
Show HN: Review my startup – a blogging platform - ne01
https://www.sunsed.com
======
mortenjorck
Congrats on shipping! My first reaction is that you need to hit the value
propositions much sooner. People aren't going to click "learn more" if you
aren't already giving them a reason to, and while the teletype-effect
headlines are nice, they aren't sufficiently making your point. You're jumping
into an extremely crowded market, which makes it all the more important that
you differentiate as much as possible up front.

Typographically, I think you need to reconsider a few things as well. That
"Poiret One" typeface isn't exactly a stunner, and definitely isn't a great
pairing for Lato (one of the classic rules of typography is never to mix
multiple sans-serif or serif types on the same page). Lato is a beautiful type
family; try just restricting yourself to a few of its many weights.

Good luck!

~~~
ne01
Thank you! You are right about the fonts! We will reconsider! Also we decided
to create a new home page with our editor! So basically people can try it on
our home page sunsed.com

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Nadya
>What happens if I stop paying?

>We'll keep your blogs online, but you won't be able to edit content or add to
it.

From a user perspective, especially a user who may only blog once every few
months, I love this. From a business perspective, I can see this scaling
poorly as you still have to pay for the storage and hosting of blogs.

At first - the storage/hosting will be small. But what if you have thousands
of "idle" blogs from infrequent bloggers? People who might only post 2-3 blogs
a year and only pay you on the month they put a blog up? What about people who
begin a blog, post a few, then leave? A common occurrence for people who
attempt to start a blog.

~~~
ne01
What would be a fair policy? keeping blogs 3 months live and 1 year data
retention? We want our users to trust the platform with their work!

~~~
Nadya
That's a decision for you guys to decide, test, iterate, and come to a
conclusion about your user base. I brought up the storage/hosting issue as a
problem for _your sustained business_. Your current policy is _great_ for
users... just not you in the long run! You could try maintaining the current
policy and see how many dead blogs you end up having to host. Perhaps I'm
thinking there will be a lot of ghost blogs and retention/hosting will cost
you guys more than it actually will.

An alternative solution to the problem would be to allow users to download
their blogs as a backup from the service and reinstate them if they wish to
continue using the site. The only major issue I see with this is retaining
Disqus comments? Perhaps make a note that any Disqus comments on blogs will be
lost in the event they stop hosting.

This also allows the user to be in complete control of their blogs, if they
decide they would rather host their blogs elsewhere.

I would then retain their data (mostly for disqus comments?) for a year -
maximum - and cease hosting when you guys see fit, be it immediately (most
fair IMHO), or after a period of several months. I see no reason for you guys
to have to host without being paid your monthly dues, but if you wish to host
for 3 months or whatever period of time that's up to you guys!

~~~
ne01
You are awesome! we are discussing it... :)

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tinkerrr
"Average page creation time of 5 milliseconds"

I know what you mean, but from a writer's perspective, page creation is all
about the time it takes her to create a page, which is, in general, several
orders of magnitude more than 5 milliseconds.

The product looks quite good at first sight. I couldn't find pricing
information though, which would be a very important factor in a decision to
move to your platform.

~~~
eloisant
I will add that the time the page takes to be created server-side is not
really relevant when you're talking about a product.

What matters for the visitor is the total load time, including:

* latency (depends on the location of your server and the visitor, whether you're serving off a CDN or a single datacenter) * download time (depends on the size of the HTML/JS/CSS you generate, i.e. your default theme) * rendering time (depends on how heavy your default theme is)

Bottom line, you can just say it's blazing fast and your users will see by
themselves (and it is very fast, indeed).

~~~
ne01
Fixed it! It's now blazing fast... at the middle of the page! Thanks!!

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rmason
Two things jumped out at me:

First you don't have the pricing. I personally won't invest my time unless I
know at the end what it will cost me. Been burned a few times on this one.

Second you mention how great your hand built editor is so I watch the video.
As you create the blog post in the video you autocreate loren ipsum and never
show the editor itself! All you do is select pictures and type the headline.
Now I admit design wise what you showed was terrific but if the video is all
about the editor - then show the editor.

