4 ms·

Ask YC: Feedback on my site: pageonetimes.com

29 points by antiismist 19y ago

Can you take a look at my site, pageonetimes.com, and let me know what you think. It is a "reddit", but just for sports. I am a sports fan and interesting stories are hard to find, so I decided to make a site to solve that problem. As an interesting footnote, the site should seem familiar, because it is written in Arc and is based on news.arc, the same code that powers this site.

ideas101 19y ago
its a nice beginning - you may want to add some color to it - at least for news headlines ...
Hates_ 19y ago
Looks good. Personally I really like the clean and simple look. Sadly I'm not a sports fan.
parker 19y ago
I like the service, but I think the name needs a non-generic angle. Not some crap like swifflr.com, but something that lets me know that it's a sports site without even going to it. Other than that, it's clean and focused.
ecarder 19y ago
I think site looks cool!But what the domain does mean? domain does not sound sporty?
- antiismist 19y ago
  The thought was, what I really want is a newspaper, but with just sports on the front page.
  - sant0sk1 19y ago
    I agree that the site looks cool but the domain is misleading. Maybe something like, thesportspage.com (not sure if its available, just off the top of my head)
    - dkokelley 19y ago
      sportspageone.com is available. thesportspage.com is taken, unfortunately. I really like the tag line though. It certainly makes the address make sense. "Page One Times - Where Sports Belong."
carlos 19y ago
Nice, although I would prefer a more readable font.
omfut 19y ago
I think it looks cool. Would probably add some colored fonts, pictures etc.
jaydub 19y ago
I like the clean design. Though I'm no design expert, I think it would be nice if the user's eyes were clearly directed, since right now nothing really jumps out of the page that much.
- walterk 19y ago
  I agree. The way the site is currently designed, my eyes want to read the headlines in rows (the columns stretch too far down for me to read down the column instead), but all headlines except for those at the top are not aligned vertically, making traversal through the page an awkward affair. You're either going to want to ensure that there's row-based alignment for headlines, or use discrete sections that each cover a particular category of sports news. E.g. how Google News has separate column sections for World, U.S., Elections, Business, etc.
- jfornear 19y ago
  I agree. The three column newspaper theme is a little overwhelming. I also think legibility could be improved by changing to a sans-serif font. I see potential, but the name really should be more sports sounding.
  - antiismist 19y ago
    That's interesting...before last night it was sporting helvetica font throughout, but I switched it to times to give it a little bit more of a newspaper feel. I like the logo in times, but the content looks better in helvetica. Is it a design atrocity to have a mix?
    - jfornear 19y ago
      It isn't against the rules to mix it up. I was just at theonion.com, and they definitely mix it up. The headlines are either serif if the body is sans serif or sans serif if the body or link is serif. The button navigation is also sans. I think your page would be easier to read if you mixed it up a bit. It just looks like a wall of text which is intimidating. There needs to be differences in the text to distinguish if they have functions or not.
icey 19y ago
I think it looks great. I know your angle is sports on the front page, but I almost wonder if it would be better to make it a generic news site and have pageonetimes.com/sports or what have you. At least, I wish the newspapers around here would do that... I would love to be able to go to mylocalpaper.com/business to read the business news or mylocalpaper.com/local/phoenix to see the local news for Phoenix.
- bostonbiz 19y ago
  I've been working on something just like what you are asking for. I follow news in a few different cities, so I wanted an easy place to track all the news outlets in each location. I'll post a link this weekend when its live.
- antiismist 19y ago
  The generic social news space is seriously crowded - reddit, digg, jaanix, and many many others. So what I am trying to do is to find a niche that is underserved, and just focus on that.
edw519 19y ago
I am a sports fan and I love it. The most important thing to me were the categories along the top. One click on "NBA" and I found everything I'm interested in. Lots of good stuff I haven't seen anywhere else. (Where did you find it?) The front page was too diverse for me (and probably anyone). General complaint not directed to you, but to many: Lots of people say this is MY fault. I am still 800 x 600 because of vision problems. This works perfectly for me all the time except when I encounter a web page that is hard coded to a large resolution (like yours). This happens more and more often and drives me nuts with all the horizontal scrolling. I would have left your page, but I loved the content. Why not check the browser's resolution and adjust the css, or simply use tables? Maybe I'm old school, but I just don't believe this should be the customer's fault (or problem).
- antiismist 19y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! I use the nickb method to find stories, http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=99966 http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=99966, and also my friends help too. For the resolution, you are in the right and I will see what I can do to make it better. I'll email you when I am done so you can take a look. I use the blueprint.css framework (which has a hard-coded width), and the 3 column layout is deep in the code (I am not sure that any CSS will make 3 columns look good on 800x600), so I am not sure there is an easy fix. The news.arc makes significant use of tables, but I had to make a decision to replace most of them with CSS for various reasons.
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
alfredp 19y ago
where's the hockey?!?!? edit: found it - it just wasn't a major category like the other sports at the top of the page
- antiismist 19y ago
  I just added an nhl top level section - it is a major sport and deserves it! If you refresh you should see it. I'll work on getting some more stories in there. Thanks for the feedback!
mattmaroon 19y ago
I feel like the design is too cluttered. It looks like a sports rag, but the designs of most sports rags are too cluttered. I'd go with 2 columns max. The idea is a solid one. No question. Digg Sports isn't very good. If you can keep the community focused I think you'll do well.
- abstractbill 19y ago
  It looks like a sports rag, but the designs of most sports rags are too cluttered. You might like to read this: http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.html http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.ht... The important bit: "the real reason pizza flyers look the way they do is because that’s what pizza flyers are expected to look like"
  - ssharp 19y ago
    The principle doesn't translates across mediums. A newspaper interface works in real life but not on the web.
    - mattmaroon 19y ago
