

Ask HN: Review my startup, PoorlyProgrammed.com - bbrutalhhonesty

Hey HN,<p>I&#x27;m sort of new around these parts! You see, I&#x27;m sort of new to the serious-web-development-scene.<p>Anyway, I&#x27;ve just made a website, PoorlyProgrammed.com, where you can make your own website. Woopty doo, right? Well.. there&#x27;s more to it. You can get a free subdomain name, free hosting, free designer templates, free plugins.. and you&#x27;ll never have to drop a penny.<p>In fact, the website itself never asks for any form of payment unless you choose to upgrade to another package (yeah, there had to be some way of making money). You can upgrade your package to include more storage space, premium plugins and themes, and even give you the ability to place your own ads on your website.<p>My point being: I believe I&#x27;m offering a genuine service here. It would mean a lot to me if you guys could give me some pointers, tell me what I&#x27;m doing wrong, and more importantly: tell your friends about it.<p>Thanks, HN.
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henrixd
You obviously are quite young. You should avoid using all provocative terms
and be more boring (young != stable). You should treat web page as an company.
You need to change your domain-name. When figuring out names, think things
that are clever but creates feelings of respect. Clever only with the way that
tells you are intelligent.

Normally I don't like advertisement like this, but you were very open and
disclosed your agenda. This kind of page is actually very good starting point
to learn these things. To actually do something, instead of just practicing
theory or doing small programs for your self.

And I really like your big changing images, they are pretty. Thats the feeling
you have to bring to whole web page. At bottom all those yellow free texts
feel like something from '80 and that epic text there was something that
would've make me change host.

One small last thing. When you ask people "How to make your very own web
page?" thats giving them more problems to solve. You should give answers, like
"Here make easily your own web page here"

Anyway, I haven really have my coffee yet so.. don't judge me, these are just
few my ideas.. good luck.

~~~
bbrutalhhonesty
You're right, I am pretty young. But I'm surprised you could tell that by my
web design; bravo! Addressing your first point: would you suggest a domain
name change?

The yellow 'Free' texts do come off a little.. slimey.. Thank you for bringing
that to my attention.

I'll definitely be changing the title to something that sounds a little more
solution-like.

I appreciate your feedback. If you think of anything else, please let me know!

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bbrutalhhonesty
onetimeusename,

Great questions. It's called 'PoorlyProgrammed.com' with the intention of
irony. The slogan is: "Not just another poorly programmed website".

I don't have an acceptable usage policy anywhere YET. But you make a solid
point: I should make that a priority.

The platform used to create this is wordpress. I did my best to hide that fact
because I feel that alerting people to the fact that it's wordpress would just
make people roll their eyes and click away. It has that connotation; the "oh,
that's for noobs" feeling.

Thanks for your feedback!:)

~~~
krapp
>I did my best to hide that fact because I feel that alerting people to the
fact that it's wordpress would just make people roll their eyes and click
away.

You didn't hide it very well, i'm seeing the wordpress login bar at the top of
every page, it's also pretty evident in the url structure and the source code.

But a bigger problem as I see it is, you're sort of competing with Wordpress'
own self-hosted solution ([https://wordpress.com.](https://wordpress.com.))
It's not that people don't trust Wordpress (though a lot of people don't) but
that it's already ridiculously easy to get it in a million different places -
and you can't hide it, it's impossible.

~~~
bbrutalhhonesty
You're absolutely right. I have more housekeeping and icon editing to do. I'll
never be able to restructure the URLs, though.

I'd like to ask for your advice on your second point, though. What would be a
positive way to spin this? Because I am absolutely competing directly with
them. What would you do to make that situation positive?

~~~
krapp
I think your best bet is to position yourself as a wordpress hosting service,
and offer wordpress hosting, domains, etc at a reasonable price, since that is
actually what you're doing. If you're going to try to compete against
wordpress using wordpress, you're going to lose - cheap hosts, even free hosts
which will let you install wordpress and use whatever plugins and themes you
want, are already available in abundance, and hiding the fact that you're
using wordpress is going to be impossible.

~~~
bbrutalhhonesty
After giving it some thought, you're right.

Do you know what steps I need to take in order to sell domain names? Where do
you go to apply? (I'll google this as well; maybe you know something I don't
though).

~~~
krapp
Sorry, no, i've never sold a domain. Google should be fine. Good luck.

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onetimeusename
Why is it called poorlyprogrammed? Do you have an acceptable use policy
anywhere? I didn't see one and I doubt you want people uploading child porn.
What did you use to build the platform?