I happen to need a blog right now so if you added those two things (and I will
check back) you might gain a customer.

~~~
ne01
I'm sorry that our pricing page is not easy to find! we have got tons of
complaints! we are working on it! It's actually $10/Month unlimited
contributors and up to 10 blogs (sunsed.com/pricing)

Please try our editor with the 14-day free-trial (no credit card required).

We are also working on putting our editor on our homepage sunsed.com so people
can try it out without signing up!

I'll do everything I can to gain your trust and business!

Thanks for your feedback!

@seyedip

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joshmn
> SunSed has a built in page view counter but we also support Google
> analytics.

The word "but" really dilutes what's said before. "SenSed has a built-in page-
view counter, and also supports Google Analytics."

~~~
ne01
Updated it! Thanks!! :)

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nilkn
I think joshmn's typo (SenSed instead of SunSed) may have made it onto the
page as well. :)

~~~
ne01
You are awesome! Fixed it! embarrassing...

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ovao
Performance is an interesting way to differentiate your product from other
platforms, though I'm not sure what kind of value high performance offers in
this space.

I don't think you're selling it well. Performance comparisons to other
platforms with clean and rapidly-digestible charts would really help convey
what makes your platform different than others when it comes to performance. I
have no idea, for example, whether "5ms page creation time" is good relative
to other platforms, nor why I should care _overly_ that other platforms do the
same in 10, 15 or even 100 milliseconds. Convince me that I should!

The speed at which the menu slides in does seem antithetical to selling
'fast', if I'm honest. It reveals itself too slowly. If speed is an important
attribute of your product, everything should be fast!

I like — _really_ like — that you have usably-fast live search. That's a great
headline feature, and something few other platforms do! Along with the editor,
I think these two features can make your platform stand out in a meaningful
and valuable way.

I think leveraging Disqus as your social story is probably a reasonable
decision, but I think there's room for evolution there. Rolling your own
solution — something that really creates a network for SunSed users — may be a
longterm goal, and may help you meet/exceed performance expectations.

~~~
ne01
We are going to fix the menu speed! You are absolutely right! Also about the
5ms we have removed it until we make charts that compare... but between us
average WordPress is 400ms and Ghost is just slightly better. Actually that
number is how long it takes for the engine to put together your site from
database without caching any content.

I'm thrilled that you liked the editor and search features!

You are right about Disqus, we are thinking about making a built-in comment
system! Thanks!!!

:)

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gaigepr
I am curious why a lot of websites use the mobile style "pull out" menu on
desktop versions of their sites. Is this for a consistent UX? Something else?
Laziness? I personally do not like clicking on something small on the corner
to get the menu for which there is plenty of space already on my screen.

~~~
ne01
Good point! It was mainly for consistency... but you are right!

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drvortex
Self-hosted package? It is important that you make the backend available for
self-hosting if you want paying customers. It is the reason why Wordpress,
Ghost and company are doing well - they are open source and can be examined
for security flaws and modified if necessary. Very few casual/amateur bloggers
will pay for a blog when Blogger, Tumblr etc. exist.

You want to be a blog hosting company. Make the engine available.

~~~
ne01
Thank you for your suggestion! We are actually thinking about it!

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quaffapint
Take a video/animated-gif of your 'revolutionary editor' and have that be the
main image on your front page to help really sell it.

~~~
ne01
Thanks!! Even better we have decided to put our editor on our homepage.

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vfrogger
It'd be nice to just embed the youtube video demoing the editor right on the
homepage. I had no clue what your value proposition was until I clicked the
learn more link (which was not obvious) and then clicked to watch the youtube
video, and it's kind of lame that I have to leave your site to see why your
site is good. Just my .02

~~~
ne01
You are absolutely right!! We are working on it! Thanks!

