After labouring for hours on my website design mockups for this Basekit competiton, when it finally came time to try building with Basekit I was quite shocked to discover that the simple, easy-to-use software was not simple or easy-to-use. After repeated attempts to import my PSD file in a way that didn't completely squash my design, I spent another two hours trying to piece together the content, which usually ended with me pounding on the keyboard like an angry gorilla.
Even worse was the utter lack of support for even one of the problems I faced, wasting even more of my time as I tried to make sense of everything myself. After spending more than half the night just getting the most basic of elements set up, I decided to call it day and try to finish it tomorrow. When I came back, I discovered my login details didn't work, my email address was invalid, yet for some reason what little I had managed to publish of the website remained.
I am now left with a third of a design to submit for the competition and no way to complete it. Needless to say, I am quite frustrated with Basekit. If I had to give the experience a rating of one to ten, I would say it thoroughly sucked.
To prove my point, here's the design I wanted to make:
And here's what I accomplished on Basekit:
I don't think I'm gonna win with that for an entry, but I don't have much choice. No way I have time to go through all that again. You can check out the site here if you want, but it's not gonna get any better. Basekit sucks.
http://smp.basekit.com/
Chris, I'm sorry your have experienced some problems with BaseKit.
ReplyDeleteI understand how frustrating it is when work gets lost and you don't get the result you were aiming for.
Like all software, BaseKit has bugs and our development team works very hard to fix reported bugs quickly. The problem you describe with the invalid email address is not one that has ever been reported before and we will fully investigate it right away.
Although many of our customers tell us that the PSD import process works well for them, we are developing a much improved version that will be simpler to learn and use.
If you are willing to participate in a screen-share session I will be happy to take you through the steps required to make your site match your PSD. I would also be interested to hear more details about the problems you encountered so that I can incorporate your feedback into our development process.
BaseKit is being developed by a small team of people who are working very hard on a complex project. We take every piece of feedback, positive or negative, very seriously and we would very much appreciate any help you can give us in resolving the problems you encountered.
Gordon Plant
Team BaseKit
Hi Chris,
ReplyDeleteWe have tracked down and fixed the issue that caused your login details to stop working.
The problem was triggered by a very rare set of conditions. Across our entire user base it only impacted 3 people of which you were the only one to loose work.
We understand how frustrating it is to loose work but we hope you'll consider giving BaseKit another try.
Please contact me if you would like assistance with the PSD import process.
Gordon Plant
Team BaseKit