021 at 8:07 AM, Frances Proctor said:

you need a navigation bar at the top to make it easier for visitors to explore what the site has to offer it could link to pages for each type of resource.

at the moment its has a menubar although very minimal in functionality (it only has account / upload / search / home button when clicked on Logo) i will be considering adding mych more dunctionalities to it.

On 4/30/2021 at 8:07 AM, Frances Proctor said:

Add some contact  and FAQ pages and links to them at the bottom

Also good advice, thank you.

 

On 4/30/2021 at 8:07 AM, Frances Proctor said:

I tried to upload an assets file and it said the format is not supported

Thats because i set the website up in a way where you have to upload the affinity file (designer/photo/publisher) this way i can show the filter in a correct way when its being searched. (Screenshot Below) than later on, you can add assets such as macros, brushes, fonts , packages , etc. in add resources (Screenshot Below). This was actually a big dilemma as in how i wanted my website to categorize the content. At the end , i decided to go consistence with how serif developers categorised their softwares and let the users to at least send a sample work in affinity format if the resources they are uploading , for example, if someone wants to share a brush, at least they could upload an af file with that brush used as use case.

Thank you so much for your word of encouragement. 

[Aaron Martin]

On 4/30/2021 at 5:25 PM, kamiC said:

add a contact for the site

Thank you for your suggestion. Will be added soon.

 

On 4/30/2021 at 5:25 PM, kamiC said:

simple Q&A section and a brief how-to info page

Thats a good suggestion, its also one of the reasons why im using this forum. your questions, contributions, advices here will be used as a reference for it.

On 4/30/2021 at 5:25 PM, kamiC said:

Visitors are curious people and want to have basic questions answered about a site before joining

I agree

On 4/30/2021 at 5:25 PM, kamiC said:

Create categories for the type of downloads that come into the site.

at the moment , there are categories after user searches. i shared a screenshot on the post before this one. but i also agree that content requires categories. i have some ideas i want to implement but im waiting to have a feel of the website after it has some content on it.

 

On 4/30/2021 at 5:25 PM, kamiC said:

Looking forward to seeing it grow.

that makes 2 of us

[Aaron Martin]

I uploaded a vector photo of a tux and several other random things on the website you can check, download and use.

https://affinityelites.com/single/249

feel free to upload files and share the site if you like it find it useful. Thank you.