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tsieling
Congratulations! Still poking around, but I almost gave up interest when I
didn't see pricing. Once I noticed the hamburger menu off in the corner I did
find the pricing (which is pretty good), but it made me realize how that
hidden menu might let interested people go by too easily.

~~~
ne01
Thank you for letting us know! We will make it better soon! :)

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OhHeyItsE
I see you are doing domain registrations. "You can register a new domain for
only $14/year with us"

That's quite an undertaking. Is this a white-label thing? I'd imagine there's
quite a lot of management that goes into being a registrar on top of a blog
platform!

~~~
ne01
Just like squarespace and WordPress.com we are resellers but all the domain
management happens in your blog admin with the SunSed beautiful and simple UI

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apricot13
I'd like to be able to see a demo blog, maybe even linked on the homepage, I'm
not one for explanation videos, I like to click around and see what I'd be
working with. Even if you just had a production blog it would be really
helpful.

~~~
ne01
We are working on it. Thank you for your feedback!

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XYEaQMZJvS
It looks pretty cool. I enjoy seeing more blogging platforms out there and I
hope this one takes off.

Seeing the video of your editor, it reminds me of Jux. They had a really cool
interface and everything, but went under.

~~~
ne01
I don't know about Jux but we have solid only-paid business model! We have
very little overhead costs! My brother designs and I code... we live with our
parents until this takes off that's our plan. We want it to grow naturally
with word of mouth and will never pay for advertisement. All that said our
plan is not bullet proof ;)

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detaro
I'd make the "learn more" link bigger/more visible.

Also, let us try the features you advertise instead of only linking to videos.
Best way to be convinced they are great is being able to try them out.

~~~
ne01
Thanks for your feedback!!! I'll make that link bigger, besides the free trial
how can I make users try features?

~~~
detaro
I was mainly thinking about the first three (editor, search, themes). For
search and themes, a demo blog with a menu to look at different themes and
enough content to make trying the search useful. For the editor, just give a
page where they can use it. Just a sandbox, no need to store what they write
there. Signing up for a trial is likely already to much effort.

~~~
ne01
Great idea!! We have decided to create an editable homepage! Also link to a
blog where users can try search.

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olalonde
Looks great. What stack is this built on if you don't mind sharing?

PS: You have a typo in your welcome message: "contributers" should be
"contributors".

~~~
ne01
Fixed it! Thanks!!!

~~~
olalonde
Other suggestion: make the menu transition a bit faster.

~~~
ne01
Will do! Thanks!

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c4n4rd
Looks great - The ideas on the comments are are really good too.

Do you mind sharing what you used on the back end, and also on the front-end?

P.S. If you cannot share, it is completely fine too.

Thanks!

~~~
ne01
On the backend: PHP & nginx On front end: JQuery + Semantic ui (css framework)
And everything is hosted on Google Cloud Platform.

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posnet
It is not obvious to me how this service differenciates itself from say ghost.
Some sort of comparison chart would be helpful.

~~~
ne01
Good idea! We will create a comparison chart! Thanks!

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ne01
Thank you all! for your awesome feedbacks!

Conclusion:

1\. Put our editor on our homepage: sunsed.com

2\. Possibly change the font "Poiret One"

3\. Make menu transition faster.

4\. Pricing is not easy to find.

5\. Fair policy for users who stop paying

6\. Comparison charts for ghost and wordpress

7\. Built-in comment system (beside Disqus)

8\. Better explain how much faster it is compared to other blogging engines.

9\. Open sourcing it.

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rellimevad
"You shall not loose your work" should be "lose" on your pledge page.

~~~
declnz
Whilst we're on corrections / copy suggestions...

"It let's your viewers find" should be "It lets", on the Why page.

Note that in that section, out of the four sentences, _three_ end in an
exclamation mark. IMO this does make the copy feel a bit... shouty / cheap; I
don't imagine the Apple site, for example, would _ever_ do this).

I'd also start that section again with the name (i.e. "Sunsed lets your
viewers", rather than a pronoun (it). Readers often skip sections, plus
excessive use of "it" is perhaps a bit de-personalising of the product.

~~~
ne01
Priceless... Thank you.

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rgbrenner
Empty page on my iPhone.. Is the site down?

