

Ask HN: Review my site - Ollawalla - dosberg

I'm just now starting to put my site in front of people and a colleague recommended posting it here.<p>http://ollawalla.com<p>I'm looking for feedback on:
- the idea
- branding
- user experience<p>Thx!<p>Ollawalla is an online trading post where you can find the things you want by trading the stuff you no longer need.  You might find free furniture in your city or trade your used computer for a new kayak.   Ollawalla brings us back to our cultural roots, before the days of mega malls and when people simply exchanged goods and services with the people in their community.  By using technology and social media, we make it fun and easy to trade online with your friends and neighbors.
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tylerwl
Along with the two options that pop up when "Choose your nearest city" is
clicked, how about a third like:

Don't see a city close to you?

This option could then take the user to a page where they can submit their
city & email. I think this would help you make the most of your traffic and
also provide some guidance when you're trying to decide where to expand to
next.

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dosberg
tylerwl, great idea. The select box on the homepage only shows cities that
have posts. Since the site doesn't have many postings I thought this would be
a better experience. This way users don't end up on blank city pages. Thx!

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mike-cardwell
If I go to <http://www.ollawalla.com/feed?city=foobar> and look at the source
code of the page I see a MySQL error. That's never a good sign.

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mike-cardwell
You only offer Facebook and Twitter logins. _tab closed_

~~~
dosberg
Mike, a big part of the idea is trading within your social networks. This
removes the layer of anonymity.

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mike-cardwell
The site doesn't look like it's limited to trading within social networks, so
why limit logins in that way? If you expect this to stamp out abuse, it's not
going to. People can just register for a new facebook/twitter account and then
use that...

~~~
dosberg
Good point Mike. I'll likely add the ability to login without facebook/twitter
in the future. Thanks again for your feedback.

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mike-cardwell
Basic XSS flaw:

    
    
      http://www.ollawalla.com/browse?city=<script>alert("xss")</script>

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dosberg
<http://ollawalla.com>

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tstegart
Is the site down right now?

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zeynalov
yes it is.

------
dosberg
Thanks for the feedback guys!

