

Ask HN: Can I Help You with Anything? - donuts

Hi HN!<p>(Regular HN-lurker, but I never really had anything helpful to say!)--This is my first personal web project and I'd like to see the feedback from the community that I've learned most of my web/start-up/tough-times-in-life stuff from =).<p>willworkforamac.com<p>Thanks =)!
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arkitaip
Keep an eye out for PayPal shenanigans; lots of donation drives have had
problems with them lately.

Oh, I will donate $10 when the html is 100% valid :)
[http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwillworkforam...](http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwillworkforamac.com)

~~~
donuts
Hi! Aw, thanks for your support =)

I hear some mean things about PayPal sometimes too! Unfortunately it was the
simplest donation process I knew how to implement (I was checking out Stripe
but there was a lot of API/developer stuff I didn't understand--my friend had
to help me install my Mixpanel trackers because I didn't really understand
Javascript either), and it seemed like a convenient way for people to donate.

I just checked/validated my site on w3.org after googling what you might have
meant by valid html, haha. (What a neat tool!) 31 errors .. ! Uhoh. Will get
working on those, thanks for your review =)!

~~~
zacharycohn
Check out www.wepay.com. Full disclosure, I use them and they're awesome.

~~~
megamark16
Came here to say this, I used wepay.com to raise money from family and friends
to buy my brother-in-law a birthday present. They are super easy to use, and
super easy to get ahold of a real person if you run into problems.

~~~
donuts
Just put up a WePay button. =) Thanks everyone!

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thaumaturgy
So, I'd like to not criticize anything at all, and just say that this is a
neat idea, it's presented beautifully, you've written it in a way which got me
to actually stop and read it (and visit it a second time), and I dig your
sense of design, which seems to do a great job of balancing humanism with
engineering.

~~~
donuts
Thanks Rob! Your compliments are encouraging =)

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kleiba
I'd be interested to know the percentage of date requests (mildly put)
_donuts_ will receive through her site. Hope this won't end in a stalking
disaster.

~~~
PLejeck
Thank god she didn't put her home address on that site.

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DanielRibeiro
Very nice design. Direct link:

<http://willworkforamac.com>

Suggestion: put design as 1 instead of 4. Also, putting your email in the same
line as "talk to me at:", or aligned, would convey the information better.

~~~
cedlimed
Love the design too. While you're at it, you may want to change the link for
your email to "mailto:francine@willworkforamac.com" instead.

It's currently linking to
"<http://willworkforamac.com/francine@willworkforamac.com>

~~~
donuts
Thank you for spotting that! The link's been changed to the mailto.

And it's aligned on the same line and centered now, with an e-mail icon
instead. Icons are cute!

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dcrankshaw
I would suggest a minor tweak to your site. To me, the "How can I earn your
support" part of the page is the most interesting, especially because you are
asking for money. But the panels switch too quickly for (at least me) to read
an entire one. You should either slow down the switch frequency or let users
switch between them manually.

Interesting site idea though. And your copy is engaging. I noticed the issue
because I was engrossed in reading your ideas.

Edit: It appears steve8918 beat me to the punch as I was writing this.

~~~
donuts
& Steve8918 - Thank you for letting me know!

Sorry for that usability peeve! I originally set the slider to pause whenever
the mouse is hovering over a slide, but I didn't forsee that the short timeout
session would be bothersome in case the cursor was elsewhere (like on the
actual buttons, oops!)

I've just quadrupled the timeout time, so viewers will have more time reading
a more stationary slide.

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steve8918
Not to be over-critical, but your "starting ideas" transition too quickly, so
that I can't read the full page to figure out what you actually can do to help
me. I would slow it down a lot more.

~~~
DallaRosa
same problem here. Had to keep pressing the buttons again and again.

