
Launchaco – Instantly generate a responsive, free, website - marclave
http://launchaco.com/build/
======
ndarilek
This is interesting. I'm blind, and while I can think of ideas for
products/side projects, designing a nice-looking website is such a huge
momentum-killer. I mean, I know that I _could_ just focus on features, keep
the site design simple, and build a good design later. Then I visit <insert
random Show HN here>, and half the comments are about how some UI element or
other breaks on some combination of browser or other, and the last thing I
want is to have my idea dismissed because it's ugly. I thought Bootstrap would
help with this, but when my sighted GF takes one look at my attempts at site
design, her first comments revolve around lack of color, and I don't even know
where to begin with that. And yes, I know about themes, but sometimes that
feels like I'd have to make my idea fit the theme, whereas this seems to let
me pick and choose what elements I want.

Unfortunately, when asked to select a hero block, I'm greeted with a series of
images. Would you consider adding alt attributes to these? If I knew roughly
what they looked like, I could probably pick and choose something semi-
appropriate for a given project. I don't know what other issues I'm likely to
hit, but I'd be interested in providing additional feedback if this at all
seems like a viable direction.

Also, just noticed I can't select a hero block via the keyboard. Items aren't
tab-focusable and keyboard-selectable. Maybe this won't work at all for me,
but I'd really like something between "Here's a fully-formed theme" and
"Here's a completely inaccessible website builder that gives you a blank
canvas and assumes you don't want to touch the final HTML." :) If anyone knows
of anything like that, please do share.

~~~
imh
You know, I have no idea how to make stuff more accessible. If you don't mind,
could you tell us about how you browse the web, so others like me can make our
content more universally accessible? Any recommended resources for that kind
of design?

~~~
shitloadofbooks
There's heaps of resources out there, but honestly, just download something
like NVDA (it's an open source Screen Reader) and try it for yourself, first
hand.

~~~
devdoomari
are there any 'touchable' monitor that renders pixel-as-depth yet?

------
prawn
Brilliant execution and so refreshing to just be given everything needed at
the end rather than a download link via email. Throw in an optional donation
button (so people can tip you $20, $50, $100, $150, etc) and careful hosting
upsells to make it painless and this will become a solid earner. Well done and
good luck - you're on the right track.

~~~
cameronrohani
Thanks for the kind words. We honestly would rather people's emails then any
money at all. We're working really hard to make good design more accessible,
and monetization will certainly come down the line! Plus we already make a bit
of money with our other tool listed on the website :)

~~~
GavinMcG
It doesn't have to be an either/or thing, especially if it's presented as an
option to tip rather than to purchase!

~~~
prawn
Exactly. I'm a web designer/developer and even I could use something like this
as a shortcut for a job. If it saves me a few hours of stuffing around, then
$20-100 as a voluntary tip is an easy decision. Still free for third world
businesses or students or tightarses, but at least gives people an option of
saying "Thanks, this was worth it."

And while I can grab the files and set up my own hosting, being able to hit a
button, enter card details and have everything done automatically would be
powerful. Every web developer inevitably does quick jobs on the sides for
friends and family, and making that process pain-free would be useful.

------
shostack
Really fantastic UI. And I LOVE party parrot at the end. Made me smile.

Depending on your target audience, I'd love to see some tooling to help with a
signup form. Maybe offer some integration options (and an affiliate link) for
Mailchimp or something else?

I'd also love the ability to easily create multiple pages linked to each other
within the app. Sure I can create separate pages, but would be nice to have
that done for me and add some basic organization.

Overall this is really awesome. Would love to know more about what technology
you used to build this, why you built it, and what your future
product/monetization plans are.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>Really fantastic UI. And I LOVE party parrot at the end. Made me smile.

Agreed. Really nice touch.

~~~
wingerlang
Just to get all view points in. I hated it, made the site feel unprofessional
at a crucial moment.

~~~
bagels
Completely agree. Went from moderately professional to childish meme
unexpectedly. Made me question whether there would be party parrot easter eggs
in the download.

