

Review my website (http://boardlite.com) - sarafsaurabh

Boardlite http://boardlite.com is basically a lightweight bulletin board website very similar to stackoverflow.com. The difference being, the aim of Boardlite is to handle discussions instead of questions and answers. You can also see a list of FAQs on this page: http://boardlite.com/faq/
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tonystubblebine
For some reason, and I'm probably projecting, I thought hey, I'll be able to
create my own bulletin board. I think there's still room for a good solution
there since Y! Groups seems lost, Google Groups seems a bit abandoned and a
ton of other people are in the groups space but trying for something
complicated (Ning).

Once I figured out what it wasn't, I had a hard time figuring out what it was.
What sort of discussions is this for? StackOverflow isn't just for any sort of
questions, it has a very clear purpose.

I forget who told me this, but someone once gave me design advice along the
lines of figure out what the number one thing people want to do and make that
thing twice as big as everything else. I often remind myself of that once I've
finished building cool tech that could be used for anything and everything. I
think that advice would be a good starting place for this site.

Aside from lack of purpose I can see a lot of potential in this sort of
software as a platform.

I hope that's helpful. I'm hoping to post a "Review My Site" here next week
and I'm already nervous about putting myself out there. But early feedback is
good to get.

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sarafsaurabh
Thanks Tony. The site is useful for creating discussions in variety of
categories and not limited to a single subject like stackoverflow is. This
might look like a difficult aim to achieve. I am willing to take the risk.
Later on I plan to set preferences for individual users so they get to see
topics relevant to their own liking.

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sarafsaurabh
btw..here is your new profile just in case you din't notice yet :-)
<http://boardlite.com/user/tony/>

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jcrocholl
Clickable link: <http://boardlite.com/>

I like the look, it is clean and simple.

One small glitch: it seems that on the page
<http://boardlite.com/category/computers/list/> some vertical gray border is
missing on the left side of "1 post" and "16 views", where the light blue
headline becomes narrower and says "Tracking ID: 400000001" etc. Same problem
on the FAQ page at <http://boardlite.com/faq/> ...

Page load speed: instead of
<http://boardlite.com/media/js/lib/jquery/jquery-1.3.2.min.js> you could use
[http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min...](http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.3.2/jquery.min.js),
see <http://code.google.com/apis/ajaxlibs/> for details.

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sarafsaurabh
Thanks. Can you tell me which browser are you using. I am so upset that I
couldn't see it before the launch.

~~~
sarafsaurabh
oh yes. Now I know what you are referring to. I guess the problem is on all
browsers. I'll do the needful soon.

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pedalpete
There are a few comments about people liking the minimalist design, but for
me, i find it a bit too pedestrian.

Also, on the homepage I get a 'welcome to boardlite', but I have to click on
the message to find out what it's about.

Why not have a description on the homepage saying what boardlite is about.
Also, why is the 'tracking ID' so prominent? Do you expect that to be
something people will use?

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sarafsaurabh
I have purposely kept the design pedestrian and thats what the website name
signifies: board "LITE". Ever wondered why people prefer Gmail over Hotmail or
Google over Yahoo, or for that matter Facebook over MySpace? Regarding the
Welcome message, its just a starter topic. It will roll down when new topics
are created. If your topics get lost and you are unable to find them, you can
search for the IDs(if you remember of course) in the searchbar.

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proexploit
As a minimalist designer, I like to see the idea put in practice, but your
design could be improved upon. Without any differentiation between areas like
post, comments, voting, and sidebar. Your design become more difficult to read
an navigate. Also, when you're using a fluid design like this, you need to
consider what it will look like to users of all screen sizes. Just being fluid
and filling a bigger screen doesn't mean it looks good on one. Keep up the
good work!

(constructive criticism only, because my compliments won't make it a better
website).

~~~
sarafsaurabh
Hey thanks. I had initially tried on 960 grid. But somehow couldn't fit in the
sidebar in the whole design. So thought of making it widescreen. But yes I'll
definitely look into the use case again.

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revorad
Hey Saurabh, that looks interesting.

Why don't you make a bulletin board on a topic which interests people here and
link to that? Then you will get meaningful reviews because without any
content, it's hard to see what's great about your site.

The minimal design is of course nice, but usability is no good without
usefulness.

~~~
sarafsaurabh
Here we got one: [http://boardlite.com/topic/how-can-one-manage-to-keep-the-
go...](http://boardlite.com/topic/how-can-one-manage-to-keep-the-google-
solitary/400000002/)

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sushi
Dude, I must say that I am very impressed with its minimal design.

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shabda
Built with Django, right?

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sarafsaurabh
I knew this was coming. Not that difficult to guess :-)