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PLejeck
Very nice site, I'd donate if I weren't saving to buy my own MacBook (probably
would also help if I had a PayPal account)

I know exactly how it is to lack a mac. I've been a Windows user up until
about a month ago, when I finally threw my hands up and said "screw this, I'm
getting Ubuntu" (surprisingly, Photoshop works on Linux quite painlessly)

Best of luck in getting a Mac and I hope it serves you well!

~~~
donuts
& chromedude,

thanks, thanks! =) my trusty Dell has been good to me. but i'm curious about
the other side! Good luck to both of you in getting a mac =)!

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squish101
This reminds me of fancyhands.com. Keep doing what you're doing and on top of
that, maybe you can drop Ted Roden a mail and ask if you can be a part of his
team. This way you may get to own a Mac in double quick time. Good luck!

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chromedude
Very cool idea! Would love to hear how quickly you are able to get one ;). I
definitely would give you some money myself, but I actually have the same goal
and am tight on money as I am trying to start a startup myself.

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ltamake
Interesting idea for donations. I'll give it a try once my PayPal account
stops hating me.

Maybe add some alternate payment gateway support (e.g. WePay, Google Checkout,
etc.)? :)

~~~
spiralganglion
Stripe?

I'm going to donate $5, just because the thought of someone being stuck using
anything other than a Mac is more bothersome than not having another latte.
Maybe I'm too big a Mac fan. Maybe I still have a functioning Mac Plus on my
desk.

~~~
donuts
=P Thank you, Ivan!

If you're ever in the bay area, shoot me an e-mail! Hopefully I'll have a Mac
by then, and I'll take you out for some local coffee =)

& ltamake, zacharycohn: thanks for the payment suggestions, currently setting
up an account!

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Jun8
Fantastic design, amazing for a first project! You definitely want to add the
amount people have donated so far, it would be a nice motivation.

~~~
donuts
Yeah! I wanted to have a thanking board or some sort of real-time donation
tracker (a la humble bundle), but I'm not a developer/didn't know how to
implement such a thing that linked to my PayPal/WePay =(

~~~
Jun8
Well, it doesn't have to be real time, could be daily. Just check the donation
figure and update your page manually.

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mrkmcknz
If I was you I would check out <http://i.crowdfunded.it/>

Might be related to what you're doing :)

~~~
donuts
Thanks for the suggestion =)

I've donated on similar cause-funding platforms like kickstarter.com before,
but I decided to make my own website because I wanted to get some hands-on
experience in building my own site, marketing my site, and understanding my
user feedback and analytics--things that I'm interested in doing
professionally in the web industry. So the project is a challenge for myself
to validate and improve on my marketing/copy skills, and also a kind of social
experiment because I'm generally curious how the whole thing will turn out =)!

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chris_dcosta
Funny, I was dreading re-writing the "about" and "help" copy on my project,
for exactly the reasons you suggest. I'll be in touch.

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vessenes
Hi Francine, nice site! Did you design it? If so, you should put web design as
a 'willing to help with'.

~~~
donuts
Hi there, and thanks!

I bought a theme (from themeforest.net) to make quick changes off of, and my
friend gave me some CSS that I used to format the top. Here's the theme I
purchased: [http://tanshcreative.com/symple-lp-
preview/symple_v1/index.h...](http://tanshcreative.com/symple-lp-
preview/symple_v1/index.html)

I'm not a developer and I'm pretty inefficient at marking up webpages (it took
me hours of trial and error for parts that I feel like a normal web designer
would take half an hour to do), so it's not something I'd advertise--and
that's for your benefit rather than mine =P. But I am definitely willing to
help as much as I can, with what I can of it =)

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PaulHoule
i just remember the time some homeless dude came up to me near union square in
san fran and tried to trade me a stolen macbook for a box of doughnuts.

it's like "what the hell is wrong with ya man? i've already got a pro in my
backpack..."

~~~
DanBC
A box of donuts, and the opportunity to return someone's computer seems like a
good deal. I guess you're just feeding the steal-macs-for-donuts outbreak
though.

At least donuts are kind f food and can't be translated to drugs or alcohol.

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allanscu
Great job! Looking forward to hearing the end result. Never quit!

-A

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RMacy
What font did you use for "& I'm raising money to buy a mac"?

~~~
donuts
Hi! I used Yanone Kaffeesatz Regular, available here:
<http://www.dafont.com/yanone-kaffeesatz.font>

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porterhaney
Donuts - did you do the entire front end code work?

