gat_sby

I'd have to agree with this one. Though I like these kinds of hack aggregators, I think yours missing some kind of fundamental product. A favorite of mine is codepen.io – the hacks are organized in a similar fashion but you have the advantage of building natively, forking, and creating collections.

I find the idea of using your engine as a aggregator for github very interesting though. I am not familiar with the github star and watcher apis but there might be a way to push upvotes/favorites/likes to github through interaction on hacksy, though you would still face the battle of bring users over.

NYC designer/front end dev here and my suggestion would be to check out Cargo Collective - Dribbble is a fantastic resource, the only problem I have with it is the invite only policy, so a lot of really talented young designers are left out of the party. Cargo Collective requires designers to apply for an account but community is wonderful and its quite easy to find quality work and contact the designers.

Agreed in that a good designer and front end developer will run you between 80-100/hr but you also have the option of scouting a younger designer who is willing to work for a little less. Now that suggestion is against everything I believe in terms of payment standards for freelance designers, however there are so many ridiculously great young designers that are hungry to grow their portfolio and get some great experience in real world application - hell, thats how I got my start years ago.

My last suggestion is to consider contracting for a fixed project payment rather than hourly. You said that you're looking for a part time designer, but looking further down the road it is a lot easier to plan your budget accordingly, and the stability for the designer ensures quality work.

And of course, good luck!