

Ask YC: Feedback on my site: pageonetimes.com - antiismist

Can you take a look at my site, pageonetimes.com, and let me know what you think. It is a "reddit", but just for sports. I am a sports fan and interesting stories are hard to find, so I decided to make a site to solve that problem.<p>As an interesting footnote, the site should seem familiar, because it is written in Arc and is based on news.arc, the same code that powers this site.
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mattmaroon
I feel like the design is too cluttered. It looks like a sports rag, but the
designs of most sports rags are too cluttered. I'd go with 2 columns max.

The idea is a solid one. No question. Digg Sports isn't very good. If you can
keep the community focused I think you'll do well.

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abstractbill
_It looks like a sports rag, but the designs of most sports rags are too
cluttered._

You might like to read this:
[http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.ht...](http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.html)

The important bit: "the real reason pizza flyers look the way they do is
because that’s what pizza flyers are expected to look like"

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ssharp
The principle doesn't translates across mediums. A newspaper interface works
in real life but not on the web.

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kashif
How does this make sense? The principle is based on the fact that something is
easily recognizable because it looks familiar and follows an expected
template. So, how is it that this does not translate across mediums.

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vthakr
I've been following your site from the start from the Arc Forum and I have to
say I was pleasantly surprised when I took a look at it today. The design is
so much more pleasing now than it was originally--which is not too say the
original design was bad, quite the contrary. I'm not really much of a sports
fan, but the site does intrigue me since you decided to go with Arc to create
it. Not sure if you're holding it secret or not (which would be totally
understandable), but if not, I would love to see the source code for the site
seeing as how I am currently learning Arc as well and I love comparing my
ideas with others to spot better ways of doing things.

Either way, code closed or open, the site does look great and I think its a
really great idea. Good work!

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antiismist
I owe a lot to pg for making news.arc open, and to the people who run Anarki
as well. Some things I am thinking about:

\- it is harder to open-source something than to deploy the site, because w/
open-sourcing, both the site and the code have to be in good shape, whereas
with just deploying a site, it is not as big a deal if the code has some
quirks. In other words, there are some deviations from Arc best practices that
I want to take care of.

\- I am thinking about whether there is an opportunity to have an open-source
digg-killer based on Arc, and if so, what that would look like.

Anyway, if you want to work something out then shoot an email to:
pageonetimes@idoh.com

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hollerith
People who download open-source code know that most code is in bad shape.
They're very forgiving.

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garbowza
I like it. Alot. I'm a sports fan and immediately saw about 7 stories I wanted
to read. I'll def bookmark this and come back. Well done.

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allang
It actually looks like a nice take on feed aggregation - and sports is a great
niche to start with.

If you're planning on taking the look & feel further in the direction of print
news, check out sIFR and consider making it an interface option. You have a
lot to gain by improving the quality of the page. (sIFR is here:
<http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/>)

In your place, I would also play with placement and formatting of certain
stories with respect to the others. It would probably require backend work,
but determining which of those stories is most important and then displaying
them as such would be pretty cool.

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antiismist
That seems like an interesting tool and a novel approach. It is a little hard
to wrap my head around how this does things that straight CSS cannot - are
there some sites that use this that I can check out?

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ecarder
I think site looks cool!But what the domain does mean? domain does not sound
sporty?

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antiismist
The thought was, what I really want is a newspaper, but with just sports on
the front page.

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sant0sk1
I agree that the site looks cool but the domain is misleading. Maybe something
like, thesportspage.com (not sure if its available, just off the top of my
head)

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dkokelley
sportspageone.com is available. thesportspage.com is taken, unfortunately.

I really like the tag line though. It certainly makes the address make sense.
"Page One Times - Where Sports Belong."

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icey
I think it looks great. I know your angle is sports on the front page, but I
almost wonder if it would be better to make it a generic news site and have
pageonetimes.com/sports or what have you.

At least, I wish the newspapers around here would do that... I would love to
be able to go to mylocalpaper.com/business to read the business news or
mylocalpaper.com/local/phoenix to see the local news for Phoenix.

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bostonbiz
I've been working on something just like what you are asking for. I follow
news in a few different cities, so I wanted an easy place to track all the
news outlets in each location.

I'll post a link this weekend when its live.

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GavinB
Many of the design tips here are right on, it could use a bit of tightening.
One very specific suggestion--try adding this to the style-sheet:

html { overflow: -moz-scrollbars-vertical; }

It will keep the scroll bars in Firefox from appearing and disappearing as new
pages are loaded. The scroll bar wouldn't be an issue except that it alters
the centering of the page.

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antiismist
That is a great nugget!

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GavinB
Thanks. Wish I could give credit to the place I first found it, but I can't
remember. Lately I stick it in every page I make.

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hooande
Great idea, seems well executed.

A suggestion: Maybe you should try a different design technique to
differentiate the stories.

There is a lot of text on the pages. It's kind of intimidating, makes it seem
like a lot like work. If you just broke it up more and maybe added more white
space it would look friendlier to read.

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marrone
I like it. Id like it more if you added a section for MMA. Regardless Ill keep
my eye on it

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antiismist
Thanks for the feedback. If you check back, you will now see a section for
MMA. It doesn't have a lot of stories yet, but I will make sure to add some.