      Also, his site is probably going to be aimed at a much different subset of the overall sports fanbase than a sports rag. My guess is by being social news themed, he's going to cater to the younger, hipper section of the overall demographic, which is very, very broad. The Sporting News, on the other hand, is probably going to cater to the older, less tech-loving section.
    - kashif 19y ago
      How does this make sense? The principle is based on the fact that something is easily recognizable because it looks familiar and follows an expected template. So, how is it that this does not translate across mediums.
marrone 19y ago
I like it. Id like it more if you added a section for MMA. Regardless Ill keep my eye on it
- antiismist 19y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. If you check back, you will now see a section for MMA. It doesn't have a lot of stories yet, but I will make sure to add some. (added the MMA section via the REPL on the live server)
  - marrone 19y ago
    nicely done. Hopefully you can build a nice community around this, in which case I will be a regular visitor. Just curious, is it just you manually submitting links at this point?
    - antiismist 19y ago
      I am the primary contributor, but I have small circle of friends and family who also post, which you can see here: http://pageonetimes.com/leaders http://pageonetimes.com/leaders
      - marrone 19y ago
        I built a HackerNews firefox extension a few days ago to monitor new comments directed towards you or your submissions which you could port pretty easily to your site if you were interested. Or if you build an api to a users threads/comments (need just be an RSS feed) Id port it for you if you wanted it. You can grab it here: http://wildstabmedia.com/hackernews http://wildstabmedia.com/hackernews and just save the xpi to disk and unzip to get at the source
        antiismist 19y ago
        Thanks for the link, it is interesting. I think I am going to opt for the rss plan.
garbowza 19y ago
I like it. Alot. I'm a sports fan and immediately saw about 7 stories I wanted to read. I'll def bookmark this and come back. Well done.
allang 19y ago
It actually looks like a nice take on feed aggregation - and sports is a great niche to start with. If you're planning on taking the look & feel further in the direction of print news, check out sIFR and consider making it an interface option. You have a lot to gain by improving the quality of the page. (sIFR is here: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/ http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/) In your place, I would also play with placement and formatting of certain stories with respect to the others. It would probably require backend work, but determining which of those stories is most important and then displaying them as such would be pretty cool.
- antiismist 19y ago
  That seems like an interesting tool and a novel approach. It is a little hard to wrap my head around how this does things that straight CSS cannot - are there some sites that use this that I can check out?
vthakr 19y ago
I've been following your site from the start from the Arc Forum and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when I took a look at it today. The design is so much more pleasing now than it was originally--which is not too say the original design was bad, quite the contrary. I'm not really much of a sports fan, but the site does intrigue me since you decided to go with Arc to create it. Not sure if you're holding it secret or not (which would be totally understandable), but if not, I would love to see the source code for the site seeing as how I am currently learning Arc as well and I love comparing my ideas with others to spot better ways of doing things. Either way, code closed or open, the site does look great and I think its a really great idea. Good work!
- antiismist 19y ago
  I owe a lot to pg for making news.arc open, and to the people who run Anarki as well. Some things I am thinking about: - it is harder to open-source something than to deploy the site, because w/ open-sourcing, both the site and the code have to be in good shape, whereas with just deploying a site, it is not as big a deal if the code has some quirks. In other words, there are some deviations from Arc best practices that I want to take care of. - I am thinking about whether there is an opportunity to have an open-source digg-killer based on Arc, and if so, what that would look like. Anyway, if you want to work something out then shoot an email to: pageonetimes@idoh.com
  - hollerith 19y ago
    People who download open-source code know that most code is in bad shape. They're very forgiving.
tyohn 19y ago
I like the site but have you considered adding a search?
- antiismist 19y ago
  I have thought about it and may add it in the future. Right now I want to focus on the tagging parts, such as having it configurable in the profile, and supporting logical ANDing and NOTing of tags. The thought is to make this a great "browse engine", to help people find what they are not looking for.
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
okeumeni 19y ago
I like the simple short presentation or articles. At glance I get to see pretty much all the latest articles. I will also suggest a change of domain name pageonetimes sounds very yahoo news to me. Cool stuff, I’ll add it to my Sports search engine.
hooande 19y ago
Great idea, seems well executed. A suggestion: Maybe you should try a different design technique to differentiate the stories. There is a lot of text on the pages. It's kind of intimidating, makes it seem like a lot like work. If you just broke it up more and maybe added more white space it would look friendlier to read.
Mistone 19y ago
nicely done a few suggestions - the categories (nba nhl mlb) look really crammed together maybe a visual separator | would help. Agree that the domain name is a bit odd, but not a huge deal. Would be great to have an RSS /subscribe tool so I can read the headlines in reader, maybe even by sport. Also if it grabbed an image "ala facebook" share feature that would be cool. A bit more white space. Most of these are nice to have and are likely already on your list of possible features. Overall well done!
rantfoil 19y ago
Looks useful. Nice. Small suggestion: You should reduce the leading for multiline headers, they look too far apart so it hurts scanability.
herdrick 19y ago
I like it! Nice job, Idoh.
GavinB 19y ago
Many of the design tips here are right on, it could use a bit of tightening. One very specific suggestion--try adding this to the style-sheet: html { overflow: -moz-scrollbars-vertical; } It will keep the scroll bars in Firefox from appearing and disappearing as new pages are loaded. The scroll bar wouldn't be an issue except that it alters the centering of the page.
- antiismist 19y ago
  That is a great nugget!
  - GavinB 19y ago
    Thanks. Wish I could give credit to the place I first found it, but I can't remember. Lately I stick it in every page I make.
antiismist 19y ago
Thanks for all the feedback. I think it is really high-quality, and now my to-do list is well stocked. I made some changes in the CSS area to address the various font issues. It is still a work in progress, but I think the advice on the sans-serif font is right on. If you get a chance, check it out and let me know.