------
codingdave
Once I figured out what was going on, I liked it. But at first, I thought you
were really trying to sell me domains the whole time. I thought it was a big
marketing page for a hosting/domain service, and did not realize it was
actually all editable. You really need to make it clear what is going on if
you want to open this to a larger audience.

~~~
webtechgal
>...and did not realize it was actually all editable.

This. Speaking for myself, at a pinch I thought this was just a sign-up page,
and that the actual designer/editor was not available.

Perhaps, adding something like 'Just click any element to edit' somewhere in
the header would make it immediately apparent that its all working and ready
to go.

------
jwcrux
This is fantastic. One argument people will make (just like they did with
Bootstrap) is that if every product used something like this, all the webpages
would look the same.

To be honest, if all product webpages looked like this, I'd be quite alright
with it, because this look great.

Well done!

~~~
shostack
And the reality is that despite this, the vast majority of people have no idea
what Bootstrap is, won't notice, and frankly wouldn't care. Increasingly site
design is differentiated by the imagery used as images get elevated in
prominence, and that is all you need to differentiate your design many times.

~~~
teleclimber
I disagree that people "won't notice". They totally do. The other day my gf
(medical field professional, not a "techie") was looking for a good restaurant
to go to and, completely unprompted by me, blurted out "OMG why does every
freaking restaurant website look the same!?!" (she couldn't keep track of
which restaurant was which among her open tabs.)

I think more people notice than we'd like to admit. There just isn't any
direct way for them to tell us about it.

~~~
prawn
I wish restaurants used a clear and consistent format. They can differentiate
with their branding, colours, and obviously food photographs. I'd prefer they
had a consistent layout!

Too many have shoddy intros, tiny text, difficult to find details and then
their beloved PDF menus.

~~~
naasking
> I wish restaurants used a clear and consistent format. They can
> differentiate with their branding, colours, and obviously food photographs.
> I'd prefer they had a consistent layout!

I'm skeptical. If you're trying to choose a steak restaurant to visit, for
example, you're saying that you'd easily be able to differentiate grill_1 with
"this" picture of a big bloody steak, and grill_2 with "that" picture of a big
bloody steak, both in roughly the same position. Doesn't sound plausible to
me.

I agree with the principle though, restaurant sites are often terrible, and
PDF menus are super annoying.

~~~
prawn
They'd still have a logo, photos of the interior, different copy and colour
schemes. How is it that much more useful to differentiate based on their web
design? That only demonstrates a willingness to either spend more on their web
site or not interfere with the process.

~~~
naasking
Colours help, sure, but more differentiation makes them more memorable, and
being memorable makes for more repeat business. Marketing wouldn't exist and
be so successful if our brains didn't work like that.

------
gschier
The builder works very well once you realize what you're supposed to do. After
designing the first block, I didn't realize I had to keep going. Maybe a more
apparent CTA would be appropriate?

I'm curious, will you be adding a hosting option for these? Right now they
provide a good starting point, but I would love a one-click hosting option so
that I can quickly made a page and push it live. The ability to plug in things
like Google Analytics token would also be awesome.

~~~
marclave
We've talked about it in the past, we very well might implement something like
this in the future. This is something we are exploring as a future release :)
Thanks for that input, the GA plugin would be awesome!

------
soneca
Asking for my email _after_ letting me download my template??

I'm not sure if it is the most effective way to collect emails, but it sure is
a good UX. As a reward, I included my email :)

~~~
shostack
Maybe a candidate for a yet-to-be-built "lightpatterns.org"?

~~~
navs
Looks like someone had the intention to start one but hasn't quite gotten
there yet:

[http://www.lightpatterns.org](http://www.lightpatterns.org)

------
dested
This is the most simple and intuitive template builder I have ever played
with.

~~~
tucaz
Second that!

~~~
cdelb
Fully agree. Unbounce and other landing page builders should take note. The
simplicity of the experience was impressive.

------
dbg31415
Really well done. Few quick questions...

Why not use an off-the-shelf grid system like Bootstrap or Foundation? Would
probably make this easier to edit / extend for people already familiar with
those layout frameworks.

For SEO... things like Page Title, Meta Description, OG/Sharing Meta Data...
those would be good to add somehow. "Click here to add your fav icon /
bookmark icon / social share icon / etc." At least adding them as empty fields
so people know to add them in manually...

