4 ms·

How I rebuilt 7books from scratch in 4 days

38 points by will_critchlow 16y ago

topcat31 16y ago
Thanks for posting this Will. I think this quote from my original post rings more true than ever: "Learning to code is like learning anything from scratch; at first it's mind numbingly difficult. For example, when I first started learning Wing Chun (a martial art) I was like a baby gazelle on ice. Uncoordinated, falling over a lot and certainly no good in a fight. You stay in this "completely inept" phase for longer than you think. But then, once you start coming out of that phase your rate of improvement is quicker than you think" I've learned so much and gotten so much quicker at writing code (and writing better code at that!). I'm really happy with the front-end changes in particular with V2 - jquery really is like black magic. Even more so than python! For those that missed the original "making of" it's here: http://www.7bks.com/blog/179001 http://www.7bks.com/blog/179001
ncavig 16y ago
I'm actually quite curious about your amazon affiliate model, and what your upkeep cost vs income is? Looks like a great site and will be perusing as I finish my current reading material. Any thought in a book recommendation engine or looking into amazon's api for similar items/books to integrate?
- topcat31 16y ago
  The answer to this is quite simple: Revenue ~ $100 so far but I've barely had any real lists added (plenty of geeks have added lists saying "testing" etc etc). Now that V2 is live I'm going to put a lot of work into building a solid community around the site. Upkeep - $0 - it's hosted on appengine which is free :) In the long run I'm hoping to get some pocket money from affiliate links but at the moment I'm concentrating on building something that people want so I can build a community. Using the similarity API is on my radar, I nearly included it in V2 but in the end decided it would be better to just stick to the core stuff and ship that. Any ideas on what would make a recommendation engine awesome are always welcome! tom@7bks.com Thanks
smokinn 16y ago
Is it just me or is the main site broken? All the top lists either have outright broken images: http://www.7bks.com/list/196001 http://www.7bks.com/list/196001 or a big 7 Missing Image pic: http://www.7bks.com/list/484001 http://www.7bks.com/list/484001 http://www.7bks.com/list/565001 http://www.7bks.com/list/565001 http://www.7bks.com/list/57001 http://www.7bks.com/list/57001 etc Only 2 of the lists actually show book covers. (The Ian M Banks and Mind Bending Fiction lists.) Maybe a 5th day was in order.
- alimoeeny 16y ago
  It looks OK.
- topcat31 16y ago
  Hey - you're right. That's because I only just launched the new site and all the top lists from the past week are old lists created before images were possible! I know the site isn't looking too consistent the moment but I'm really pleased with the way the new lists look - take a look at the latest lists and see how the new style looks. I'm new at this coding malarkey and error handling and exception handling is still somewhere down on my todo list so not everything works perfectly... I'm working hard to fix everything tho! Thanks Tom
  - smokinn 16y ago
    Ah ok that makes sense. I'm a big fan of not cluttering up my codebase with special cases for launches if things will resolve themselves naturally in a couple of days. It's a pretty nice product though. Here's my list: http://www.7bks.com/list/610009 http://www.7bks.com/list/610009 Maybe a suggestion for the future: A corners/groups kind of feature? So that I can filter by what my interests are. Maybe implemented as tags? Amazon already categorizes the books so if you have access to that you could build the tag cloud automatically and let the person making the list add/remove from it.
kingsidharth 16y ago
I wonder what pushed you to learn, make and ship in 4 weeks. Really, what was the driving force?
sfphotoarts 16y ago
why is the trend currently to making everything so big? Im not Tufte fanboi but information content is a big part of design, and while i wish you the best of luck with your venture, I would love to see the design be less about big and more about density. (Chrome/9)
- henry81 16y ago
  I agree.. It seems every time I get a bigger monitor, websites progressively get larger to where they take up way too much real estate.
- topcat31 16y ago
  Clearly I like big bold design. There's no doubt about that. That said, I see your point and I think it's a really hard balance to strike. I don't think I've gotten it right yet and actually I've found the front-end design the hardest part of building the whole site. I think certainly there's elements where I could make it more compact but still look good but I do like the big bold list format I currently have. I'm going to keep working on it and eventually hopefully I'll find a layout that pleases everyone :)
  - ismaelsow 16y ago
    I found that the blog is very good-looking, if you are debuting at webdesign too, it's quite impressive.
- bhudman 16y ago
  I actually like the big letter design because I think it emulates minimalism. If you have big letters, you have to avoid putting other crap on the page, and it gets you to focus on the one message (as opposed to a bunch of other things on the page)
nhangen 16y ago
Really cool idea, and great execution. I'm picky about signing up for little apps like this, but I like the idea alot.
lkozma 16y ago
I made something similar a few years ago, although much simpler, I admit. If anyone interested: http://www.sharebookbox.com http://www.sharebookbox.com (you can use it with your own affiliate-ID) 7books looks nice, btw. Good luck with it!
smokinn 16y ago
Quick question: What's the definition of "Top"? Is it the most pageviews? If so, your top list is going to become stagnant since putting something on the homepage is going to give it a disproportionate amount of views. Suggestions would be measuring clickthroughs to amazon or disregarding clicks from the front page in a list's rank or (my preference) a time-based ranking that would always eventually shuffle the top lists off the from page. There's an example of that here: https://gist.github.com/724443/eaee0121e4085bcd8c8a5f47a79c36150b2e3803 https://gist.github.com/724443/eaee0121e4085bcd8c8a5f47a79c3... When testing those kinds of things I like to implement more than one and see which I like best personally over the span of a couple of days and then split my population based on userid and see which drives better engagement. Of course, in your case I would suggest just making some "secret" urls (simply unpublished) like http://www.7bks.com/home/time http://www.7bks.com/home/time and http://www.7bks.com/home/amazon http://www.7bks.com/home/amazon that you can check out and see what you prefer compared to the current home.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