29 points by antiismist 19y ago

ideas101 19y ago

its a nice beginning - you may want to add some color to it - at least for news headlines ...

Hates_ 19y ago

Looks good. Personally I really like the clean and simple look. Sadly I'm not a sports fan.

parker 19y ago

I like the service, but I think the name needs a non-generic angle. Not some crap like swifflr.com, but something that lets me know that it's a sports site without even going to it. Other than that, it's clean and focused.

ecarder 19y ago

I think site looks cool!But what the domain does mean? domain does not sound sporty?

antiismist 19y ago
The thought was, what I really want is a newspaper, but with just sports on the front page.
- sant0sk1 19y ago
  I agree that the site looks cool but the domain is misleading. Maybe something like, thesportspage.com (not sure if its available, just off the top of my head)
  - dkokelley 19y ago
    sportspageone.com is available. thesportspage.com is taken, unfortunately. I really like the tag line though. It certainly makes the address make sense. "Page One Times - Where Sports Belong."

carlos 19y ago

Nice, although I would prefer a more readable font.

omfut 19y ago

I think it looks cool. Would probably add some colored fonts, pictures etc.

jaydub 19y ago

I like the clean design. Though I'm no design expert, I think it would be nice if the user's eyes were clearly directed, since right now nothing really jumps out of the page that much.

walterk 19y ago
I agree. The way the site is currently designed, my eyes want to read the headlines in rows (the columns stretch too far down for me to read down the column instead), but all headlines except for those at the top are not aligned vertically, making traversal through the page an awkward affair. You're either going to want to ensure that there's row-based alignment for headlines, or use discrete sections that each cover a particular category of sports news. E.g. how Google News has separate column sections for World, U.S., Elections, Business, etc.
jfornear 19y ago
I agree. The three column newspaper theme is a little overwhelming. I also think legibility could be improved by changing to a sans-serif font. I see potential, but the name really should be more sports sounding.
- antiismist 19y ago
  That's interesting...before last night it was sporting helvetica font throughout, but I switched it to times to give it a little bit more of a newspaper feel. I like the logo in times, but the content looks better in helvetica. Is it a design atrocity to have a mix?
  - jfornear 19y ago
    It isn't against the rules to mix it up. I was just at theonion.com, and they definitely mix it up. The headlines are either serif if the body is sans serif or sans serif if the body or link is serif. The button navigation is also sans. I think your page would be easier to read if you mixed it up a bit. It just looks like a wall of text which is intimidating. There needs to be differences in the text to distinguish if they have functions or not.

