

I just launched a site with hardly any features - swGooF
http://tumblr.swgoof.com/post/13952498570/launch-hardly-any-features

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eggbrain
No one will like a site without a few more of those features your site doesn't
have. There's the old phrase "it's whats on the inside that counts", but with
first impressions, that's simply just not true.

I look at your site, and I see its a poorly designed, poorly implemented site.
For most people, that's enough to immediately leave the site, and not come
back. First impressions are extremely important, and your site gives off a
terrible first impression. When someone sees someone link to your site again,
they will immediately think to themselves "this website again? I hated it my
first time there." and then you will have to convince them that it is worth it
to go back. It takes a lot more effort to convince someone your site is good
later on, than take the time and effort to make it good to begin with.

Why don't I immediately see when I go to the homepage how I can submit my own
idea? No, I have to go to an idea first (at least from what I can tell) to
submit an idea.

Why do I need to click into an idea in order to vote it up/down? Put a plus
next to the title, which will expand text below it, and then have the Good/Bad
buttons next to the idea.

The Free CSS template makes your website seem cheap. It immediately shows that
you haven't thought about personalizing the site for your users, but rather
phoned it in in order to put your site out there.

Never expect people to like a site that has shown that no effort was put into
it to begin with, to justify to yourself to put more effort into said site.
The phrase "I am not going to spend time implementing features for a site no
one will use" boils my blood, because you as an entrepreneur are the showman:
if you'll only do a song and dance after people say they loved you, even
without knowing you, you'll never get a gig ever.

You get people to care about your site, not the other way around. You've shown
that you don't care about your site, and so thus other people will care even
less.

~~~
jholman
There's a weird assumption in your comment, eggbrain, that swgoof "expect[s]
people to like [this] site".

I agree with the factual content of everything you say, but the tone and the
assumptions and the context seem way off-base.

There's nothing wrong with sharing a low-investment project, and letting it
have whatever success or failure it has. The problem comes with false
promises, false entitlement, and to a lesser degree false expectations, but I
see no reason to believe any of those are happening here. So what's the
problem?

~~~
code_duck
That would lead me to ask, why is he making the site? Apparently not to make
money. If it's for an honest exploration of good ideas, people are going to
have to use it. If they don't even 'like' it, I presume they won't use it.

I could make a site that had nothing than an animated picture of a duck
spinning around on the middle of the page, but I wouldn't expect people on
Hacker News to think it was meaningful.

~~~
swGooF
I originally started the site because I was planning to add the features it is
currently missing. I got side tracked and never finished. So instead of
letting the code die, I decided to launch it, as is.

It turned out to not be a very good idea. If I added the missing features,
would you find it meaningful?

~~~
code_duck
Hey, it's a solid idea to be built upon. I like what I take the point of this
post to be, which is just go ahead and release what you have instead of
waiting forever. It's actually a very 37-signals/paul grahamy sort of message.

I do think you should keep working on it, and add what it takes to make a
useful little tool. Some people here have decent suggestions.

------
Archio
Interesting idea (that is, launching the site with hardly any features). Good
way to make sure the product doesn't become vaporware.

~~~
swGooF
The idea sounded interesting to me as well, but in hindsight it was not such a
good idea. It got very spammy very fast.

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SquareWheel
"Social Media Sharing Links - It is not easy for a person to Facebook like or
tweet an idea"

Sign me up!

~~~
swGooF
Thanks, I should probably add those links. That is a pretty easy one.

~~~
SquareWheel
Perhaps this is whooshing over my head right now, but I meant that I prefer
websites without social media integration.

I don't like that they slow down the web, I don't like that they track me, and
I don't like that they centralize a large part of the web's content to a few
number of companies.

~~~
swGooF
Sorry, I misunderstood your comment.

~~~
ethnomusicolog
The site is exactly as it should be. Simple , straightforward, not fancy UI
tricks, good color palette. overall I understood and trusted the site in 30
seconds, and browsed it for 5 minutes. If you add things too much you will
become an also-ran in a crowded space. Run with it. my 2cts!

~~~
swGooF
Thanks, the site is live again but people cannot add new content anymore. I am
glad you liked it.

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simon
A nice idea. Some folks may be nervous about expressing ideas without an NDA
involved, but do we want their ideas anyway? :-)

The design looked nice, but it was not intuitively obvious how to get back
from an idea to the main screen.

~~~
swGooF
Thanks, I know the navigation needs some work. Also, the site is not for
people that need an NDA. The privacy policy is simple: everything is public.

~~~
jholman
Yeah, eeeeverything about the navigation needs work, and it seems prime
candidate for early minimal work.

How do you get a new random idea in category X without clicking Back and then
re-selecting the category? Without voting, I mean.

Open-source the site source code on github! :D

~~~
swGooF
Yes, I know the nav is bad.

It is on github:

<https://github.com/swGooF/34ideas>

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mquinlan
One feature that feels kinda necessary while the ideas are sparse is the
ability to skip (or not have repeating) ideas. Otherwise, I feel like I've
already read over all the submissions in just a few minutes.

~~~
swGooF
Personally, I just hoped people would vote multiple times on the same idea.
Anyhow, you may have seen all the ideas in just a few minutes. When you left
this comment there were not many ideas.

Thanks

------
swGooF
I made the site non-functional. It was getting bombarded with spam.

