

Ask HN: Please review my new social learning site - bdmac97
http://www.cafecourses.com

======
apsurd
Using javascript for sign up.

Even though something like 90%< of users have javascript enabled, I think it
is an unnecessary risk to have a signup form be 100% dependent on javascript.
Especially when it is so easy to just provide a real link to a basic signup
page and then load that right within the facebox using jquery. Pretty sure you
are using facebox and facebox makes this ridiculously easy.

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kajecounterhack
Hrm "Get In. Get Out. Get Smarter." Don't like it already, sounds trite.

"Ya tai! \- Hiro Nakamura, Heroes "

What has that got to do with anything? And it is "Yatta" not "ya tai."

The entire style of the site feels cheap too. I'm not sure, maybe the striped
banner up top? You need a logo.

~~~
mahmud
Cut the guy some slack FFS. He managed to get a _good_ idea and launched it.
Congratulations are in order and kudoses. We can't really predict the success
of his project by the absence or presence of minor details, like a striped
banner, and no site feels cheaper than Craigslist.

Fixing the UI/design is an iterative, everyday process, and the great majority
of it will ever come to light after heavy traffic and use.

Regards.

~~~
bdmac97
Thank you very much!

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jgilliam
I signed up. The "conversational japanese" course was highly rated and
recommended, so I enrolled in it, but I don't know what to do now. There
doesn't seem to be anything there. Where's the course?

The "enroll" button was a bit scary, I wasn't sure what that would do. I'd
expose as much of the course materials as you can without forcing someone to
enroll.

~~~
bdmac97
On the content issue, most of the existing courses out there were created
during the private friends/family beta. I have not removed them under the
assumption that they will simply fade to meaningless over time. I believe the
"Conversational Japanese" course is still under construction but the owner
"published" it for testing purposes. Getting quality content is my primary
concern at this point!

Didn't mean to scare you with that enroll button haha. Enrolling at this point
really doesn't do anything other than give you full access to the course (you
can then rate/review it, access the sections, and partake in the forums).

I have a story to think about letting people in w/out enrolling but am unsure
how well that would work because then it is hard to gauge a) how popular is a
course and b) should a user be able to review the course. Plus I intend to
eventually allow course owners to charge for their courses if they so desire
and want to get users used to enrolling since eventually that may have a
checkout process attached to it.

~~~
jgilliam
More food for thought.. "Enroll" feels like there is going to be some
requirement of me, and I wasn't willing to make that commitment yet. This
isn't the right language, but something like "keep tabs on this course", or
simply "follow", or maybe there's two options: "enroll" and "audit"

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pibefision
I personally don't like generic icons.

~~~
bdmac97
Neither do I! Want to make some for me for free? :-)

~~~
quizbiz
What about just not using them? Or you can find super cheap ones on
istockphoto

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apsurd
To me, the signup/login forms are not clear. You use "login" on the signup
form. I instinctively associated that word with logging in, so i kept looking
for where to "sign up". A better word would be username.

When signing up using the big orange sticker icon on the right, you get no
status message as to what happend after submitting the form. It was only after
trying to sign up using the top left link that it told me "username exists"
which meant the sticker signup apparently worked.

Not requiring a password on initial signup tells me you want ease signing up
as much as possible; why are you requiring email validation then? Seems
counter-productive. Let users gain instance access, and then delete accounts
that haven't validated after a set timeframe, (with reminders).

Minor pet peeve. The facebox boxes have too little padding on the left/right
margins. It does not look nice.

I tried to sign up for a course by clicking on the plus sign, but after I do
that I am lost as to actually how to "take" the course. Maybe this is a lack
of content issue, but I'm still puzzled as to whether these courses have
video, audio, read like a textbook, or??