Could you add in semantic elements? Wouldn't take long to add those to the
base template...
[http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_semantic_elements.asp](http://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_semantic_elements.asp)

Really nice tool, can see a lot of people getting use out of this.

~~~
dbg31415
Found 2 minor bugs between the builder and the downloaded version:

Body Styles break with multiple paragraphs -
[http://imgur.com/YOjjGkB](http://imgur.com/YOjjGkB)

Emoji break when you change them -
[http://imgur.com/FE8VUgH](http://imgur.com/FE8VUgH)

~~~
cocoflunchy
The emoji bug is an encoding issue, add

    
    
        <meta charset="utf-8">
    

to the generated html to fix it (and fix any accented characters issues too)

------
wzy
I was pleasantly surprised this worked as well as it did, without the need for
me signing up or providing an email.

~~~
marclave
We hate having to sign up for things ,we firmly believe you should only ever
be on boarded after you get to try out the product and love it :)!

~~~
wzy
I actually gave you my email address because the site wasn't pressuring me for
it.

~~~
marclave
thank you!

------
annnnd
Now THIS is how it should be done! Congrats to author! Where can we pay you?
:)

This hits a sweet spot for me because I am in full control of HTML if I want
it, but I can still put together a responsive page in literally a minute.

About missing colors and stuff - yeah, it would be nice if we could select
background images, set more colors and similar, but that's secondary. Building
a responsive skeleton is what this tool does for me, and first impression is
great. Kudos!

------
drew-y
Nice! Really easy to use and the templates look great. One question though:

> Launchaco website builder is licensed under CC0

Does that mean both the website builder itself and the website you build with
it are CC0? And is the source to the builder available anywhere?

~~~
marclave
Apologies, copy isn't clear there - will deploy a change. The website you
download is licensed under cc0, however if there's interest we wouldn't mind
open sourcing our builder. It's written in Elm, & go.

~~~
zem
@insulinrocks you appear to be shadowbanned

~~~
insulinrocks
That's odd. I've only mostly lurked here. Does that happen when you're a new
poster or something? I've only had a handful of posts. I hope I didn't break
any rules.

~~~
zem
huh, no, it's weird, i can see some of your comments but the others seem to be
dead for no reason.

~~~
grzm
If you have showdead on and see a dead comment you think is worthwhile, you
can click the "vouch" button to reanimate it. That may have happened in some
of the cases you're seeing. IIRC, I vouched for
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13126780](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13126780)
after seeing your earlier comment.

------
aaronpk
I was pleasantly surprised to receive a .zip file with the site after I made
it to the bottom, rather than a call-to-action pushing me to sign up for some
hosting plan! Well done.

------
0vermorrow
I love this. Also a super fan of the UI. Seamlessly led me to a download
button with the source. They've coupled it with an awesome hosting setup
process. I can promise you I will use this service for the very next project
of mine.

Commoditisation of design cannot come soon enough! ( at least the web design
part :) )

~~~
wapz
So I hit the download button and got a file named download with no extensions.
Am I doing something wrong (I didn't change anything just wanted to see what
it spits out)?

~~~
throwaway29292
It's a zip file containing HTML/CSS.

~~~
wapz
Wow thanks. I've never been more ashamed to say I work with computers every
day.

------
the_wheel
I noticed you posted Launchaco a few months ago. Why do you think this post
succeeded in generating traction while the previous failed? Love the product!

~~~
marclave
Great question, I guess the community feels stronger about this product than
the name page. I read your post on "Ask HN: What are some successful products
that had a disappointing Show HN?", loved the dropbox comment!

------
tomschlick
nitpick: please enable HTTPS

I just had some issues on airline wifi because they man-in-the-middle the
connection to inject their crappy "flight tracker" menubar and it covered some
of the builder controls. That wouldn't happen with SSL and your visitors would
be more secure.

------
navs
I absolutely love this and thats coming from a "professional" web developer.

I gave this to a client of mine to try for one of her personal projects and
she was somewhat confused. After I pointed out the steps vs previews, she got
the hang of it. But by that time she'd made a bit of a mess with a lot of
extra feature blocks/steps.

She wanted a clean slate but it looks like you're storing progress in a
cookie. Can we have a reset all?