(added the MMA section via the REPL on the live server)

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marrone
nicely done. Hopefully you can build a nice community around this, in which
case I will be a regular visitor.

Just curious, is it just you manually submitting links at this point?

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antiismist
I am the primary contributor, but I have small circle of friends and family
who also post, which you can see here: <http://pageonetimes.com/leaders>

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marrone
I built a HackerNews firefox extension a few days ago to monitor new comments
directed towards you or your submissions which you could port pretty easily to
your site if you were interested. Or if you build an api to a users
threads/comments (need just be an RSS feed) Id port it for you if you wanted
it.

You can grab it here: <http://wildstabmedia.com/hackernews> and just save the
xpi to disk and unzip to get at the source

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antiismist
Thanks for the link, it is interesting. I think I am going to opt for the rss
plan.

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parker
I like the service, but I think the name needs a non-generic angle. Not some
crap like swifflr.com, but something that lets me know that it's a sports site
without even going to it.

Other than that, it's clean and focused.

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Mistone
nicely done a few suggestions - the categories (nba nhl mlb) look really
crammed together maybe a visual separator | would help.

Agree that the domain name is a bit odd, but not a huge deal.

Would be great to have an RSS /subscribe tool so I can read the headlines in
reader, maybe even by sport.

Also if it grabbed an image "ala facebook" share feature that would be cool.

A bit more white space.

Most of these are nice to have and are likely already on your list of possible
features. Overall well done!

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jaydub
I like the clean design. Though I'm no design expert, I think it would be nice
if the user's eyes were clearly directed, since right now nothing really jumps
out of the page that much.

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jfornear
I agree. The three column newspaper theme is a little overwhelming. I also
think legibility could be improved by changing to a sans-serif font.

I see potential, but the name really should be more sports sounding.

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antiismist
That's interesting...before last night it was sporting helvetica font
throughout, but I switched it to times to give it a little bit more of a
newspaper feel. I like the logo in times, but the content looks better in
helvetica. Is it a design atrocity to have a mix?

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jfornear
It isn't against the rules to mix it up. I was just at theonion.com, and they
definitely mix it up. The headlines are either serif if the body is sans serif
or sans serif if the body or link is serif. The button navigation is also
sans.

I think your page would be easier to read if you mixed it up a bit. It just
looks like a wall of text which is intimidating. There needs to be differences
in the text to distinguish if they have functions or not.

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antiismist
Thanks for the link, I am going to try mixing it up and see how it looks.

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edw519
I am a sports fan and I love it. The most important thing to me were the
categories along the top. One click on "NBA" and I found everything I'm
interested in. Lots of good stuff I haven't seen anywhere else. (Where did you
find it?) The front page was too diverse for me (and probably anyone).

General complaint not directed to you, but to many:

Lots of people say this is MY fault. I am still 800 x 600 because of vision
problems. This works perfectly for me all the time except when I encounter a
web page that is hard coded to a large resolution (like yours). This happens
more and more often and drives me nuts with all the horizontal scrolling. I
would have left your page, but I loved the content.

Why not check the browser's resolution and adjust the css, or simply use
tables? Maybe I'm old school, but I just don't believe this should be the
customer's fault (or problem).

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antiismist
Thanks for the feedback! I use the nickb method to find stories,
<http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=99966>, and also my friends help too.

For the resolution, you are in the right and I will see what I can do to make
it better. I'll email you when I am done so you can take a look.

I use the blueprint.css framework (which has a hard-coded width), and the 3
column layout is deep in the code (I am not sure that any CSS will make 3
columns look good on 800x600), so I am not sure there is an easy fix. The
news.arc makes significant use of tables, but I had to make a decision to
replace most of them with CSS for various reasons.

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rantfoil
Looks useful. Nice.

Small suggestion: You should reduce the leading for multiline headers, they
look too far apart so it hurts scanability.

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antiismist
Thanks for all the feedback. I think it is really high-quality, and now my to-
do list is well stocked. I made some changes in the CSS area to address the
various font issues. It is still a work in progress, but I think the advice on
the sans-serif font is right on. If you get a chance, check it out and let me
know.

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okeumeni
I like the simple short presentation or articles. At glance I get to see
pretty much all the latest articles. I will also suggest a change of domain
name pageonetimes sounds very yahoo news to me. Cool stuff, I’ll add it to my
Sports search engine.

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Hates_
Looks good. Personally I really like the clean and simple look. Sadly I'm not
a sports fan.

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omfut
I think it looks cool. Would probably add some colored fonts, pictures etc.

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herdrick
I like it! Nice job, Idoh.

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tyohn
I like the site but have you considered adding a search?

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antiismist
I have thought about it and may add it in the future. Right now I want to
focus on the tagging parts, such as having it configurable in the profile, and
supporting logical ANDing and NOTing of tags.

The thought is to make this a great "browse engine", to help people find what
they are not looking for.

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carlos
Nice, although I would prefer a more readable font.

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alfredp
where's the hockey?!?!?

edit: found it - it just wasn't a major category like the other sports at the
top of the page

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antiismist
I just added an nhl top level section - it is a major sport and deserves it!
If you refresh you should see it. I'll work on getting some more stories in
there.

Thanks for the feedback!

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ideas101
its a nice beginning - you may want to add some color to it - at least for
news headlines ...

