

Ask HN: Please Review My New Site. - spoiledtechie
http://www.drinkingfor.com

======
bemmu
My attention was drawn to the tag cloud first, and that made me confused as to
what the site was about. Only later I noticed there was a description on the
left.

Personally I am also a bit skeptical of the usefulness of tag clouds. It seem
to me they are mostly interesting to techie types who like to think about raw
data. I would rather see some specific examples of recently hot drinking games
from the site.

~~~
dgabriel
Totally agree. Featured games, plus (possibly) photos of college kids (your
friends, i'd assume?) playing the featured games, possibly a video...

~~~
spoiledtechie
Maybe do something like a video service?

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oakmac
I would change the text: "If you do decide to drink, DO NOT Drive. Drink
Safely." to simply "Always drink responsibly." and have that section of the
text be a link to a new page with a paragraph about drinking and driving. You
also might include some external links on that page (MADD, AA, etc).

It is more direct to use a command instead of a conditional and use a positive
instead of a negative.

~~~
JoelSutherland
It is worth noting that "Always drink responsibly" is the alcohol industry's
PSA slogan. It was almost certainly chosen because it contains "Always drink"
as opposed to being effective. This is why you see it in industry supported
ads instead of the MADD ads.

~~~
oakmac
The industry may have created that phrase in a conveniently ambiguous way;
still, in English, positives are always better than negatives when giving a
command. Consider the difference between "I don't eat junk food" and "I always
eat healthy foods." The first contains the proposition that you have the
capability of eating junk foods; the second does not.

Perhaps "Always Drive Safely" or "Always be Responsible" as the link text
would be better?

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axod
The "Drinking For.com" is only half visible in Safari. (Can only see top half
of it).

~~~
spoiledtechie
thanks, will look into.

~~~
tutwabee
The background color of the logo is gray in IE6 and the Add Game page is
messed up in IE6 also. Although, I can't blame you if you aren't planning to
support IE6.

Also the OpenID button does not load in Opera 9 and slows down the loading of
the rest of the form greatly.

------
spoiledtechie
I don't expect to make money off this site, but I do hope to make some headway
as my first true website...

Let me know what you all think. Its a Drinking site which will one day bring
all the drinking activities together hopefully.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Trying to upvote a game didn't do anything - the number didn't change, I
didn't see any message telling me something went wrong - just nothing.

At that point, I got bored and left.

~~~
spoiledtechie
Gotcha, Only logged in users can up vote. Don't want abuse of the system. Will
have to display a message that says something like that,

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teej
Definitely an interesting idea. Here's a few things:

\- Iterate on the design: I'd start on the color scheme, since it's easy to
get right. Resources: <http://www.wellstyled.com/tools/colorscheme2/index-
en.html> <http://beta.dailycolorscheme.com/>

\- Random design tip: Please don't use a grey gradient on everything. It looks
like everything has a layer of virtual dust on it. Try black or white, and
then tweaking the transparency/opacity of the gradient down to 25-75%.

\- Maybe I'm alone, but I never really thought tag clouds were a great data
visualization. Regardless, I think another way to explore the games is worth
pursuing. Example: <http://www.extratasty.com/recipes>

~~~
spoiledtechie
All points taken and noted.

Where did you see Grey Gradient? You talking about the voting system?

~~~
teej
The DrinkingFor.com logo at the top and the bottles on the left side

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icey
The layout seems like it's missing something to me. The tag cloud block is too
short vertically maybe? I kept waiting for something to load under it, and it
never did.

The other option is to put the tag cloud in a column on the right and make a
center column where you can have a featured game or something? You know, to
put some content on the front page.

Anyways, it seems like a cool idea - good luck!

~~~
spoiledtechie
Thanks,

I will be putting a top ten games voted on kind of thing at the top.

I also want to put a BIG BUTTON for the ADD a Game...

Hopefully that should fill it out a little.

------
brent
"We are here to provide a source of entertainment for any sort of drinking
game/activity. We wanted to provide the best place to find any activity for
drinking so feel free to look around and add a game/activity or two."

This is not as concise as it should be. Cut it down to like 7-8 words.

------
mkuhn
i like the idea to get creative ideas :-) a few suggestions:

\- i would not only display a tag-cloud on the homepage but also top games.