While I'd love an arbitrary HTML block, the ability to add meta tags, custom
fonts, blah blah...don't. If people want that kind of power there's a lot of
alternative static site tools/CMS' out there.

------
aaronm14
Really awesome. Surprised by how much time I spent on there. I noticed when I
tried to download it in Safari, it didn't work because I don't think fetch is
supported. Would have been good to get a notice about that earlier on. Would
also be nice to see what exactly the download button is going to provide (just
a zip of HTML/css/JS files I assume?)

Thanks for sharing, will probably come back to this. Happy to sign up for
email updates

~~~
marclave
Apologies, deploying fix asap!

~~~
Abundnce10
Love the builder feature! I, too, had a problem downloading in Firefox. It
worked fine in Chrome though.

------
pbrumm
Very interesting. I did loose track of the 4 steps and was confused on how to
finish the project.

~~~
cameronrohani
Agreed, I think there's simple things we can do to help with this. The UX is
flawed atm, with out a doubt.

------
marclave
Fun fact: Every device is in pure css, this means adding your own app images
is dead simple.

~~~
giarc
Could instructions be added to the site? I was going to add a top level
comment to say "Why does every image include the launchaco name?"

~~~
cameronrohani
Yah good idea, I'll make a readme attached to the download.

------
uberstuber
Love the builder! Wish I had seen this a week ago.

------
mxuribe
Holy smokes, this is such a useful tool! For any little updates that could
certainly be applied in the future (e.g. adding more accessibility aspects,
other color palettes, etc.), the sheer ease and speed with which I was able to
create a website was absolutely astonishing, and overshadows any shortfall. I
seldom share my email but submitted it in this case, because I believe this is
a solid product, and I have this feeling the authors behind this tool really
know what they're doing (as far as product dev.). Kudos to the creators! Great
job!

------
moh_maya
This is just what I was looking for! I needed a simple landing page for our
startup, and the layouts / design are perfect.

Quick noob question though: Do you have / are you planning to include
templates where I can add video (hosted on Vimeo / Youtube) instead of the
computer / browser images?

I know I can edit the HTML / CSS files, but my background is statistics / R,
and I am wary of mucking up the code and spoiling the layout.

I signed up with my email. Looking forward to seeing where this goes, and
would gladly pay for the service as & when you start accepting payments.

Thank you! :)

------
huula
Nice work! Really like the way you provide color palette instead wild crazy
color selector for your user, that simplifies things so much! However, A
common problem with this product and a lot of other template based website
builders like Squarespace, Weebly, Wix is, you will end up creating so many
sites that looks just the same. If you just want a clone, then I have nothing
to say. But more customization and more unique intelligent generation
certainly needs advanced models other than naive templates.

~~~
chenster
Second that. Static site generator seems like popular those days. But they
don't have much template selections so they end up look similar. Or spend $10
~ $20 on Themeforrest [https://themeforest.net/category/site-
templates](https://themeforest.net/category/site-templates) with nearly
infinitely number of options.

------
reacharavindh
Very efficiently done!

Love that you didn't force me with any annoying pop-ups or interfering spaces
to ask for email. I gave you anyway, with my 100% will.

Looking forward to your finished product. My girlfriend wants to build a Yoga
website to put in all her stuff and promote her private lessons. I was going
to build it myself, but your product is so intuitive that I might give her
this and ask her to build it herself!

------
blunte
I'm pretty used to being different from most people, but I'm not used to being
so utterly different from the hackernews crowd as I feel right now.

Am I seeing a different website than everyone is talking about? All I see is a
bunch of different boxes with links, where most links just shove me to some
external service (GoDaddy, Twitter, Google Fonts, etc.)

Where's the "website builder"?

~~~
naasking
Those links and that text are all editable. It's sample content for the layout
you're building. A little confusing at first.

------
beardog
Doesn't load at all without JavaScript :)

~~~
jlgaddis
The problem is not that the site doesn't load without JavaScript. The problem
is that a very small vocal minority mistakenly think that anyone else gives a
damn that they can't surf the Internet with JavaScript turned off.

------
arikrak
This looks great but was a little confusing at first. Maybe make it clearer to
the user what's going on so they know they're just building their own site.

I think it's nice not to have to enter an email at the end, but you'll miss
out on a lot of emails. Maybe provide the prompt to enter an email first, but
let them skip it.