Thanks for posting this Will. I think this quote from my original post rings more true than ever: "Learning to code is like learning anything from scratch; at first it's mind numbingly difficult. For example, when I first started learning Wing Chun (a martial art) I was like a baby gazelle on ice. Uncoordinated, falling over a lot and certainly no good in a fight. You stay in this "completely inept" phase for longer than you think. But then, once you start coming out of that phase your rate of improvement is quicker than you think" I've learned so much and gotten so much quicker at writing code (and writing better code at that!). I'm really happy with the front-end changes in particular with V2 - jquery really is like black magic. Even more so than python! For those that missed the original "making of" it's here: http://www.7bks.com/blog/179001 http://www.7bks.com/blog/179001

ncavig 16y ago

I'm actually quite curious about your amazon affiliate model, and what your upkeep cost vs income is? Looks like a great site and will be perusing as I finish my current reading material. Any thought in a book recommendation engine or looking into amazon's api for similar items/books to integrate?

topcat31 16y ago
The answer to this is quite simple: Revenue ~ $100 so far but I've barely had any real lists added (plenty of geeks have added lists saying "testing" etc etc). Now that V2 is live I'm going to put a lot of work into building a solid community around the site. Upkeep - $0 - it's hosted on appengine which is free :) In the long run I'm hoping to get some pocket money from affiliate links but at the moment I'm concentrating on building something that people want so I can build a community. Using the similarity API is on my radar, I nearly included it in V2 but in the end decided it would be better to just stick to the core stuff and ship that. Any ideas on what would make a recommendation engine awesome are always welcome! tom@7bks.com Thanks

smokinn 16y ago

Is it just me or is the main site broken? All the top lists either have outright broken images: http://www.7bks.com/list/196001 http://www.7bks.com/list/196001 or a big 7 Missing Image pic: http://www.7bks.com/list/484001 http://www.7bks.com/list/484001 http://www.7bks.com/list/565001 http://www.7bks.com/list/565001 http://www.7bks.com/list/57001 http://www.7bks.com/list/57001 etc Only 2 of the lists actually show book covers. (The Ian M Banks and Mind Bending Fiction lists.) Maybe a 5th day was in order.

alimoeeny 16y ago
It looks OK.
topcat31 16y ago
Hey - you're right. That's because I only just launched the new site and all the top lists from the past week are old lists created before images were possible! I know the site isn't looking too consistent the moment but I'm really pleased with the way the new lists look - take a look at the latest lists and see how the new style looks. I'm new at this coding malarkey and error handling and exception handling is still somewhere down on my todo list so not everything works perfectly... I'm working hard to fix everything tho! Thanks Tom
- smokinn 16y ago
  Ah ok that makes sense. I'm a big fan of not cluttering up my codebase with special cases for launches if things will resolve themselves naturally in a couple of days. It's a pretty nice product though. Here's my list: http://www.7bks.com/list/610009 http://www.7bks.com/list/610009 Maybe a suggestion for the future: A corners/groups kind of feature? So that I can filter by what my interests are. Maybe implemented as tags? Amazon already categorizes the books so if you have access to that you could build the tag cloud automatically and let the person making the list add/remove from it.

kingsidharth 16y ago

I wonder what pushed you to learn, make and ship in 4 weeks. Really, what was the driving force?

sfphotoarts 16y ago

why is the trend currently to making everything so big? Im not Tufte fanboi but information content is a big part of design, and while i wish you the best of luck with your venture, I would love to see the design be less about big and more about density. (Chrome/9)

henry81 16y ago
I agree.. It seems every time I get a bigger monitor, websites progressively get larger to where they take up way too much real estate.
topcat31 16y ago
Clearly I like big bold design. There's no doubt about that. That said, I see your point and I think it's a really hard balance to strike. I don't think I've gotten it right yet and actually I've found the front-end design the hardest part of building the whole site. I think certainly there's elements where I could make it more compact but still look good but I do like the big bold list format I currently have. I'm going to keep working on it and eventually hopefully I'll find a layout that pleases everyone :)
- ismaelsow 16y ago
  I found that the blog is very good-looking, if you are debuting at webdesign too, it's quite impressive.
bhudman 16y ago
I actually like the big letter design because I think it emulates minimalism. If you have big letters, you have to avoid putting other crap on the page, and it gets you to focus on the one message (as opposed to a bunch of other things on the page)

nhangen 16y ago

Really cool idea, and great execution. I'm picky about signing up for little apps like this, but I like the idea alot.

lkozma 16y ago

I made something similar a few years ago, although much simpler, I admit. If anyone interested: http://www.sharebookbox.com http://www.sharebookbox.com (you can use it with your own affiliate-ID) 7books looks nice, btw. Good luck with it!

smokinn 16y ago

Quick question: What's the definition of "Top"? Is it the most pageviews? If so, your top list is going to become stagnant since putting something on the homepage is going to give it a disproportionate amount of views. Suggestions would be measuring clickthroughs to amazon or disregarding clicks from the front page in a list's rank or (my preference) a time-based ranking that would always eventually shuffle the top lists off the from page. There's an example of that here: https://gist.github.com/724443/eaee0121e4085bcd8c8a5f47a79c36150b2e3803 https://gist.github.com/724443/eaee0121e4085bcd8c8a5f47a79c3... When testing those kinds of things I like to implement more than one and see which I like best personally over the span of a couple of days and then split my population based on userid and see which drives better engagement. Of course, in your case I would suggest just making some "secret" urls (simply unpublished) like http://www.7bks.com/home/time http://www.7bks.com/home/time and http://www.7bks.com/home/amazon http://www.7bks.com/home/amazon that you can check out and see what you prefer compared to the current home.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]