icey 19y ago

I think it looks great. I know your angle is sports on the front page, but I almost wonder if it would be better to make it a generic news site and have pageonetimes.com/sports or what have you. At least, I wish the newspapers around here would do that... I would love to be able to go to mylocalpaper.com/business to read the business news or mylocalpaper.com/local/phoenix to see the local news for Phoenix.

bostonbiz 19y ago
I've been working on something just like what you are asking for. I follow news in a few different cities, so I wanted an easy place to track all the news outlets in each location. I'll post a link this weekend when its live.
antiismist 19y ago
The generic social news space is seriously crowded - reddit, digg, jaanix, and many many others. So what I am trying to do is to find a niche that is underserved, and just focus on that.

edw519 19y ago

I am a sports fan and I love it. The most important thing to me were the categories along the top. One click on "NBA" and I found everything I'm interested in. Lots of good stuff I haven't seen anywhere else. (Where did you find it?) The front page was too diverse for me (and probably anyone). General complaint not directed to you, but to many: Lots of people say this is MY fault. I am still 800 x 600 because of vision problems. This works perfectly for me all the time except when I encounter a web page that is hard coded to a large resolution (like yours). This happens more and more often and drives me nuts with all the horizontal scrolling. I would have left your page, but I loved the content. Why not check the browser's resolution and adjust the css, or simply use tables? Maybe I'm old school, but I just don't believe this should be the customer's fault (or problem).

antiismist 19y ago
Thanks for the feedback! I use the nickb method to find stories, http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=99966 http://www.hackerne.ws/item?id=99966, and also my friends help too. For the resolution, you are in the right and I will see what I can do to make it better. I'll email you when I am done so you can take a look. I use the blueprint.css framework (which has a hard-coded width), and the 3 column layout is deep in the code (I am not sure that any CSS will make 3 columns look good on 800x600), so I am not sure there is an easy fix. The news.arc makes significant use of tables, but I had to make a decision to replace most of them with CSS for various reasons.

deleted 19y ago

[deleted]

alfredp 19y ago

where's the hockey?!?!? edit: found it - it just wasn't a major category like the other sports at the top of the page

antiismist 19y ago
I just added an nhl top level section - it is a major sport and deserves it! If you refresh you should see it. I'll work on getting some more stories in there. Thanks for the feedback!

mattmaroon 19y ago

I feel like the design is too cluttered. It looks like a sports rag, but the designs of most sports rags are too cluttered. I'd go with 2 columns max. The idea is a solid one. No question. Digg Sports isn't very good. If you can keep the community focused I think you'll do well.

abstractbill 19y ago
It looks like a sports rag, but the designs of most sports rags are too cluttered. You might like to read this: http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.html http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.ht... The important bit: "the real reason pizza flyers look the way they do is because that’s what pizza flyers are expected to look like"
- ssharp 19y ago
  The principle doesn't translates across mediums. A newspaper interface works in real life but not on the web.
  - mattmaroon 19y ago
    Also, his site is probably going to be aimed at a much different subset of the overall sports fanbase than a sports rag. My guess is by being social news themed, he's going to cater to the younger, hipper section of the overall demographic, which is very, very broad. The Sporting News, on the other hand, is probably going to cater to the older, less tech-loving section.
  - kashif 19y ago
    How does this make sense? The principle is based on the fact that something is easily recognizable because it looks familiar and follows an expected template. So, how is it that this does not translate across mediums.

marrone 19y ago

I like it. Id like it more if you added a section for MMA. Regardless Ill keep my eye on it

antiismist 19y ago
Thanks for the feedback. If you check back, you will now see a section for MMA. It doesn't have a lot of stories yet, but I will make sure to add some. (added the MMA section via the REPL on the live server)
- marrone 19y ago
  nicely done. Hopefully you can build a nice community around this, in which case I will be a regular visitor. Just curious, is it just you manually submitting links at this point?
  - antiismist 19y ago
    I am the primary contributor, but I have small circle of friends and family who also post, which you can see here: http://pageonetimes.com/leaders http://pageonetimes.com/leaders
    - marrone 19y ago
      I built a HackerNews firefox extension a few days ago to monitor new comments directed towards you or your submissions which you could port pretty easily to your site if you were interested. Or if you build an api to a users threads/comments (need just be an RSS feed) Id port it for you if you wanted it. You can grab it here: http://wildstabmedia.com/hackernews http://wildstabmedia.com/hackernews and just save the xpi to disk and unzip to get at the source
      - antiismist 19y ago
        Thanks for the link, it is interesting. I think I am going to opt for the rss plan.