------
voycey
This is great - I am literally just finishing a site that looks exactly like
this (single product site). I would 100% use this for future things!

I agree about the donation buttons as well - even keep it to micro-donating -
you would be surprised at how many people would use it!

------
vishyav
whoa this is the fastest product website process ever.

------
gilstroem
Super cool idea - Though one of my first interactions was to search for an
emoji, which failed completely as it deleted my query when I typed more than
one letter. (MacOS Sierra, Safari.) Other than that, thumbs up on the
delicious UX.

------
transposed
Very cool - I've had ideas for a few sites, but when the time came to create
the site and get a half decent design going, I found myself running out of
time to work on the actual content. Best of luck to your idea/service

------
Procrastes
Great idea. This could save me all sorts of wasteful dithering. Looks like
it's broken right now. When I try to download, I get a file called
"download.txt" which contains the text "Internal Server Error"

------
colbyh
would like to point out that the author has not only built a tool that is
making a bunch of people happy, but is also responding brilliantly to all
comments with a super helpful tone. very cool all around.

------
emrahayanoglu
That's one of the brilliant service as I have ever tried.

Actually, I'll also consider to pay something to this wonderful service. I
think producer should consider about adding premium staff for small prices.

------
keyle
Definitely put that "download" file as "template.zip" or something.

I was baffled getting a file without extension, and Windows 10 didn't see it
as a zip, but just a binary blob.

------
nodesocket
Awesome job! It would be great if you added a pricing feature block.

------
forgetsusername
I haven't even checked the site out (yet, hear me out), but this is one of the
most positive reactions I've seen on HN. So congrats on that already.

------
pqdbr
Could you please make it possible to add more than one social template and
more than one footer template, just like you do with the feature blocks?

~~~
nathan_f77
After you download the generated HTML, you can just copy/paste.

------
nedwin
Looks awesome. Have reviewed a ton of website builders and this is one of the
easier ones.

Only problem is when I hit the download button the .txt file is blank.

~~~
cameronrohani
That is indeed a big problem, we're deploying some changes atm that should
hopefully fix this. Sorry about that.

~~~
nedwin
Would love to see the conversion rate from visit to creat, visit to download
and visit to provide email. I suspect you're going to have a super high email
capture conversion because of the value you're giving up front.

------
ffef
When dark theme is activated you cannot see the headings "Name Your Business"
or "Build Your Website" on the homepage.

------
telekid
Holy hell this is well done. Congrats.

------
minhajuddin
Shameless plug, I made something related which makes testing out public static
sites pretty easy. You can check it out at
[https://slugex.com/](https://slugex.com/) It also allows you to deploy via
the terminal. All you need is bash and curl :)

------
drivingmenuts
How do we make money?

Volume!

Seriously, though. This is an interesting idea, but what's the endgame?

------
ayh
Nice UI. Bad idea to do domain lookups on a site without SSL.

------
0x1d
Really good job! It turned out better than most templates.

------
gavi
Very nice. For creating a quick app site, this is perfect!

------
demircancelebi
Great work. Do you have any plans to make it open source?

~~~
aioprisan
This. I would love to see this open sourced.

------
Mgardepe
Reason I'm not getting into web development.

~~~
gshulegaard
I am not sure if building static HTML pages represents the bulk of what web
development is about.

(Disclaimer: I am a "web developer")

~~~
choward
The other way you could take his comment is he doesn't want to have to build
apps like Launchaco. Because they way you interpreted it, which is probably
correct, is completely ignorant. Launchaco generates marketing web sites. Web
developers build the web apps that some of these marketing sites are trying to
sell. It might be a reason not to become a web designer though.

(Disclaimer: I am a "web developer")

------
bgnm2000
This is fantastic.

------
Warp__
Very Cool. Thank you. Will sign up :)

------
ekevjn
Find some excited site which you like and fit your business. Right click and
there your template done!

------
SimianLogic2
looks great! could definitely see myself using this as a starter

------
izzydoesizzy
Holy shit this is incredible!

------
btcboss
T H I S I S E P I C !!!!!

------
manish7
nice product.

