

Show HN: Had That Beer - Many many weekends project - MPiccinato

It is a simple beer checklist site where you can keep track of the beers you have had and what you thought of them.  I started this site around September of last year as I wasn't satisfied with any of the beer rating sites available for keeping track of what I have had.<p>It is still a little rough around the edges and is a continual work in progress, as I am the only one working on it.  But please check it out and send on any feedback.  Mat@hadthatbeer.com<p>http://www.hadthatbeer.com/signup<p>Code: showhn<p>If you don't want to sign up, and just want to browse around the site...<p>http://www.hadthatbeer.com/user/1
======
revorad
It took me a few minutes of wandering around to see the "Find beers, brewers
and places" search box. You really need to make it more prominent. White text
instead of ochre yellow might be a better choice. It's quite funny considering
I'm in the middle of reading "Don't make me think" by Steve Krug and just 2
minutes ago, I was reading the bit where he wrote, use "Search" for your
search box labels, not other words like Find.

As others have pointed out, please list some beers already. It's too much work
to expect me to start typing in beer names randomly.

Why don't you present me with your own and other early users' profiles which
already have a bunch of beers listed? Ask me if I like any of them or know one
I like better.

Even Myspace didn't make me feel so lonely. At least, Tom was my friend. Be my
friend, Mat.

Edit: Between the logo, top two nav links, search box, top right links, main
page text, Search button text, you have too many text styles going on, which
is confusing the visual heirarchy.

~~~
MPiccinato
This is great feedback, thanks for going through it. I will be adding more
content to guide a new user, and will be updating the UI to make it more
intuitive.

------
albertsun
Are you depending on users to input all the different types of beers? Would be
nice if you could scrape together an extensive list that I could pick from.
Was imagining a grid with pictures of bottles/logos and easy one click to
select.

I searched for the last two beers I had, nothing terribly exotic, and didn't
find either and so gave up at that point.

~~~
MPiccinato
To an extent I am relying on users input. I imported a beer database I had of
around 3,500 beers...though it didn't have many common ones and I am
continuing to fill them in.

The grid with pictures of bottles/logos is a feature I definitely want to add
in :)

------
MattBearman
The url <http://www.hadthatbeer.com/user/1> instantly worried me, so I tried
<http://www.hadthatbeer.com/user/2>, <http://www.hadthatbeer.com/user/3>, etc
and all were available.

Are user profiles meant to be public? If not that's a pretty serious security
flaw.

Other than that, the site looks great.

~~~
MPiccinato
Thanks!

The profiles are public by default and there is a setting to make it private,
which would show only limited information to the public just so that someone
can identify you when they are looking to friend you.

------
dataduck
Couldn't get to the Beers section, assume you're in the middle of updating it?
It would be really great to have a way of tagging or arbitrarily grouping
beers together, e.g. "fruity" or "goes with Salmon" etc, as well as by obvious
characteristics (e.g. brewer). When I'm thinking about a beer, I'm more
interested in the sort of beer it is than ranking it by a number.

------
tnorthcutt
Great idea. My two biggest/immediate suggestions:

Allow Twitter signup (and FB, I suppose - I say Twitter b/c that's the one I
care about.

Create a really, really, really good mobile experience. Seriously, if you want
users to actually use the site, let them do it while they're drinking a beer,
no matter where that is.

~~~
MPiccinato
I can't believe I forgot to mention this, there is a mobile web version
available that I have been working on, check it out at
<http://www.hadthatbeer.com/mobile>

Should auto redirect if I support your device.

------
dholowiski
Coming from someone who's done almost the same thing, you need to remove the
barrier to entry (signup) - for some reason beer drinkers won't fill in forms.
Allow twitter/Facebook signin or even anonymous ratings- a signup form was the
single biggest mistake I made with my site (and I made a lot of mistakes)

~~~
nickh
Going one step further, when a user goes to your site for the first time,
create an account for them behind the scenes. This will enable them to track
beers immediately.

Later on, you can prompt them for an email address or password. For example,
if a new user adds X beers, open a lightbox that says "Mmmm, beer. To make
sure you don't lose your list, type in your email address and a password."

This is beneficial because by the time they've added X beers, they have more
of a connection with the site, and likely to not want to lose the info they've
plugged in.

------
dstein
Beer Advocate (<http://beeradvocate.com/>) has been around for a while.