\- why do you need people to log in / "register". wouldn't a captcha also do
the job of avoiding spam and make the log-in/providing personal data optional.
i think it makes it more likely people would contribute

\- categories might could help people to navigate / provide contributers with
suggestions how to classify their games. it also enables to "surf" the site.

\- i don't dislike the design but i would make the navigation a bit more
dominant and combine the two logos, combine the picture of the bottles and the
title

~~~
rudyfink
Yeah, I second categories. I think there should be a few: top games, type of
drink, by game type (movies, speeches, skill games, etc), size of group.

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aptimpropriety
I'd remove the need for a log-in to vote on games. Regardless of 'abuse',
which should be relatively easy to monitor, if someone feels particularly
passionate about up-voting, perhaps they should be able to express it.

Considering a large percentage of individuals who play such games are likely
underage, who would want to log-in and, essentially, confess to their crime?

In my experience, sites like this which are 'cool content' driven depend
heavily on equally 'cool' design. Perhaps consider design overhaul, find a
friend good with web design?

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noahlt
When you click a tag and see a listing of activities, the headers ("equipment"
and "rules") are inline with the text. Where it should read like:

    
    
      Equipment
        foo bar and baz
      Rules
        blah blah blah.
    

it looks like

    
    
      Equipment foo bar and baz Rules blah blah blah.
    

That is hard to read, and ugly.

Also, the colors aren't so pretty.

Neat site though. Clever premise.

~~~
spoiledtechie
The problem with this is users are allowed to enter in data so I will never be
able to control what is in the site and not.

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unalone
It seems like a fun idea, but it doesn't _feel_ fun. I think the tag cloud is
detrimental. It makes drinking feel like work.

The logo doesn't appear in Safari, as was noted.

Beyond that, this feels like you could have much more than drinking games on
the site. There aren't enough drinking games to make a directory seem
worthwhile unless you're adding some other features to the site to make it
seem big.

~~~
spoiledtechie
I was asking my self the exact same question. Should I just put drinking games
and move on or should I build up the site more. I don't know how much real
type of advertising I can get with this site so I was thinking it might just
be a waste of time to put more into the site. What do you think?

~~~
unalone
Well, I'm guessing you'll be using this site, so just figure out what works!
Off the top of my head I'd think of either putting drink recipes online, or
letting people talk and tell stories about each game, making it a bit more
social. But it's your site, so I'd figure just make it whatever you want and
if you like it, other people will too.

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moxy
I can't say I'm too fond of the color scheme. However, I left the site feeling
impressed, primarily because I'm quite fond of the site's purpose.

It might be beneficial to replace the tag cloud with something a bit less
abstract and considerably more specific -- possibly even a "recommended games"
or "top games" page. Though you could always use the tag cloud to supplement
the interface.

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rksprst
It's nice to see a fellow asp.net website. It also looks like you're using the
mvc beta. Though, the site could use a designer.

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eduardoflores
\- Let users add photos/videos \- Make design more fun, cheerful, drunken...
\- Maybe link to social networking sites

~~~
spoiledtechie
We are looking into it.

The thought on this tho would be after we are finished building the site where
you can put games, would we want to expand it or move on to another idea...

Once all the problems and bugs have been fixed, do we stay and develop on it
for another 3 or 4 months or do we move on?

~~~
eduardoflores
I would move on... don't see too much future on this idea only, as fun as it
is

------
jordanf
Nice man. Black text on blue is hard to read for me, though.

~~~
spoiledtechie
suggest another text color? I was wondering about that too.

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latortuga
Typo from the About page: "If your still reading this..."

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pclark
whats in the light blue box on the right? adverts?

remove it, make the content wider.

~~~
spoiledtechie
There will be adverts there. Wanted to get the site filled out a bit more
before I place advertising.

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Allocator2008
I appreciate the fact that there is a disclaimer about not drinking and
driving. Perhaps one could further add a disclaimer that once one gets into
the order of a dozen or more shots in a single night, one runs a risk of dying
from alcohol poisoning, and that can happen with these kinds of "drinking
games", so sort of a "proceed at your own risk" link might be appropriate and
link to a medical article on the subject.

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GrandMasterBirt
Very non-standard navigation up top, but not so bad, I actually like it since
it is so simple.

The site looks nice. What would make sense is that the 1st page is the
description up top, then tag clound. Every other page has the description on
the side.

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whiter4bbit
actual:)

