

Ask HN: Review my weekend project, testist.com - noodle

Backstory:  About a year ago I started searching for a service that made creating custom tests easy and had some useful features (API, email results, etc).  After looking for a long time, I could only come up with one -- Zoho Challenge.  After working with that for about a year, its been nothing but headaches, broken functionality and customer service problems.  Fast forward to present.  I need a project to help me learn Rails (better late than never?).  So, I decided to build something I know I would use -- a better online test service.  I'm trying to build out the functionality I want to see in a form that others could use.<p>What it is (or will be):  A better version of Zoho Challenge, initially more oriented towards developers.  Or, perhaps a good description would be Wufoo for tests/quizzes/exams.  Basically, a service built to create, host, and integrate online tests easily into whatever you're doing so that you don't have to code something up yourself.<p>Link:  http://testist.com<p>Its a weekend project in which I was learning along the way, so its a little bare-bones.  Other than that, any thoughts?  Would you use it if it were more fully featured?  Etc..?  Right now I'm aiming for the features I want (since I'm my first customer) and things are kind of simple, but I'm aiming for more complex features in the future to touch upon a more academic level of service.
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pkamb
Too much text. I have no idea what the site does.

You need a nice big verbal call to action button: -"Create an XXXXX" -"Make a
YYYYY now" -etc.

The things people can do on your site are "Register" and "Sign In." Those
aren't things people want to do, those are ends to a mean. Give us an enticing
link to click, because right now the 3 in your header are extremely large
barriers.

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noodle
i agree, and thats something that i'll be getting in there soon. my "weekend
project" dragged out into wednesday, and the visible site is only one step up
from bare-bones text. i probably should've held it until next weekend and
polished it a bit more. hindsight, 20/20, etc.

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frankdenbow
Clickable: <http://testist.com>

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rfntv
Do you have a walk-through on how to build a test from scratch? I'd totally
use this on one of my membership sites. Bookmarked!

~~~
noodle
not yet, but its not too tough to figure out since there aren't many options
yet.

i'll see about writing something up as soon as possible, though, as well as
adding more information inline.

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fezzl
You might want to change the name...

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noodle
why? i see one or two possible issues but nothing like experts exchange.
insight would be appreciated

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logicalmike
If fezzi is as immature as myself, then it has nothing to do with being too
generic.

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noodle
only thing i can think of is its one char off of testis. but i don't know if
it would be that big of a deal. in the same ballpark as "pens.com" being one
letter off of penis.

unless there's something else? and i couldn't come up with a better, relevant,
easy to remember name. any suggestions?

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ibdknox
Perhaps there's something I'm missing? All I see at that link is a default
wordpress install.

~~~
noodle
perhaps a DNS propagation issue, i was pointing it to something temporary for
a while up until an hour or two ago. <http://testist.heroku.com> should also
work