------
black2night
great work

------
kmeade
Sorry to be negative, but I'm honestly mystified by the complimentary
comments.

First, attempting to set up a domain name sends me to some site named
shareasale.com. The site is blocked on my system because I'm using the
winhelp2002.mvps.org HOSTS file to block shady web sites.

Next, I follow the 4 steps to select the Hero, Feature, Social and Footer
templates. How I'm supposed to make an intelligent choice based on the shadowy
outlines is beyond me.

Finally, I'm apparently supposed to click the Download... link. This gets me a
little "success" message - but the end result is a file called "download" with
no extension. Renaming the download to download.zip gives me something to
extract which is... a single HTML file plus css and image folders. Clicking on
the HTML gives me a local copy of the launchaco main page with no sort of
customizations or anything.

WTF?

~~~
kmeade
Reply to myself... In spite of the downvotes, I'll plow ahead with this.

I see now that you're supposed to "play" with the website and put it into some
sort of personally pleasing configuration and download the result. (The
download feature still doesn't work properly for me, SORRY.)

People won't be surprised to learn that I'm an older programmer. I found it
interesting to see how apparently out of step I am. People seem to like this
and I think it cries for more structure and a tiny bit of DOCUMENTATION.

And those CSS/JS files. (f7e531b07478dedf9916.js??) There's no way I'd want to
maintain something like this unless it used Bootstrap or some other
established system.

So, downvote away. I personally remain unimpressed.

~~~
tobz
(disclaimed: not tied to Launchaco but I felt compelled to address your
points)

#1 - can you provide an example of where buying/setting up a domain takes you
to somewhere called "shareasale.com"? At worst, it seems like the links to the
registrars (which are all legit, as far as I can tell) go through some sort of
analytics/tracking service.

#2 - have you considered rephrasing your download issue as "Hey, this seems
broken, and here's why: ..."?

#3 - what customizations did you expect there to be in the downloaded archive?
are you not seeing the selected hero/feature/social/footer templates you
selected?

#4 - while others have brought up the idea of using Bootstrap/Foundation/etc
as a more familiar and tweakable base, the point is around easily making a
website WITHOUT having to know or understand the underlying technologies. if
you're already deadset of needing/wanting to do things yourself, the tool
clearly isn't for you.

you may be unimpressed, but you could be a little more positive/helpful with
explaining issues rather than writing about them in such a dismissive tone
that sreams "i don't care about your thing, but let me tell you everything i
think is wrong with it"

~~~
kmeade
Thanks for the reply...

#1 At the top of the first page, where it says "Name Your Business", click on
"Let's Do It." The next page is full of link for various TLDs with prices -
the links go to shareasale.com. ##UPDATE## The domain purchase links are now
dead and there are no prices/links. Someone must have decided to remove them
(maybe someone read my comment -- or something else -- who knows).

#2 In my first message I described exactly what went wrong. In my second
message I said "the download feature still doesn't work properly for me"
Different wording, but pretty much what you suggested. We must think alike
(smile).

#3 When I wrote the first message, I clearly didn't get how the customization
was supposed to work. My second message explains and clarifies. As I said,
just a bit of documentation would be nice.

#4 I think of HN as a programmer's venue. When I saw all the glowing comments,
I thought there might be a nice web development tool to check out. If HN has a
lot of readers who are interested in "making a website WITHOUT having to know
or understand the underlying technologies" \- then I apologize for my
misunderstanding. If we agree that this is not a tool for technical web
developers, then your comments are spot on.

As to the last paragraph, the first thing I said was "sorry to be negative."
Criticism, by it's nature, is often negative. I hate knee-jerk negativity as
much as you do (I'll bet). But heaps of sugary praise is also bad in it's own
"awesome" way.

In/re being more helpful -- well, pointing out problems is helpful, right? I'm
wondering if my comments didn't result in the shareasale.com links being
removed (see #1 above). Maybe OP could comment.

In/re dismissive -- That's what you say but who cares what you think? (smile
again - please note as joke)

To the author of "Launchaco" I would certainly offer a "well done!" To me, the
most impressive thing that you have done is offer your work up for us to
review and discuss. I hope and suspect you were looking for more than praise.

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necrodawg
dude this is hella crazy nice yo. gonna use this for my next landing page