That is all for now.

~~~
bdmac97
I've addressed most of these concerns in the last deployment I just did. The
lack of notification on signup was a caching problem.

After signing up for (enrolling in) a course you should be taken to that
course's landing page. A navigation section gets added to the sidebar when in
a course that lists out that course's sections (assuming it has any). At that
point, the norm would be to simply progress through the course's sections in a
linear fashion but that is not enforced so you can skip around if you
want/need.

I guess I need to somehow make it more obvious what you do when you are in a
course.

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JeremyChase
Once you get into the site itself the design is fine. I think the negative
reaction you are seeing is more about the landing page. To sum it up; it has a
web 1.0 feel. There is a lot of text, and it seems like a pretty intense sales
pitch.

I'd cut that landing page down to the bare essentials.

The site itself feels very complete, but without content it is impossible to
understand what the point really is. I registered and as others mentioned, I
had no clue what to do. The "what to do" drop down is great, but so much to
read. I don't have the patience to read all that (and I want to help you), so
I wouldn't expect a user to read it.

Regarding content; you need to champion a topic. Pick something you know that
would relate to other people. If you can't think of something, do something
technical.. The site can't be empty, and the things that people see must be
current.

good luck, looks like a strong start

~~~
bdmac97
That is great feedback. Thank you.

------
bdmac97
Just wanted to say thank you all again for the valuable feedback.

I have taken many of the suggestions from here and updated the site's landing
page to be less wordy and more to the point.

Also, I have streamlined the signup process so that you no longer have to
validate your email address (although now I probably need to add a CAPTCHA or
something at least).

I've also added in a new user help page that you are taken to upon signing up
that tries to give some pointers on what to do next rather than just dumping
you on your profile page.

Again, thank you all for the feedback!

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emmett
As soon as I understood what you were offering (make your own courses online!)
I wanted to browse example courses that had been released, and it wasn't
obvious how to do that.

~~~
bdmac97
Course Catalog link at the top. It's also the home page when you are logged
in.

~~~
emmett
Ah, I see. I didn't understand what a course catalog was in this context.
Maybe "Browse Courses", or place the link more centrally? Also, it should
default to a few examples that are really awesome, not "Most Recent" which is
full of garbage at any given moment.

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epoweripi
for a one man army, I think its pretty neat what you've put out as v1.

Some gripes: \- Please allow me to see content without a signup. it will help
in SEO too.

\- You can put up this on your hompage :)
<http://www.cafecourses.com/courses/3-course-creation-101> and invite people
to take up more courses (if #1 is done)

\- Related courses will help when looking at a particular course (you already
have tags and search, so I think it might be easy to do this)

\- Your login form is a bit too intrusive for my taste. Why do I have to check
my email to continue using the service? (I dropped out at that point and didnt
get to see a course) I didnt mind a signup for testing ur service but checking
my email was a blocker. I have 2 emails (both on gmail) and one I dont check
at all. Used for experimenting. To see that inbox I have to signoff from my
account and log in there, wade through spam to find your mail.

~~~
bdmac97
Thanks for the comments.

1\. You can already see the content without signing up (at least the course
overview pages). It is probably not obvious but the Course Catalog link at the
top is accessible when you are not signed in. I didn't want people to get lost
in looking at courses (especially when there aren't many yet) because I want
them to sign up and get involved in the community.

2\. Related courses is a great idea, thanks!

3\. Due to comments here I am reconsidering the email verification step. Most
people just use a trash or temp address to get around it anyways (like I do).

------
pubb
Tried to sign up but all I got was an animated gif in the popup window. Tried
with Safari and FF on OS X.

Edit: The popup worked from /courses but not from the home page.

~~~
bdmac97
I think the site is just under a bit heavier load than normal and until I get
some more traffic it's running on a pretty low-powered server. Be patient
please!

~~~
nop
Pubb is right, it's the same for me. It works from /privacy and /courses.
Clicking on it from the landing page returns 422 "Unprocessable Entity" as a
response to the ajax call.

Chrome/XP.

~~~
bdmac97
Think I fixed it. Sorry for that guys!

------
bdmac97
Thank you all very much for your feedback! I truly appreciate all of it, both
positive and negative.

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iterationx
nice idea, if a user creates a course will another user be able to modify it?
because that might be helpful.

~~~
bdmac97
This is not implemented yet but there is already a story for allowing possible
course author collaborations.

~~~
iterationx
i'm reminded of something joel spolsky said about the changing state of
volunteering, that people are willing to do small defined tasks, but less
willing to volunteer a certain block of their time each week. So if somehow
you had a course todo list, and people could each contribute, i think that
might work well.