garbowza 19y ago

I like it. Alot. I'm a sports fan and immediately saw about 7 stories I wanted to read. I'll def bookmark this and come back. Well done.

allang 19y ago

It actually looks like a nice take on feed aggregation - and sports is a great niche to start with. If you're planning on taking the look & feel further in the direction of print news, check out sIFR and consider making it an interface option. You have a lot to gain by improving the quality of the page. (sIFR is here: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/ http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/) In your place, I would also play with placement and formatting of certain stories with respect to the others. It would probably require backend work, but determining which of those stories is most important and then displaying them as such would be pretty cool.

antiismist 19y ago
That seems like an interesting tool and a novel approach. It is a little hard to wrap my head around how this does things that straight CSS cannot - are there some sites that use this that I can check out?

vthakr 19y ago

I've been following your site from the start from the Arc Forum and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised when I took a look at it today. The design is so much more pleasing now than it was originally--which is not too say the original design was bad, quite the contrary. I'm not really much of a sports fan, but the site does intrigue me since you decided to go with Arc to create it. Not sure if you're holding it secret or not (which would be totally understandable), but if not, I would love to see the source code for the site seeing as how I am currently learning Arc as well and I love comparing my ideas with others to spot better ways of doing things. Either way, code closed or open, the site does look great and I think its a really great idea. Good work!

antiismist 19y ago
I owe a lot to pg for making news.arc open, and to the people who run Anarki as well. Some things I am thinking about: - it is harder to open-source something than to deploy the site, because w/ open-sourcing, both the site and the code have to be in good shape, whereas with just deploying a site, it is not as big a deal if the code has some quirks. In other words, there are some deviations from Arc best practices that I want to take care of. - I am thinking about whether there is an opportunity to have an open-source digg-killer based on Arc, and if so, what that would look like. Anyway, if you want to work something out then shoot an email to: pageonetimes@idoh.com
- hollerith 19y ago
  People who download open-source code know that most code is in bad shape. They're very forgiving.

tyohn 19y ago

I like the site but have you considered adding a search?

antiismist 19y ago
I have thought about it and may add it in the future. Right now I want to focus on the tagging parts, such as having it configurable in the profile, and supporting logical ANDing and NOTing of tags. The thought is to make this a great "browse engine", to help people find what they are not looking for.

deleted 19y ago

[deleted]

okeumeni 19y ago

I like the simple short presentation or articles. At glance I get to see pretty much all the latest articles. I will also suggest a change of domain name pageonetimes sounds very yahoo news to me. Cool stuff, I’ll add it to my Sports search engine.

hooande 19y ago

Great idea, seems well executed. A suggestion: Maybe you should try a different design technique to differentiate the stories. There is a lot of text on the pages. It's kind of intimidating, makes it seem like a lot like work. If you just broke it up more and maybe added more white space it would look friendlier to read.

Mistone 19y ago

nicely done a few suggestions - the categories (nba nhl mlb) look really crammed together maybe a visual separator | would help. Agree that the domain name is a bit odd, but not a huge deal. Would be great to have an RSS /subscribe tool so I can read the headlines in reader, maybe even by sport. Also if it grabbed an image "ala facebook" share feature that would be cool. A bit more white space. Most of these are nice to have and are likely already on your list of possible features. Overall well done!

rantfoil 19y ago

Looks useful. Nice. Small suggestion: You should reduce the leading for multiline headers, they look too far apart so it hurts scanability.

herdrick 19y ago

I like it! Nice job, Idoh.

GavinB 19y ago

Many of the design tips here are right on, it could use a bit of tightening. One very specific suggestion--try adding this to the style-sheet: html { overflow: -moz-scrollbars-vertical; } It will keep the scroll bars in Firefox from appearing and disappearing as new pages are loaded. The scroll bar wouldn't be an issue except that it alters the centering of the page.

antiismist 19y ago
That is a great nugget!
- GavinB 19y ago
  Thanks. Wish I could give credit to the place I first found it, but I can't remember. Lately I stick it in every page I make.

antiismist 19y ago

Thanks for all the feedback. I think it is really high-quality, and now my to-do list is well stocked. I made some changes in the CSS area to address the various font issues. It is still a work in progress, but I think the advice on the sans-serif font is right on. If you get a chance, check it out and let me know.