

Ideas for the new catonmat.net website - pkrumins
http://www.catonmat.net/blog/50-ideas-for-the-new-catonmat-website/

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michael_dorfman
Some of these ideas are pretty good, but some are not. To take a couple
examples:

 _Here is a concrete example: Someone links to www.catonmat.net/artikle when
they wanted to link to www.catonmat/article. I’d simply insert an entry to 301
redirect /artikle to /article and everyone’s happy._

Everyone's happy? I think not. What you've just done is taken on the the onus
for fixing other people's mistakes. In the long run, that's not sustainable--
it's more work for you, and only encourages sloppiness on their part. It's not
a road I'd like to go down, I'll tell you that.

 _47\. Add A Job Board. As my site is getting more popular and popular among
programmers, it may be a good idea to add a job board. Joel Spolsky made a
million $ in a year with job boards. As the popularity of my site increases, I
might make a few dollars out of it as well._

The value (and revenue) from a job board is not linear-- if your site gets 5%
of the traffic that Joel gets, your job board is not going to have 5% of the
value. In fact, until your site is extremely popular, a job board has almost
no value whatsoever. It takes a critical mass.

Catonmat's a great site, btw-- I really dig your content. And that's why I'd
hate to see you putting your energy into low-value, high-effort activities
like the aforementioned, instead of concentrating on the core: producing good
content.

~~~
pkrumins
Thanks for the feedback.

About the 301 redirects - it doesn't take much effort. People don't make
mistakes too often, but when they do I wouldn't like to lose visitors that
came from their link. I have currently fixed a few links that I have noticed
via URL rewriting, but it's web server specific, and I want to brink it to
application level to have all the site configuration centralized from admin
menu. Managing this tiny feature won't take much of my time and I will still
be able to produce quality articles.

About the job board. Oh, didn't think of that. You are right. I will set this
idea a lower priority and just keep producing good content until I hit
critical mass. :)

~~~
michael_dorfman
Personally speaking, my biggest complaint about your site is that the Lecture
Notes you publish are for courses I have already taken online-- I only wish
you had gotten there first. Damned space-time continuum!

~~~
pkrumins
Oh no... /o\ When did you take take these courses?

~~~
michael_dorfman
I did them both about 2 years ago. I didn't take any organized notes, I'm
afraid-- I'd have been happy to pass them along if I had.

If you're going to continue following in my footsteps, I suppose the UC
Berkeley Operating Systems course and Knuth's "Musings" series will be next
up.

~~~
pkrumins
You're right. Next up is Knuth's "Musings". :)

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khingebjerg
I don't think no. 30 is a good idea, I find it very irritating when a site
does this. If I want to open something in a new window/tab, I'll do it myself.

~~~
cabalamat
I'm not keen on it either. I think the behaviour of the browser should be that
the user controls whether it goes in a new window or tab, i.e.: LMB = same
tab, MMB = new tab.

Oh, and if the link is Javascript that attempts to enforce new or different
tab, then thre browser should send a distributed denial of service attack to
the website. Or better still, assassinate the person resonsible for it (though
I suspect this is AI-complete).

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amix
I think you should focus on improving the design of your site. Make it more
simple so your content is focused - remove the weird matching colors, cloud
picture taking too much space on the top and other things that take the focus
of your site's main attraction: great content.

I think you could get inspired by A List Apart ( <http://www.alistapart.com/>
), they provide similar articles like you, but their design and typography is
much better.

~~~
pkrumins
Thanks for the suggestions, Amir. Web design is not my strong side, but I will
try my best!

~~~
aarongough
I really, really recommend working with a web/graphic designer in that case...
I always used to go solo as I wanted to retain complete control of the
finished product. What I do now though is I consult with a graphic designer.
He may not make even 50% of the design, but his input always makes a huge
difference in the visual quality of the finished product.

~~~
pkrumins
Thanks, I'll think about it.

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pkrumins
Hmm...

Who changed the title from "50 ideas for the new catonmat.net website" to
"Ideas for the new catonmat.net website"?

I liked the "50 ideas" more. As tests have shown, people like concrete number
of things, like "10 Things You Should Buy For Christmas" or "5 Unix Utilities
Everyone Has To Know"

Any way to change the title back to "50 ideas"? :)

~~~
unwind
There's a HN guideline that says:

 _If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective,
we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How
To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is
meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."_

That's probably the reason why it was edited out.

~~~
pkrumins
Oh, thanks!

I had missed this HN guideline.

Sorry about that, will not repeat this mistake!

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arthurk
"28. Highlight The Python Code As In SQLalchemy Documentation." -- Yes,
they're using Pygments.

~~~
pkrumins
Thanks. :)

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dood
I'm intrigued by the Knowledge Database idea, care to explain a little more
about that pkrumins? I may build something similar for myself.

~~~
pkrumins
Sure.

I had a knowledge database back in 2002-2004. It was an application that I
used every time I was learning something. It wasn't too advanced, I had to do
everything manually, but now I am going to automate as much as I can.

Here is how it worked, every time I'd learn something from the web, I'd
copy/paste the key information into the application from the source I was
reading, add tags, wget the page (so that i had local copy of the database)
and link to local copy. This was I was accumulating tons of information. Some
days I'd review everything I had accumulated and add some comments with where
it could be relevant. When I needed something, I'd just enter some phrase or
keyword that I remembered, like 'linux security chmod' and I would locate the
key facts about this topic that I had stored.

Now that I think of it, it can be argued that you can do the same with Google,
but it would be a bit slower, you'd have to see which site was it and you'd
sometimes make mistakes of locating the right one. But if it's in the
database, there are just a few results and you can recall precisely which one
is the right because you added the result. It's you personal knowledge
database, not the knowledge database of the whole universe as Google is.

~~~
ErrantX
If there was a web app that did this would you use it?

And the killer question: would it be worth a monthly fee if it really rocked
and had desktop/iPhone apps?

~~~
pkrumins
Not sure I would use it. I would need the knowledge database to be customized
exactly to my needs. Perhaps other people would use it.

