Briefer is a website builder founded by Bine Ryberg. The idea was born in Germany, where Bine is part of the international startup environment, which is where she got the inspiration to create Briefer.
Everything started when Bine felt the urge to write her own blog. More precisely, a blog about her own experiences with product development and what it is to be a female entrepreneur. Unfortunately, the available tools were not able to meet Bine’s requirements for a blog the way she anticipated. No matter how hard she tried, the standardized templates were always ending up looking unprofessional.
After several mishaps, she decided to create her own tool, that will help her make her own portfolio website. That’s how Briefer was born. It is a service that makes it easy for content writers and creative people to submit their portfolio and text files, which Briefer will then convert into a stunning website.
Disclaimer: The information and screenshots presented below reflect the website and/or application at the moment of its publication. Wiredelta does not have a maintenance agreement in place with this client, therefore all changes and updates that occurred after this date have been made by the client.
The Problem
When Bine approached Wiredelta, the first version of the Briefer platform had already been built. Hence, the problem was more focused on technical rather than businesses needs.
Ruby on Rails
Briefer was originally built on Ruby on Rails. Additionally, when the website was created, there were not a lot of frameworks to choose from. That’s why the original team of developers went for Rails.
Rails is the framework for the coding language, Ruby. It was launched in 2004 by David H. Hansson and for the next five years it became a huge hit among developers, because of its unique Model-View-Controller structure. However, new and improved frameworks appeared on the market and Ruby lost a big part of its popularity.
Responsiveness
While Ruby on Rails can be convenient for small websites, Bine wasn’t satisfied with the functionality of the website and its responsiveness. For her, it was very important that the customer is able to make changes and add a new “briefer” (submit a brief) while sitting comfortably in the couch using their phone or tablet.
The client also wanted to add more features and for the website to be responsive, easily accessible by any mobile device. In that way, the users will have access to their briefs no matter where they are.
The Solution
Wiredelta has always been a supporter of mass producing standard websites. That’s why supporting Briefer in creating a website builder felt like supporting our own values.
Briefer’s first version was built on Ruby on Rails, however, due to problems with the website’s functionality our team of developers used NodeJS to rebuild the backend. Furthermore, the website’s UI was built with AngularJS for fast and efficient development.
Most importantly, the signup process is very simple and easy. All you have to do is to add your name, email and select your subdomain for your new website.
With Briefer you avoid dealing with difficult setup processes and time-consuming design templates. The platform gives insight into your project/case/research/portfolio, including contact information that allows the readers to contact the authors. It is an easy way to showcase your content that you can also continuously rearrange and improve.
The design of a brief is reminiscent of a text document that you easily navigate with colorful tabs on the right. Each tab specifies a new paragraph, and your paragraphs can be moved up and down, deleted, or hidden from the public.
Briefer is designed for everyone with a message. Researchers, artists, small businesses, and for everyone with something to share that they would like to be online.
The font automatically adjusts its size to tablets and mobile phones, for a better user experience. The website also provides you with good editing capabilities and basic SEO features. In that way your page can obtain great search engine rankings.
Conclusion
Even though Ruby has its advantages, it doesn’t always cover everything for a scalable platform like Briefer. Bine learned this the hard way, and we were able to help her implement all her new ideas.
Therefore, if you are experiencing some troubles finding developers to help you out with your web platform, you can always reach out to us. If you are not convinced yet, you can always check out the other cool cases we have worked on. Furthermore, don’t forget to sign up to our newsletter in order to stay in touch with the latest and greatest from the tech world.
